I know that the race to be Massachusett’s junior senator could be construed as “not of general interest”, so here’s a quick-hit summary for the New Englanders and true political junkies.
The primaries will be held on April 30th, and the general election on June 25th. The two Democratic candidates have agreed to six primary debates, and the three Republicans are arguing somewhere between four and nine. (Barring some actual surprises, I will not be live-blogging). Ed Markey (my current Rep) is easily the most progressive of the five, so I consider this Boston Globe story good news:
US Representative Edward J. Markey holds a wide lead over his Democratic rival for the US Senate, fellow Representative Stephen F. Lynch, and would easily beat all three Republican candidates in a head-to-head matchup, according to a new poll.
Markey leads Lynch by 29.5 percentage points among potential Democratic primary voters, 50 percent to 20.5 percent, with 23 percent undecided about their preference in the April 30 primary, according to the UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll released Wednesday night.
Markey, of Malden, would also beat the Republicans candidates by double-digit margins, although the poll found that the vast majority of voters do not know who those candidates are, suggesting those candidates have room to grow if they can broaden their profiles…
The poll indicated that, if the June 25 general election were held today, Markey would defeat state Representative Daniel B. Winslow by 23 percentage points, former Navy SEAL Gabriel E. Gomez by 19.5 percentage points, and former US attorney Michael J. Sullivan by 17 points. The survey did not measure how the Republicans would fare against one another in the GOP primary on April 30.
The poll found most voters have yet to form an opinion of Markey, offering a chance for Lynch and the Republicans to dent his public image and shake up the race in its earliest stages. Despite Markey’s 36 years in Congress, about 31 percent of those surveyed said they had no opinion of the Malden Democrat, while nearly 19 percent said they had never even heard of him…
(And yet I believe Massachusetts voters are considered fairly politically sophisticated, by national standards. Yes, we’re doomed.)
David S. Bernstein at the Phoenix discusses why Lynch, whose voting record differs from Markey only in being far more socially conservative, is still running:
… When labor failed to support Lynch for US Senate in 2009, media reports pinned it on his opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Hence the general surprise at labor’s amnesia in embracing Lynch now…
In fact, the unions who were most furious about Lynch’s ACA vote are simply too liberal — on non-labor issues — to ever warm up to him. That includes teachers’ unions, which are backing Markey; and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose members skew heavily female, black, and Hispanic, and which is likely to endorse Markey next week.
As one SEIU insider put it to me, “Do we have a position on choice? No. Would our members kill us [if we endorsed a pro-life candidate]? Yes.”
The building trades, by contrast, consist mostly of white men for whom Markey is far too liberal…
As for the Republicans, all three represent excellent reasons to donate, campaign, and vote for the Democrat(hopefully Markey). Gabriel Gomez, who has decided to try and hide his tenure as a vulture capitalist for Advent International, is best known as a spokesmodel for the “Dishonourable Disclosure” swiftboaters who failed to persuade voters that Obama should never have been allowed to mention that Osama bin Laden was dead. Dan Winslow, humble middle-class One Percenter, was Mitt Romney’s legal counsel before jumping on the Americans Elect bandwagon.
Champion of the litter Mike Sullivan made his bones pursuing scary brown people for Dubya after 9/11; when some of his more noxious fellow Repubs denied him permanent appointment as ATF director for being insufficiently deferential to gun dealers, he jumped to John Ashcroft’s law firm.
Speaking of also-rans, Scott Brown has just joined the law firm of Nixon Peabody:
… Though he will be leaning heavily on his Washington contacts to drum up business for the firm, he will not be a lobbyist, according to Nixon Peabody officials….”
The job allows Brown to begin cashing in on his contacts with the financial services industry, which he helped oversee in the Senate. He received hefty donations from the industry during his race last year against Warren.
Senator Warren, on the other hand, remains awesome.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think the Senate is so close, and that situation is made worse by the heavy right skew of the Dem caucus, that no Senate race is of only local interest, except in the states so red the only question is if Barrasso or Crappo is willing to step aside for the Granddaughter of Satan, Dick Cheney Jr.
Since this is a Boston firm, can I assume the Nixon is unrelated to Dick Jr’s cousin Dick?
Punchy
Lets give Markey a hip nicky and call him “Biz”…
MikeJ
I would be shocked if Markey isn’t the next senator from Massachusetts, but even I’ve been shocked before. Markey can actually run a campaign and he’ll have the machine with him. He’ll have to show up in public wearing a Yankees cap to lose.
max
OK. Looks solid. Must keep it up.
(And yet I believe Massachusetts voters are considered fairly politically sophisticated, by national standards. Yes, we’re doomed.)
If we turn out our folks we’re fine. As for the general effects of people not knowing… enh. I’m sure enough of them are 27%ers who couldn’t find [insert country here] on a map.
Here’s his Actblue page (for folks like me who prefer to use that).
max
[‘I’m already one of his 3,857 supporters, but he’s going to have to wait until the end of March for more cash.’]
Jim, Foolish Literalist
because they all make over $250/yr, will never need Medicare or Social Security, their children and grandchildren will be unaffected by a hotter, more turbulent climate within (most of them, I think?) fifty miles of the ocean…. /rhetorical and exasperated sigh/
The Pale Scot
Framers, drywallers , painters etc make 250Gs+? Wow I wish was I was young enough to go back to my old job.
FlyingToaster
I got my first call from a Markey volunteer this weekend; naturally they then asked me to volunteer as well. No. Again. I am having (better damn well be temporary) mobility problems and am the primary care giver for a five-year-old. If I speak to strangers I sound like I’m ponitificating (I probably do this with acquaintances as well, they’re just not quite so horrified by it); I, like HerrDoktor, make pop-culture references that my audience just doesn’t get.
I will recommend Markey to people when it comes up in discussion; everyone who votes (except my next-door-neighbor) will likely vote for him. My neighbor will likely write in Atilla the Hun, unless he’d prefer Ghenghis Kahn or Timur-i-Lang.
The union rank-n-file are not in lockstep on Lynch; he hurt himself badly with the anti-ACA rhetoric, and since we’ve been “victims” of RomneyCare, the working stiffs are heavily in favor of it. I can tell you from experience with preschool; kids around here are effing healthier, and since they have cousins out-of-state, their parents are comparing notes. I think Lynch really wants to be governor, and this is his best chance of getting enough name recognition to have a prayer.
And if it’s Lynch vs theCenterfold, I’ll vote for Lynch. He’s no Vomit Lives.
Punchy
@The Pale Scot: You may wanna give yer Snark Detector the Fonz and reread that comment…
Xenos
@The Pale Scot:
No, no, think electricians. Back in the days of the Big Dig there was such a shortage of electricians and no way to bring any in from out of the state (and the union) that a generation of electricians made some very nice change. I got a peek inside the BIEE pension system once – it was pretty damn impressive.
TheMightyTrowel
Lynch has been my Rep since I was too young to vote. I think his office’s shredder has a very special and intimate relationship with the letters I write him about women’s health. I hope he loses embarrassingly. I hope it ruins his career so someone better can get a toe into the district.
aimai
The Markey people were out doorknocking my (solidly) Markey neighborhood yesterday, midday. The woman was using Minivan, the iphone canvassing tool we used for the last election for Warren/Obama in the co-ordinated campaign. She was delighted to be using it. People really know their jobs by this time: knock on door, hand in literature, and ascertain whether this household is going to vote for your guy. You are not trying to convince anyone. You are not doing every door. Just the people you think need a direct contact so you can locate them when you need to pull their vote. There is probably a calcuation they have done that if they can get X number of votes from this ward/precinct that they can be sure they are putting Markey over the top. The only error they are making is that they are not re-inforcing the actual date of the election. A lot of people are planning to vote Markey (or anyone else) but are not really aware of the dates because its so off calendar. MA has very strict rules about absentee voting or they would be vote banking right now.
TriassicSands
Senator Warren and Senator Markey.
Sounds pretty good.-
Cervantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Since this is a Boston firm, can I assume the Nixon is unrelated to Dick Jr’s cousin Dick?”
The “Nixon” part of Nixon Peabody hails from Nixon, Hargrave, a 19th-century upstate New York firm. Prior to its 1999 merger with Boston’s Peabody & Brown (also not related to Scottie), Nixon, Hargrave did lean Republican — but that’s about as close as it got to Tricky Dick.
njb
Lynch is setting himself up for political oblivion.
Ella in New Mexico
Yeah,yeah, he’s a progressive. He’s pro-choice, pro-science, pro-environment. He cares about working people and poor people and is not in the pocket of Wall Street and big business.
But the SOB is the reason I am still bumping into walls and suffering from sleep deprivation-induced depression.
Thanks to Ed, we not only kept DST, it’s been EXTENDED. For that alone, I hate him. ;-)