THE STATE OF the two political parties in Massachusetts could not look more different.
We are perhaps the bluest of blue states, with Democrats now holding virtually every elected position of significance – from our congressional delegation to every statewide office from governor on down. Republicans barely register.
What does that mean for the health of our democracy?
Nothing good, said Stonehill College political scientist Peter Ubertaccio and Republican activist Ed Lyons on this week’s Codcast.
But it’s not just that there is no effective check on Democratic Party rule. Our whole electoral system has been thrown out of kilter, they say, as contests for major offices are increasingly decided in lower turnout Democratic primaries, sometimes with a half dozen or more candidates, while uncompetitive general elections have become an afterthought.
Recent open races for congressional seats won by Lori Trahan and Jake Auchincloss saw candidates who “won low turnout Democratic primaries by very small amounts, then went on to face Republicans who couldn’t possibly win,” said Lyons, who has been sharply critical of his party’s hard right turn. “You see these useless general elections,” he said, calling it “one of the many costs that I see of having the system that we have.” Despite his Republican leanings, Lyons said the districts – and democracy – would have been better served by seeing the first and second place finishers in those Democratic primaries vie in a runoff to determine who won the seat.
The Democratic and Republican state parties have both elected new chairs in recent months, but they are operating from playbooks that seem ill-suited to the times, said Lyons.
The Massachusetts Democratic Party officially stays neutral in contested primaries, but that’s often where races are decided. “They’re the only organization in the state that can’t take part in Democratic primary elections, which is where the only action is anymore,” Lyons said of the state party, now headed by veteran Democratic operative – and one-time lieutenant governor nominee – Steve Kerrigan.
On the Republican side, although Amy Carnevale recently ousted combative Mass. GOP chair Jim Lyons, Ed Lyons (no relation to, or fan of, the former party chair) says she only seems inclined to change the tone, not the message, of the party. “She’s basically professionalizing the unpopular opinions of the party, and she’s driven entirely by national politics,” he said.
How much do the state parties matter?
“Not as much as they used to,” said Ubertaccio. “Political parties in the United States have always been, relative to their counterparts elsewhere, fairly weak organizations,“ he said, and that has become even more true in recent years. Anyone can “self-select” to run in Democratic or Republican primaries, Ubertaccio said, and parties have “ceded some of their power and authority over the years to much bigger and more powerful PACs and dark money organizations that tend to fuel our politics. Having said all of that, there’s still a really important role for them to play in organizing our politics.”
The state’s electorate leans firmly Democratic, but formal party identity has been on a steady decline. Well over half of the state’s registered voters (61 percent) are not enrolled in a party, with just 29 percent of voters registered as Democrats and 9 percent as Republicans.
Meanwhile, “the nationalization of our politics has zapped local parties of their own culture and identity,” Ubertaccio said, something that has become particularly problematic for Massachusetts Republicans, he said, who increasingly “have absolutely no shot here in any reasonable sense.”
All of which seems to make a strong case for reform of how we structure elections for partisan offices in Massachusetts.
“We choose party primaries as the method of winnowing the field,” said Ubertaccio. “It’s odd to continue to make that choice at a moment when fewer and fewer people belong to political parties, and when fewer candidates emerge in truly competitive general elections.” We have a “system where a relatively small number of people vote in [Democratic] primaries, dictating choices for the rest of the population. But once they’ve made that decision, because the Republican party here is so incredibly weak and doesn’t contest so many races, you end up with these uncontested general elections.”
“There are some institutional features that we could change. We have it within our power to do this,” said Ubertaccio.
Lyons pointed to recent change in Alaska’s election system as one promising alternative. Under the election reform there, all candidates for an office, regardless of party, appear on a single primary ballot. The top four finishers advance to the general election, where ranked-choice voting is used to select the winner. Under California’s so-called “jungle primary” system, all candidates also vie on a single primary ballot, with the top two finishers, regardless of party affiliation, advancing to the general election. That’s similar to the way nonpartisan municipal elections in Massachusetts are conducted.
Those systems are the “kind of experimentation that we, in Massachusetts, should be exploring, and we’re not,” said Ubertaccio. While such change could be made through the Legislature, Lyons and Ubertaccio both said enacting some type of electoral reform through a ballot question is a far more likely path.
“People in power don’t want to disrupt the system that has helped put them in power,” said Ubertaccio. “But I think it would produce a more competitive political environment.”
