Keller @ Large: Massachusetts Democrats poised to regain hold of all statewide offices
BOSTON – With the exception of Democrat Deval Patrick's two terms, Massachusetts has had at least one Republican holding statewide office for the past 31 years.
But thanks to new polling showing all Democratic candidates with big leads, that could be about to change. What could one-party rule mean to you?
We asked former Gov. Bill Weld and current Gov. Charlie Baker about that as they rallied in support of GOP Auditor candidate Anthony Amore.
"I'm a big believer in constructive friction," Baker said. "I think it's really important that you have more than one voice, more than one team on the field."
Baker cited the pending income tax rebates as an example of something that might not be happening without him in there.
When Weld won the governorship in 1990, he ended years of exclusively Democratic control, and ushered in an era of tax cuts and education reform. And he recalled what he found when he became US Attorney in 1981 after decades of Democratic dominance.
"There are a lot of quarters in which it's considered ok if a big piece of public money is being handed out to just skim a little bit off the top of the system. And of course that led to over 100 public corruption prosecutions," he said.
With Amore running closer to his opponent, State Sen. Diana DiZoglio, than any other statewide GOP candidate, he wonders if voters will care about this difference.
"I have taken no special interest money in my campaign and my opponent has taken $700,000 from unions that represent employees who have to be audited," Amore said.
The Amore campaign later clarified that he's referring to ads bought by union political action committees which are independent from the candidate. And a DiZoglio spokesman says they're proud to be supported by nurses, teachers and firefighters.
But is the broader issue of keeping some level of partisan balance still important to voters? Six times in the last 32 years they've put in a Republican governor while electing almost all Democrats to everything else.
But the Republican brand is at a low ebb in Massachusetts these days, and the polls suggest this fall might be an exception to that tradition.