The statewide contest

I have been railing about the lack of Republicans in the MA state house, and how it has been harmful to democracy for the Commonwealth. Most people I know agree with me.


So, here is the ballot I was given for our statewide reps:

See a pattern? Where are the Republicans?

The Boston Phoenix, way back when, commented on this grim situation, and Mitt Romney's responsibility as the GOP standard bearer to do something about it:

Romney, then, must do something no other Republican governor in recent memory has been able to do: he must work aggressively to build up the moribund state Republican Party. Since 1990, Republicans have had a hammerlock on the governor’s office, but they have failed miserably at building their party organization. The 13 percent of the state's electorate that registers as Republican is about what it was 13 years ago, when William Weld was elected. Aside from the high-profile positions of governor and lieutenant governor, Republican statewide officeholders are nonexistent, and that’s partly the fault of the party itself. The state Republican Party, for example, failed to run a candidate against Attorney General Tom Reilly. It presented no challenger to Senator John Kerry, whom it should have countered, if only to force him to spend money he can now use in his run against President George W. Bush. The best the party could do against Democratic incumbent secretary of state William Galvin was Jack E. Robinson, a farcical figure who took the stage at the Republican convention in Lowell last April to the theme from Rocky. The party even failed to run a candidate for the seat formerly held by Senate president Tom Birmingham, which now belongs to Senator Jarrett Barrios of Cambridge — a race that, while uphill, could have raised the visibility of an up-and-coming Republican.

At least partly as a result of such lackluster efforts, all 10 members of the Bay State’s US congressional delegation are Democrats. And, most serious for Romney, he has only six fellow Republicans in the state Senate (a body of 40) and 23 in the House (a body of 160) — far less than the one-third (14 in the Senate, 54 in the House) he needs to uphold his vetoes. Without the key executive power to veto legislation, Romney will not be able to sustain himself as a strong governor.

Romney, of course, failed. Some would say that such failure led him to denigrate his own state in front of his potential southern constituency when he was running in the presidential primary last year. I would, with an admitted lack of any evidence right now, assert that it was such an attitude that led to his halfhearted efforts and the situation we faced in this election cycle.