Mass. Republican voters turn their backs on Jim Lyons — and his hard-edged style of politics
It wasn’t just Amy Carnevale, the chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, who emerged as a winner on Tuesday night. It was her vision for how to turn the tiny party, which she said has shrunk to less than 10 percent of the electorate, back into a real force in state politics.
In voting for members of the Republican State Committee, candidates aligned with Carnevale won 44 of the 77 available seats, according to a party operative, turning back a challenge from the party’s former chair, Jim Lyons, and his allied Massachusetts Freedom Slate, which included former US Senate and gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl. The votes are still being counted on four of the remaining seats.
Although the contest was often framed as Lyons’s Trump-aligned populists vs. Carnevale’s mainstream Republicans, that’s not really what the race was about. The heart of the dispute was about two different visions for how to grow the Republican Party — and the conservative movement — in the blue Bay State.
The Lyons faction is fighting for a MassGOP that will ideologically shift the state to the right by running unapologetically conservative culture warriors who aren’t interested in moderating to win seats. Their aim is to gradually shift the conversation in state politics in a rightward direction.
That approach was on display most prominently leading up to the 2022 elections, when Lyons disparaged incumbent GOP governor Charlie Baker, a centrist who eventually chose not to run for a third term amid unpopularity in his own party. The party instead nominated Diehl, who ran as a conservative purist in Lyons’s mold — and then lost in a landslide.
Carnevale, in contrast, is fighting for a party that can simply win, taking the big-tent approach and not turning its back on figures like Baker. That’s not because she’s a moderate or centrist, as is sometimes portrayed. Unlike Lyons, in fact, Carnevale was a rare (for Massachusetts) OG Trumper, serving as a Trump delegate in 2016 and 2020. She’d also been a vocal opponent to efforts to bump Trump off the Massachusetts primary ballot.
Lyons, and his backers, wants to lead a movement. Carnevale, and hers, wants to lead a political party. Sprinkle in a few dozen personal vendettas and — boom — that’s the explanation for the MassGOP’s internecine warfare.
As someone who would like to see a more influential Republican Party in Massachusetts, to me Carnevale’s leadership is a promising path for the party to gain the political victories that lead to conservative influence in statewide conversations.
Former party chair Jennifer Nassour, who supports Carnevale, explained the importance of a Republican Party that is able to win in politically hostile territory. “You can only have your voice heard when you’re inside,” she said. “The role of party chair … is to actually win elections, not lose elections.”
Carnevale is taking a similar approach. In Tuesday’s race, the candidates who were reportedly “Team Amy” spanned from hardcore Trumpers, like Michael Fountain, to Charlie Baker Republicans, like Sean Powers.
“The Republican Party in Massachusetts consists of less than 9 percent of registered voters. In order to win elections, our party needs to reach out to unenrolled voters and even moderate Democrats,” Carnevale told me. “My mission as party chair is to make our party more attractive to all citizens of the Commonwealth in order to win elections.”
Carnevale’s big-tent approach is paying off, both literally and electorally. She’s raised almost $800,000, helping to pay off
$200,000 of MassGOP’s debt. On her watch, Republicans have won two special elections for a state Senate seat for Worcester and Hampshire and for the 6th Worcester House seat. Carnevale’s own margins within the committee seem to be growing. She won the chairmanship from Lyons in 2023 by 3 votes, and on Tuesday she cemented her leadership with a 10-person majority.
Some of Lyons’s supporters point to Governor Ron DeSantis’s victory in shifting Florida’s electorate to the right as evidence of the success that a hard-liner can have in growing the conservative movement. But Florida is a swing state. The Bay State is far from swing territory. Both MassGOP factions are quick to point out that there is a growing number of unenrolled voters in Massachusetts. For Lyons, that’s a mandate for cultural conservatism. For Carnevale, that’s a chance to cast a broad net on what is likely to be an ideologically diverse bloc.
With nearly 600,000 Republican ballots cast on Super Tuesday in Massachusetts — including what Carnevale suspects are many Democratic-leaning unenrolled voters — there is an opportunity to make inroads with a crowd that is upset with the state’s liberal status quo but not ready to enlist in the culture war. “Making the party more attractive means talking about issues like affordability and the unsustainability of certain programs supported by the Healey-Driscoll administration, like the migrant housing policy,” Carnevale said. The MassGOP has a great opportunity to make a conservative case on border control, high immigration rates, astronomical taxes, and school choice.
But that will take a functioning party. Carnevale’s task ahead is to be a unifying leader who’s open to ideological diversity within her own party. That also means including Lyons’s remaining hard-liners, which might help neutralize the ever-present attempts to attack her leadership.
Lyons isn’t going away, and neither is the theory of political power that he champions. But with Tuesday’s results, Republican voters in Massachusetts have sent a clear message: They want a party that wants to win.
Carnevale, in contrast, is fighting for a party that can simply win, taking the big-tent approach and not turning its back on figures like Baker.