HI equality warrior retired by voters

Hawaiian Gov. Neil Abercrombie, 76, was swamped in his primary over the weekend. A state senator, David Ige, 57, will be the Dem against the GOP's Duke Aiona for the general election.

Seriously progressive in a conservative state, Abercromie had already riled the locals as a long-term legislator. He annoyed many of them more in four-year governorship. We noted his relentless push for same-sex marriage (successful in large part due to his efforts).  In a stat chockablock with very loud, very anti-gay religious fundamentals. was wisdom and compassion to offset them.

He stood for numerous lefty positions, most of which he won. I had to wonder if the marriage issue was big in his defeat. 

Not so, according to numerous local accounts, like here. Instead it seems voters  could forgive him the equality thing but not the pension one.
In 2011, he proposed raising revenue by adding retirees' pension income to state tax liability. In a state knee-to-knee with oldsters, that seems to have been his worst idea. The legislature soundly defeated it.

In a real sense, it's good that pushing for marriage equality was not the problem. Plus he's plenty old enough to relax. I bet he doesn't though and while he likely won't run for office again, he can mettle around and find good causes to champion.

Gosssman against the wall

Neither has a pol/sales rep/cheerleader personality, Yet it's Steve Grossman v. Martha Coakley for MA Gov. She leads him by perhaps 30% heading to the Sept. 9th primary.

Our irony factor is that the third Dem in the primary has the best platform and policies. Donald Berwick (Dr. Don) is the true visionary and progressive in the race. He's nowhere near as well known as the two cabinet members and few give him even a slim chance.

Cliché time

Yesterday's intro of Grossman's first video ad reeled in the stereotypes and assorted tropes. (Click the ad below and judge for yourself.)

As usual, the silliest was in the Boston Herald. Immediately under the head Steve Grossman goes on the attack in first ad of race was a tightly cropped pic of him looking like a screaming berzerker (definitely not his style or wont). Winger columnist Hillary Chabot wrote it was a decision to go negative and got a pol turned UMASS prof to call it a Hail-Mary approach.

Set aside her perpetual melodrama and disdain for all lefty and Dem ideas and folk. This piece is asinine and wrong. Personally after observing and writing about politics — five years in South Carolina, 10 in Manhattan and 34 in Boston — I think I recognize negative and dirty politics. Grossman's I-know-biz-and-job-creation-from-doing-it doesn't qualify. He didn't even use Coakley's name and just said he could and had done it.

As usual, the LITE version came on TV news/noise. On WCVB, Janet Wu missed repeatedly with loaded content. For example, she denigrated his introduction of a female employee he had helped twice as her boss as "bragging." She has real emotional issues with Grossman. Then over at CBSBoston, Steve Keller was his usual hit-and-miss self. He began reasonably, raising the question of whether jobs would really be what swung this primary, as Grossman holds. Yet he thoroughly muddled this with a made-up alternative about it being centered on women. Lackaday.

Refreshingly enough, over at the Boston Globe, Joshua Miller had a passable take on the ad and related campaign. He describe the ad, noting that it drew a contrast. He avoided the clumsiness of the other commentators. He didn't analyze or speculate what might work for Grossman.

Any chance?

Big questions remain in what looks like a grim eight weeks for Grossman. When the first polls came out showing Coakley skunking him, many asked how one cabinet member had such a much higher profile. Likely her then humiliating 2010 loss to Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate seems to have played out in the predictable stereotype; in the minds of voters, she may have been elevated to Senator/Governor status. Grossman remains "just" a successful business guy who's done really good stuff as Treasurer and Receiver General.

To Keller's unanswered query though, what is this election about and what would enable Grossman to win? Unfortunately for him, timing on the jobs-creation is not good. Voters who get any news know by now that our MA unemployment is about 5.5% and many know folk who are back to work. There are still huge problems, like in gateway cities and lack of preparation in education to prepare young and reentering workers for future needs (which will also attract businesses).

Both Coakley and Grossman when they spoke with Left Ahead said these economic and education issues were huge. Yet at the moment, people here seem less morose and panicked about it all.

In TV dramas, such elections would pivot on a sudden surprise scandal revelation. Forget it. Coakley has been known to misspeak and misjudge her audiences, but she's no crook. Grossman is literally and figuratively an Eagle Scout. He's clean.

I suspect he'll not find the traction he needs in his job creation ad(s). Here's betting he has several more approaches ready to go. He might even be able to sweeten some of his issues area, say promising affordable daycare for working moms. No time to waste for him.

Vaguely related: My rant on his weird hangout for the ad last night is here.

---

---

Mark Fisher Gets Shout Down Instead of Shout-Out

Like the old man in Moonstruck, "I'm confused." Not only did I get sucked into a winger radio show embedded in a RedMassGroup diary, but here I pass it along.

You can go to The Kuhner Report page for the audio show. You can catch it on Red Mass Group, replete with sniping comments from its readers. It is over 40 minutes of fast-paced accusations, counter-accusations, bluster, innuendo, and calumny.

H/T to RMG's Rob Eno. I had never heard Kuhner's show and would have been unaware of this high theater had Eno not featured it.

Guest for Jeff Kuhner's show yesterday was Mark Fisher, the Tea Party GOP candidate for MA governor. As he was when he joined Left Ahead, he started and remained calm and rational throughout the show. In stark contrast, a couple of caller- in said he was a liar, that he misrepresented him involvement in the GOP, and worse.

The gist of Fisher's contentions includes that a couple GOP Poobahs and moneyed types asked him to drop out of the gubernatorial race, giving nearly certain nominee Charlie Baker a clear field with no primary. In return, Fisher said, he would get a shot at a more winnable office, plus funding toward such a race.  He named the Grand Poobahs in the show.

There have been he-says/he-says disagreements on who offered whom what when. To us with clean hands, those seem like quibbles. Some Baker folk may imply Fisher tried to extort up to $1 million from the party bigs to get out. Fisher's competing implication is that they wanted to bribe him.

Regardless, the consensus among GOP functionaries seems to be avoiding the primary is essential for Baker's November victory. As an aside, I'm with various righties and lefties thinking a primary can only strengthen Baker's hand, particularly with unenrolled voters.

The lowest ring of his Kuhner-show hell featured Boston Herald columnist and GOP consultant Holly Robichaud. She is the show.

Robichaud plays the drama queen and is even worse than Chris Matthews and at least as bad as Bill O'Reilly in screaming, in shouting down other speakers, in raw, abrasive emotion in lieu of logic. She is unbelievable in multiple senses of that term.

Her basic refutation of Fisher relies entirely on ad hominem ploys. Again and again, she screams that she knows this or that person Fisher says was involved in proposing the deal. She knows, she just knows (without evidence) that what he said is impossible. She was as far as possible from demonstrating anything in her QED. She just knows, like a parent who just knows her son would never steal a car.

The show fascinates me. There's the circled-wagons aspect. There's the crazed shouting lady, bordering on sociopathy.  Mostly there's the raised curtain revealing the motley GOP crew backstage.

---

---

MA GOP niggling and wiggling

You'd think from experience the utter disingenuous John Boehner or R.M. Nixon or even hearing the testimony of a sneaky what-your-definition-of-is-is W.J. Clinton that even arrogant New Englanders would sense their limits. Instead the MA GOP spits in the faces of one of their candidates, their convention delegates, the larger party and voters.

The self-created disgrace continues. For the latest on the filthy deals at the convention, see today's Globe piece. I've also been one of many who's covered this, like here.

The point is this is not going away. The GOP functionaries can continue to wave their hands, but that changes nothing. This actually is simple.

• Certain GOP gubernatorial nominee Charlie Baker didn't blow out the convention.

• Also-ran Mark Fisher, the proud Tea Party, full-platform Republican, squeaked out a little over 15% of the convention delegate vote, as required to force a primary. 

• Done and done? Big no. See the Globe piece for details on how the party snuck behind everyone to deny reality. 

The punchline is my standard from my favorite philosopher/comic/junkie Lenny Bruce — There is only what is and that's it. What should be is a dirty lie.

The local GOPpers instead try the same crap you can hear at a country club bar or a Dorchester pub. Lie loudly and repeatedly, daring more honest and honorable folk to challenge you.

The Party doesn't want their party inconvenienced. They appear to have it in mind that an uncontested primary is their best bet for winning a statewide office in who can remember how long. To make that happen, they have fudged and cheated and scammed. Honk. Wrong!

Regular readers here know that Fisher and I differ vastly politically. I like him and trust him though. He's a straight-ahead, Boy Scout kind of guy, as am I. Understandably, he's suing to get what he earned — a shot at losing to Baker in a party primary...fair and square.

I remain to be convinced that uncontested primaries are an absolute good. A lot of research questions that as well. Moreover, it's wrong, really immoral, to clear the field against the party procedures and rules, just because. Some of the party insiders, notably Executive Director Rob Cunningham, are even denigrating Fisher's call to obey their own counting rules as irrelevant.

The MA GOP has long specialized in patronizing and insulting the majority of our voters, a.k.a. the unenrolled. This year, they seem intent on telling their own to buzz off. If enough party members are as delusional, that may well work. I'm betting though that Fisher's suit calling for obeying the rules will make that moot.

Alas, this was so simple. I think of the non-stop lunacy of the national GOP on the Affordable Care Act. All that was necessary was honesty; say thank God that the Dems came around to the Republican plan for health-care and implemented it; we win! Instead, they appear to be what they are, obstreperous asses.

Likewise, in Boston, the MA GOP need only have praised themselves for their open democracy and model convention. Instead, they reveal they are liars, sneaks and frauds.  How simple victory could have been.

By the bye, if you ever need confirmation of how sneaky they are, go to the party site. They don't cover anything meaningful. They never have controversial issues. They are months behind the times. They don't even post the approved party platform. They lack both courage and wisdom. You can thrive with only one of those but not without at least one.

Baker's Free Ride or Free Fall

It wasn't a clean and definitive win for Charlie Baker. Yet as far as the MA GOP bigs are concerned, he cleared the field of his single primary opponent, Mark Fisher.

A few more days may pass until we're positive that, unlike the Dems, the GOP'ers will have an uncontested race at the very top of the ticket. The debate includes how real the 14.765% of yesterday's convention ballot was. Fisher needs 15% to get on the primary ballot.

Complicating it is that the rules say blank ballots don't count. The party tabulators did instead tally 64 blanks, knocking Fisher down below 15% (as in Baker at 2,095 to Fisher at 394 and Fisher at 15.829 without blanks).

Fisher and I had a good chat at Left Ahead last week. I'll stick in his half-hour show below. He also graciously called me before the convention to thank me for being reasonable and respectful to him, as he was to me despite our political disparities. I can't run a Baker show; neither his campaign manager nor his communications director has responded to numerous requests.

Today, Fisher's FB feed includes:

Dear Friends,Thank you for your support over the last 5 months. I am currently speaking with lawyers about being jobbed out by Kirsten Hughes at the Massachusetts Republican Party "Kangaroo Convention". There were improprieties in the counting of the 'blank' vote that occurred which were not allowed to be challenged and no re-count was allowed. I will let you know our plans in the coming days.

He certainly has every right to feel cheated and to fight.

I don't know anyone who thinks Fisher would win a primary election against Baker. Yet we simple folk who took civics classes cling stubbornly to rudimentary concepts of democracy and fairness.

Conventional wisdom on this is that an uncontested primary is far better for the candidate than spending money and energy before a general election, all the while getting prodded and exposed by another party member.

Today's Globe has a pretty good piece on the convention results. They include a contrarian of moment, former Gov. Bill Weld, among the several saying how great it will be for Baker if he goes unprimaried. Weld says a Fisher challenge would help Baker interest unenrolled voters. As we all note here in MA, with 53% of voters unenrolled, that is where elections are won.

For analysis of uncontested MA primaries, you can try your own tabulation. Instead, look at the stats compiled and analyzed over at the Mass. Numbers blog. Over there in Nov. 2012, Bret Benson admitted the samples are small and Dems rarely have top seats without primaries. However, he concludes that most times, it works solidly in the GOP's advantage to clear the field for governor.

I note and admire the relentless optimism of the MA GOP leaders. I've heard the shouts of the party chairs from the carousel that seems to spin them off so quickly. This election will be different, like Weld or Mitt Romney and such. This is the right candidate at the right time. Then again, they insisted that when Baker went against Deval Patrick.

They would be foolish to turn down real or perceived advantages. Moreover, we have a long if irrational history here of the unenrolled claiming that voting for Republican governors to keep a check on the monolithic Dems. The wide disparity from one Dem legislator to another is plenty of restraint, more than a single chief executive could impose.

So it comes down to Baker. He's trimmed down and comes across a lot more human than in his last run. It may be long enough from his slash-and-burn at Harvard Pilgrim and his Big Dig associations that he can run pretty clean.

We in MA also are quite forgiving and don't burn an L for loser in the foreheads of unsuccessful politicians. Two or three goes at a high office are OK around here. Baker too has the plus of two full terms of a Dem governor. Those many voters who like that fairy tale of the magic of balance only a GOP can bring will certainly want a change on that alone.

Instead, I like the agon, when a governorship or presidency is the prize. Surprisingly, I find myself on Weld's side here. Whoever ends up as the Dem candidate will emerge well defined and with clear positions and personality traits for voters to see. For the other side, wouldn't it be swell to have the same?

Monday Followup: The Globe reports that Fisher remains unhappy at the appearance of a fix being in on the count and rules. MA GOP bigs deny both. I call with Baker the sure winner of a primary, the party should have let Fisher have a go, pretended they were honest and honorable, and not alienated unenrolled and GOP voters.


Update: Autoplay on Blogger started this regardless of settings. That's annoying. I removed the embedded player. Instead, click here to listen.