Keller @ Large: Will Kavanaugh Have An Impact On Local Elections?
BOSTON (CBS) -- After the Kavanaugh-Ford hearing, Jon Keller brought in Joanna Weiss, editor of Northeastern University's Experience magazine, and Matt Murphy of the State House News Service, to discuss how it will impact the upcoming election.
Weiss said: "After watching these nine hours almost of these hearing, I think both sides, the base and core group of both sides of the aisle are super energized. It was shocking and sad this devolves from what felt like a hearing attempting to be fair to just a bitter partisan battle. So how does that affect Geoff Diehl who is running against Elizabeth Warren on the Trump supporter side? Does this energize his base a little more than we might have expected before? And then how does this affect the gubernatorial race? We've got Jay Gonzalez, the Democrat, fighting an uphill battle against a popular -- even among Democrats or especially among Democrats -- Republican Charlie Baker. Does this actually energize Democrats to look at Charlie Baker a different way?"
Murphy said that it would be "plausible" if voters came out in record numbers as a response and voted down the Democratic party line. "With Baker, he's been calling for an investigation for several weeks now, it took him a couple times this past week but he eventually got to the point where he said I believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. He didn't say that that should be disqualifying, though he again said that this should be further investigated by the FBI or the law enforcement. That's going to play into Jay Gonzalez's narrative, that [Baker's] not stepping up, that he's not leading. He didn't go to the women's march, he didn't go to the science march, but if you look at the polls, none of those arguments have really moved the needle very much."
Weiss added that Baker has been successful in working with Democrats without angering Republicans too much but separated himself from Trump. She believes Gonzalez doesn't have enough name recognition or "Deval Patrick special charisma to really break through."
"Jay is not running as a continuation of Patrick even though that label has been assigned to him in some ways. But as you mentioned we are now 40 days give or take out from the election and 45 percent of voters still don't know who he is," said Murphy.
While there are multiple Baker ads running on TV, Murphy said, there are none for Gonzalez. Instead, he will need to use the debates to get his message out.
The first gubernatorial debate will be Tuesday, October 9 on TV38 at 8 p.m..