With GOP in disarray, Mass Dems look to reorganize
There Is an old political maxim that says you can’t beat somebody with nobody.
Which is generally true. But there ought to be another one that assumes you need a nobody, like the Republican Party in Massachusetts, to beat in the first place.
But there is no Republican Party to beat any more.
The Massachusetts Republican Party, a once commanding organization, beat itself and is all but extinct.
It is true that the party has a new state chairman—Amy Carnevale—following the ouster of the controversial conservative Jim Lyons, who is Donald Trump’s biggest supporter around.
But that, to use a cliché, is like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Led by former Gov. Charlie Baker, the Democrat’s favorite Republican, moderate Republicans abandoned ship a long time ago.
Carnevale, who also supported Trump—as well as Baker—thinks she can bring them back by moving the party back to the center.
Good luck with that. There are only 437,211 registered Republicans in the state compared to 1,438,607 Democrats. More importantly there are 2,951,863 unenrolled or independent voters who can vote either way.
Republicans running for governor can only be successful if they, like Baker, can appeal to the independents.
Geoff Diehl, the conservative Trump supporting Republican candidate for governor, could not do that and lost badly to Democrat Gov. Maura Healey.
The Republican Party in Massachusetts was simply wiped out in the last election. All statewide constitutional offices from the governor down to the state auditor are now held by Democrats.
Both U.S. Senators and all nine members of the U.S. House are Democrats.
At the State House, there are only three Republicans in the 40-member state Senate and 29 in the 160-member House of Representatives.
And after veteran Bristol County Republican Sheriff Thomas Hodgson went down to defeat at the hands of Democrat Paul Heroux in the last election, there are just two of 14 Massachusetts sheriffs who are Republicans.
Of the 11 district attorneys in the state, only one is a Republican.
We are withholding their names because if the Democrats find out who they are they will defeat them too.
So it is understandable why outgoing Democrat Party Chief Gus Bickford took a victory lap as he announced plans of stepping down as party chairman.
Bickford, who has held the post since 2016, said, “I am so proud to be able to step down as chair with more Democrats in the Legislature than when I began, and with an incredible team of Democrats in every statewide office.”
Hardly had Bickford completed a sentence than Gov. Maura Healey, now the nominal head of the Democrat Party, announced her support of longtime party operative
Steve Kerrigan as his replacement.
Kerrigan is president of Worcester’s Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Care. He is also a political addict, having first worked for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, beginning as intern and rising to be Kennedy’s political director.
Following that, Kerrigan was chief of staff to Democrat Attorney General Tom Reilly from 2003 to 2007 and ran Reilly’s unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2008. Reilly came in third in the Democrat primary that was won by Deval Patrick.
Among other things, Kerrigan was chief of staff of President Barack Obama’s first Presidential Inauguration Committee
Kerrigan was Democrat gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley’s lieutenant governor running mate in 2014. They lost to Baker and Karyn Polito.
In 2018 Kerrigan ran for the open seat in the Lowell-based 3rd Congressional District but pulled out of the race following a death in the family.
Kerrigan, who has been around the block a few times, brings a lot of credentials to the job. He also needs a win.
The question is, what is he going to do with his credentials now that there are no Republicans around to defeat any more.
Since Bickford and the Democrats have been so successful in decimating the ranks of Republicans, Kerrigan’s first assignment will apparently be to access the battlefield and shoot the wounded.
If he can find any.