I’ve never really bought the idea that Massachusetts is particularly hostile toward women as political candidates. (See this weekend’s story in the Boston Globe, as well as a different take on the topic by my CommonWealth colleague Alison Lobron.) We rank 17th in the percentage of state legislators who are women, and we’ve had plenty of women mayors across the state. As for the idea that the “old boys’ network” has blocked the progress of female politicos, it doesn’t explain how Therese Murray got to be president of the state Senate, or how Patricia McGovern was one of the most powerful members of the Senate back in the 1980s.

Indeed, a chief reason why we haven’t elected a woman governor is that Bay State voters have a strong bias against “next in line” candidates, or insiders who work their way up the ladder, for that position. Michael Dukakis, Bill Weld, Mitt Romney, and Deval Patrick all leapfrogged over establishment candidates to capture the Corner Office. But all of the major women candidates for governor over the past 20 years have been precisely the kind of pseudo-incumbent that turns off voters looking for change.

Evelyn Murphy, Jane Swift, and Kerry Healey were all lieutenant governors whose (male) mentors weren’t terribly popular, and they seemed to offer more of the same. Patricia McGovern, who didn’t get past the Democratic primary in 1998, was an effective and respected leader in the state Senate, but legislative leaders almost never advance to higher office here. (Ask George Keverian and Tom Birmingham.)

Shannon O’Brien, the Democratic nominee in 2006, was described in a Boston Phoenix editorial endorsement thus:

She’s climbed the political ladder one rung at a time, and, like other professional working mothers, she’s raised a family at the same time. Her story is compelling. She comes from a political family involved in Democratic politics for five generations…

This bio made her a popular choice among legislators and party officials, but she was vulnerable to Romney’s “gang of three” ads, in which he warned that she would be too cozy with Democratic leaders in the Legislature. It didn’t help that she came off as the status quo candidate against Romney and the three other women who participated in all of that fall’s debates. (Green Party nominee Jill Stein impressed many as a fresh face who could have been a serious candidate if she had enough money and if her party had more credibility.)

When Patrick was elected governor in 2006, I don’t think it necessarily proved that Massachusetts was more willing to elect an African-American than a woman. Patrick gambled that Tom Reilly, the near-unanimous choice for Democratic nominee among party insiders, was in reality a lackluster candidate, and that voters wanted to switch parties after 16 years of Republican governors. The right Democratic woman could have taken the same gamble and ended up defeating Kerry Healey in the fall.

Attorney General (and now Democratic US Senate nominee) Martha Coakley isn’t exactly an anti-establishment candidate, but she did one thing that showed independence from the start. She was the first to declare that she was running for Ted Kennedy’s seat after the senator died this summer.

Some Kennedy family hangers-on grumbled that Coakley had been putting together her campaign before Ted actually died, but that complaint was really about Coakley’s refusal to wait to see whether another Kennedy would claim the seat — either Ted’s widow, Vicki Kennedy, or his nephew, former US Rep. Joe Kennedy. Coakley’s eventual opponents lost valuable time (in a short campaign) while they waited for the Kennnedys to tamp down speculation about a dynasty candidate. And it seemed incongruous for US Rep. Michael Capuano, who has cultivated an image of a scrappy fighter, to say that his candidacy was contingent on Joe Kennedy not running.

Coakley ran a mostly cautious campaign for the Senate, but she did make one move that both highlighted her status as the only woman in the race and also made her seem like a bit of a troublemaker (which, again, is mostly a plus in Bay State politics). That was when she suggested that she would buck the Democratic leadership in Congress and vote against any health care reform package that severely restricted access to abortion. At first, Capuano criticized her stand, but a day later he adopted it as his own. This reversal only made it harder for Capuano, the only candidate with legislative experience, to claim that Coakley wouldn’t know how to get things done in Congress.

After her double-digit primary win, Coakley is a heavy favorite to win January’s special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat, and to become the first woman elected US senator from Massachusetts. I don’t think it’s because she’s come up with the perfect persona for a trendsetting woman. It’s not a matter of getting the proportions of ambition and cooperation exactly right, or hitting some kind of sweet spot in appearing professional without being threatening to men. I think she was simply the best strategist in the race.

And there’s a lesson for future women candidates in Massachusetts: Don’t depend on from the political establishment. Show your independence from it.