Schilling: Baker loves the gays

In his blog, Curt Schilling makes some remarks about his beliefs as part of his eventual decision not to run for office. I will give him credit that his ideas are more in line with a person trying to work out some conflicts and questions, and it's a nice change from the tight, poll-tested list of convictions most pols present. I'll give Schilling this -- he strikes me as more sincere in what he says he believes than most candidates.

But he does say something curious about Republican gubernatorial candidate/guy who won't pay for your prosthetic Charlie Baker:

Charlie Baker is running for Governor of Massachusetts. I am a huge supporter of Charlie. Charlie Baker is very much in favor of Gay marriage, I’m not. That doesn’t make me feel one ounce different about Charlie, because I understand there is no perfect candidate and no one exists but yourself, that’s going to align perfectly with your opinions and beliefs. This state needs good people above all else, and Charlie is that.

It's the "very much in favor of Gay marriage" that gets me. Not just in favor of equality, in favor of Gay marriage ("G"ay marriage? Baker wants sprinters to get married?). No, Baker is very much in favor of gay marriage. He doesn't just favor of equal rights in marriage, or colloquially accept the idea of gay marriage.

The way Schilling phrases it, he makes it sound as if there's nothing that gets ol' Charlie's motor running like two men going out and getting themselves married. A real guy-on-guy knot-tyin' enthusiast. To read Schilling, Baker cruises Unitarian chapels in Provincetown.

I doubt that's Baker's case. Rather, Baker can read poll numbers as well as anyone else, and realizes that clinging to an anti-equality stance in this state is a short path to loserdom. However, it certainly makes it seem that in Curt's mind, even a hint of tolerance makes you thrill at the idea of two men exchanging rings. It certainly makes it seem that the hardline conservatives in Massachusetts are not going to accept Baker's admission of equality quietly.

Which is perhaps a sign that it's a good thing Schilling won't come close to being our Senator, and that Baker isn't as close to the nomination as he likes to think he is.

Romney is to Bush as Weld to...

Charlie Baker, perhaps aware of how unknown he is to people (63% have no opinion of him in the recent Globe poll), is out of the gate in an effort to define himself. This video below is his first foray...




The production values are horrid, I think we can all agree. The green screen is obvious, and the body language and speech pacing are horrible. These are the mistakes you make at a stage between memorizing the lines and final take -- no way this should be a final take.

This video is also a preview of what we'll be hearing for the next several months, and it's an echo of McCain's campaign. Like McCain, Baker can be expected to dodge any connection to the last Republican to hold this office (Romney in Baker's case, Bush in McCain's). We can also expect similar invocations of an idealized Republican leader in the past -- Baker will talk about Weld with all the adoration that McCain spoke of Reagan.

The 2010 election is going to be reduced to Obama's Understudy vs. Weld Redux. (Does that make Cahill our Ross Perot?)

Coakley leagues beyond others in Globe poll

As you probably have already read, the Boston Globe commissioned a poll. The rather misleading headline reads that "Patrick support plummets", though this is the third straight one that showed Deval Patrick is murky waters coming up on re-election.

The head-to-head numbers are fun, but I wanted to instead focus on voters' impressions of the main figures in the state. I assembled a list of all the statewide officeholders showing their net favorability (that is, % of total respondents with a positive view of a candidate, minus the % with a negative view). Next to that net favorability is a number in parentheses which shows the percentage of respondents with no opinion of the person mentioned.

Generally, you want a high net favorability (which means people like you) with a low number of people with no opinion (which means that people know you and like you).

Some observations are below...

The Executives
Deval Patrick -16 net (3% no opinion)
Tim Murray +22 (48%)

Of all the persons surveyed by the Globe, nobody is liked less than Deval Patrick, and nobody is as strongly defined. Somebody so poorly liked, and with such little room to grow is vulnerable, regardless of the dynamics of the race. Patrick can try to bring up these numbers, but it looks that Deval's main hope may be that he isn't as bad as anyone else on the ballot -- a hope I personally think has a good chance of being fulfilled. Tim Murray, meanwhile, is fundraising at a strong clip and is enough out of the limelight that he is generally well liked.

The Legislative Leaders
Robert DeLeo -4% (49%)
Therese Murray +1% (54%)

Not too bad for the legislative leaders, considering how vilified they often become, especially after passing a sales tax. Despite all the internecine struggles, they seem to have come out of it the better -- both are more popular than the governor. Oddly enough, Murray is less known as a quantity even though I seem to see her on the screen more. Most strangely (and granted, margin of error grows at this point), Murray elicits no stronger an opinion in her home territory of SE Mass than anywhere else -- not much of a homebase.

The Other Guys
Charlie Baker +2% (63%)
Christy Mihos -12% (29%)
Tim Cahill +24% (32%)

I am astounded by Tim Cahill's net positives. More amazingly, he is held in esteem by Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, Republicans most of all. He's also notably liked among the wealthy. This is the first time I've seen anything to make me think that Cahill has a shot, but he's in great position on the start line.

I think Mihos is pretty much dead in the water. He used up all his goodwill the first time around, and he has net negative favorability among Republicans.

As for Baker, well, he's a blank slate. If I were him, I'd be getting ads ready for the fall to introduce myself to voters, to beat the others guys to the punch. Baker has lots of potential to sell himself in a positive way, at least as much as a Republican chief of an HMO is able. I maintain the words "Republican chief of an HMO" doom him in this race, no matter how much money he has.

The Future
Martha Coakley +39 (21%)

Nobody is in her league on this poll. She has a +17 among Republicans, and an incredible +48 among women -- Deval's weaker group. In age demographics, she has a great lead among older voters, again the mirror image of Deval.

Right now, it looks as if she could write her own ticket.

RGA: Baker doesn't need your help

Proving how little national Republicans understand Massachusetts, Nick Ayers, the Executive Director of the Republican Governors' Association offers this assessment of Charlie Baker:

My belief is that a well-run governor’s race isn’t overtly partisan as much as it is about hiring the right CEO. And that’s especially true of the Northeast, where there’s more big business and people are very familiar with the roles of CEOs. We think if we can field better candidates who fit the job description of CEO and deal with a budget situation, that we’ll have a great opportunity in places like New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and even Maine.

A great example of that is a candidate who announced last week, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts. He’s a CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, has done a lot of nonprofit work in the healthcare, and is a brilliant business man and someone who I believe can cut beyond party and racial lines and say, “I’m willing to bring my experience from the private sector to help solve Massachusetts’ budget issues.” I think Charlie is the kind of ideal candidate that we’ve been looking for. We spent five months recruiting him, so we were very excited to see him get in the race there.

Basically, the strategy is to tell people he'd be another Dubya or Mitt Romney.

I'd love it if Baker took this advice, but I think he's more attuned to voters' suspicion of CEOs this day than our friend in DC apparently is.

Deval's win: primary voters + 20% of the rest

In the wake of an apparent three-way election, I just wanted to run the numbers based on the results of the 2006 gubernatorial election in Massachusetts, reproduced further below. What I found is bad news for anyone not named Deval Patrick.

For giggles' sake, I took every single Democrat who did not vote for Deval Patrick in the primary, and awarded their votes to a mythical Independent candidate, named Tim C. in the general. Unenrolled voters, and Democrats who did not vote in the primary, went untouched. The results would have been:

Healey/ Hillman	784,342
Patrick/ Murray	775,652
Tim C./ Guy G.*	459,332
Mihos/ Sullivan	154,628

*for example

This proves nothing (for many, many reasons) about what will happen in 2010. What it does indicate is that even if we reduce Deval Patrick's vote total to Democrats who liked him during the primary, he's in great shape. Even subtracting every Democrat who did not vote for Deval Patrick in the 2006 primary -- discounting any idea of party loyalty -- you have to figure that Deval Patrick starts with about 700,000 votes in hand, almost a third of the total cast. That even allows for a large percentage of Deval Patrick supporters who have since moved away. In any case, if you start a three-way race with 1/3 of the votes on your side before the debate even begins, you have a really great chance of winning the whole enchilada.

Hypothetical: Tim Cahill runs a meandering campaign that nonetheless does a bit better than Mihos and captures 10% of the vote, or about 220,000 votes. That means that in order to win, Deval Patrick needs to keep his loyal soldiers from the 2006 primary season, and merely add on about one-fifth of the remaining electorate.

I'll repeat that -- Deval's winning coalition is:
2006 primary voters + one-fifth of the entire remaining electorate.

That 20% is a small majority of Democrats who voted for Reilly or Gabrieli in the primary. Or a healthy dollop of first-time or second-time voters, or a fair amount of unenrolleds. What it means is that unless Cahill can somehow poach on people who sided with Deval Patrick way back when, Cahill isn't moving up in the world, and Deval isn't moving out of his office.

Democratic gubernatorial primary[33]
Candidate		Votes	%	±%
Deval Patrick		452,229	49.57%
Chris Gabrieli		248,301	27.22%
Tom Reilly		211,031	23.13%
Write-in		787	0.08%
Blanks		14,054
Majority		203,928	22.35%
Turnout		926,402

2006 gubernatorial election, Massachusetts[34]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Democratic	Deval Patrick (Tim Murray)	1,234,984	55.64%	+10.70
	Republican	Kerry Healey (Reed Hillman)	784,342	35.33%	-14.44
	Independent	Christy Mihos (John J. Sullivan)	154,628	6.97%	+6.27
	Green-Rainbow	Grace Ross (Martina Robinson)	43,193	1.95%	-1.54
	Write-in	All others	2,632	0.12	+.06
Total votes			2,219,779	55.63%%	+ 0.40
		Blank	24,056
Turnout			2,243,835
Majority			450,642	20.30%
	Democratic gain from Republican		Swing	+ 25.13