Baker gives Game gig to gun guy
Advocate’s appointment seen as dig against AG
Gov. Charlie Baker’s move to appoint the head of a gun rights group to lead the Department of Fish & Game is being seen as both an attempt to recover alienated conservatives and to challenge his possible Democratic challenger Attorney General Maura Healey.
Baker picked Ronald Amidon, the president of the Gun Owners’ Action League of Massachusetts, to be commissioner of the wildlife agency on Wednesday, even as the organization is actively suing Healey in U.S. District Court over a copycat assault weapons ban.
The group filed the lawsuit after Healey began cracking down on guns that resemble assault rifles last summer as part of the state’s assault weapon ban. They’ve also organized protests against Healey outside the State House.
Baker’s decision to make Amidon, one of the group’s top leaders, part of his administration is a clear shot at Healey, one political observer said.
“There are all kinds of people out there interested in fish and wildlife who are not associated with GOAL,” said Dennis Hale, a political science professor at Boston College. “But to pick that person sends a signal.”
Baker, who’s up for re-election next year, has also taken heat from within his own Republican party for being too moderate.
Just yesterday, Baker swore in Rosalin Acosta, a progressive antiTrump activist, to be Secretary of Labor in an attempt to appeal to Democrats in a super-blue state.
The Amidon appointment is essentially an effort to have it both ways, Hale said.
“He’s not stupid,” Hale said of Baker. “He’s going to do something to show conservatives in the Republican Party that he at least sometimes pays attention to them.”
But gun rights supporters don’t buy the idea that Baker is in their corner.
They still remember that, before eventually criticizing it, Baker initially appeared to back Healey’s gun directive, saying the attorney general has the “authority and jurisdiction” to enforce the state’s assault rifle ban.
GOAL activists also protested Baker’s decision last year to nominate Healey’s first assistant AG Christopher Barry-Smith as a Superior Court judge over his role in crafting the copycat gun ban, charging that Baker “cannot be counted on to represent and protect the civil rights of all citizens.”
“A lot of our members are still very angry at the Baker administration for what they did,” said Jim Wallace, the executive director of GOAL. “They would still have to come an awful long way to get probably a lot of people’s support.”
Baker himself is named in the GOAL lawsuit targeting Healey’s ruling, but Amidon told the Herald yesterday the governor is not a real focus.
Amidon, who will now step down from his post as GOAL president, said his interview with Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito focused mainly on environmental issues and there were “very few, if any” questions about his group.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Setti Warren, the mayor of Newton, also took aim at Baker and Amidon in a press release yesterday, saying that “at a time when the NRA is working to make our country and the Commonwealth less safe, it’s absurd that Charlie Baker would reward (Amidon) ... with a plum job running a state agency.”
Amidon, who will make $127,000 a year at Fish & Game, laughed when a reporter read him the Warren statement over the phone yesterday.
“The briefings I’ve had so far, it is certainly a prestigious job, but I wouldn’t call it a plum job,” said Amidon. “There’s a great deal of work to be done.”
Asked about any political friction created by the appointment, spokesmen for both Baker and Healey merely offered bland statements of congratulations and welcome to Amidon.