Keller: Diehl's debate performance respectable, but Healey did nothing to squander lead in polls
BOSTON - There are good reasons to believe that Democratic gubernatorial nominee Maura Healey's super-comfy lead in the polls is no illusion.
This is Massachusetts, where Donald Trump and most things Republican are widely loathed, abortion rights are widely supported, and the social safety net is not considered an abomination. And in Wednesday night's gubernatorial debate televised on NBC10 Boston, Healey - to use her preferred basketball point guard analogy - found all her favorite spots on the court.
A word cloud of her rhetoric would be dominated by three boldface words: TRUMP, ABORTION and INVESTING.
Healey did nothing to hurt herself or squander any of that big polling advantage. Unless a significant number of undecided voters and soft Healey leaners actually skipped "Jeopardy" and the Bruins opener to watch the thing.
In that unlikely scenario, her lead might take a hit.
Republican nominee Geoff Diehl - repeatedly described by Healey as "Donald Trump's candidate" - turned in a very respectable performance that at times had Healey licking her lips and darting her eyes, classic body language tells of anxiety.
Diehl's best moment of the night came early, when he answered the inevitable question about who won the 2020 election with a canned but clever line: "Obviously Joe Biden won the election, look at how bad the economy is right now."
He effectively tied Healey's adamant opposition to new natural gas pipelines and support for a fossil-free state by the end of this decade to visions of soaring energy bills and economic disaster. "By 2030, no fossil fuels? No possible way, we're gonna go bankrupt," he said. Diehl repeatedly linked Healey to Biden and, at one point, "higher interest rates."
And while Healey countered with ever more Diehl-Trump linkage - a glaring weakness Diehl brought on himself by needlessly festooning his campaign with Trump swag like the ex-president's worthless endorsement and useless former aide Corey Lewandowski - Diehl was the calm, courteous antithesis of Trump, shunning some of the Trumpian red meat he's been foolishly peddling elsewhere and sticking to a balanced conservative diet of economic relief, policy restraint and parental rights.
To a casual voter just tuning into the race for the first time, Diehl did not appear to resemble Satan. He wished his daughter a happy birthday and name-checked his wife twice before Healey got around to mentioning her mom and stepdad. He even fended off one of Healey's abortion-rights broadsides by disclosing that he was born out of wedlock.
A time-limit-obsessed format that squelched extended candidate interaction didn't work to Healey's favor. As a former litigator and prosecutor, one expected her to perhaps hit Diehl with a flurry of questions at some point, but that never happened. And while Healey seemed to warm to the moment as the debate went on, it was telling that some of her best moments came during the bottom of the hour commercial break, where a slick Healey campaign ad was allowed to air.
There will be just one more debate by decree of the Healey campaign, a defensive decision that perhaps reflects the ambivalence Healey showed for so long toward a run for governor. Perhaps Wednesday night we saw why.