Carnevale seeks to grow MassGOP
Even Charlie Baker welcome, she says
After months of silence from the previous chair of the state’s Republican party, newly elected MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale took the airwaves this weekend where she touted her goal to grow the party.
“We’re a small enough party that I say we welcome anybody who wants to attach that Republican label to their name, we’re less than 9%, so I say welcome to our party,” she said. “If you consider yourself a Republican, I consider you part of our party.”
Carnevale, fresh from a narrow election victory over embattled former Chairman Jim Lyons, joined WBZ’s Jon Keller for his weekly politics segment, where she struck a strikingly different tone from that of her predecessor by avoiding the so-called culture wars and focusing on ways to grow the party, put forward a fiscal message and participate in state politics.
“I notice you’re not mentioning cultural issues,” Keller pointed out.
According to the Chairwoman, that’s just not what voters, especially conservative voters, care about in the Bay State.
“We do need to have a fiscal message that resonates with voters,” she said. “Residents of the Commonwealth are facing huge pressures from inflation, regulatory burdens from the government in Massachusetts and federally, so I think that’s, frankly, the focus of a lot of voters in Massachusetts and that’s something that should be a focus of our party.”
Lyons, despite attempting to lead the party in a deeply progressive state, focused on issues more in keeping with the pursuits of the national party, heavy on support for former President Donald Trump, loud with anti-abortion rhetoric and light on proposed solutions.
Former Republican Gov. Charlie Baker was often cited as the nation’s most popular state executive, but the party, under Lyons, was dissatisfied with his conservative bona fides, choosing to go into November’s election cycle without him or his input. Baker did not attend the party nominating convention and endorsed few candidates.
It didn’t work out well. Republicans now control no constitutional offices, lost the corner office, and hold fewer seats in the legislature.
Carnevale said she was a fan of both Trump and the twice-elected former governor.
“I am somebody who supported Donald Trump at the national level but I also strongly supported Charlie Baker here in Massachusetts,” she said.
“I think you can do both,” she continued.
According to Carnevale the party needs to move more toward the center if they want to win elections in the state and they need to pick people to run who are already doing work to make their communities better, not untested extremists.
“The Republicans need to reflect their constituency,” she said.