Massachusetts has a large, and growing, block of independent voters. They call out like a siren to ambitious outsider politicians, ambitious individuals who set out to vanquish partisan politics. These […]
Gubernatorial politics
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Baker 2.0 taps Polito
Charlie Baker 2.0 has learned two important lessons from Charlie Baker 1.0. First, he had to lighten up. Second, he needed to appeal to women voters who were turned off […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Baker’s one-two punch
Charlie Baker took some heat from Democrats for announcing his run for governor in a video, but the strategy appears to have worked perfectly. The good-guy image Baker cultivated in […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Gubernatorial Darwinism
There is a sort of natural selection to the shaping of a political race and Massachusetts voters are beginning to see the electoral circle of life. Within a 24-hour […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
State GOP looks to 2014
The state’s Democrats kicked off their gubernatorial hunt last week with a convention in Lowell. The Republican answer came more quietly, in the form of a meeting and conference call […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Patrick draws line in the sand on local aid funds
Gov. Deval Patrick may be a lame duck, but he has plenty of political fight left in him this budget season. The annual spectacle of dysfunction over local aid funding […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Gubernatorial free-for-all fully underway
Inertia consumes the bulk of Massachusetts’s political power structure. Democrats dominate the Legislature, which is one of the country’s least competitive. The party doesn’t have to sweat to stuff pols […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Economy, Politics, The Download
Ortiz’s discretionary call
Six months later the Globe selected Ortiz as its Bostonian of the Year. The newspaper’s magazine said Ortiz, Boston’s first female and first Hispanic US attorney, “has sent an unambiguous […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Politics, The Download, Transportation
The language of guns
When President Obama unveiled his gun reform package yesterday, one month after the Newtown massacre, there was a commonly used phrase that wasn’t uttered by him or Vice President Joe […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Murray raises money, doubts
Lieutenant Gov. Tim Murray has already told the world he wants to be governor. He’s putting some muscle behind those ambitions, outraising the rest of Beacon Hill in 2012. Murray’s […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Patrick in a firing mood
When scandal nears his office, Gov. Deval Patrick has learned to take decisive action. He quickly abandoned former Sen. Marian Walsh when emails surfaced that exposed his scheme to give […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Patrick keeps ’em guessing
Gov. Deval Patrick keeps saying that he wants to finish out his term as governor, and then return to the private sector. He keeps insisting that he doesn’t have his […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Gov. Patrick and the tale of two bills
If the end of the General Court’s 187th session precipitated a chaotic though predictable scramble to move the session’s most consequential bills, it was an even more challenging time for […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics, State House News Service, The Download
Where the Pentagon sees guns, Mass. sees butter
With Gov. Deval Patrick gone AWOL more and more, Lt. Gov. Tim Murray has been tapped to lead the fight to forestall cutbacks at Bay State military facilities. So far, […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Murray’s spin-out
Until yesterday, it looked as if Lt. Gov. Tim Murray had been through a very rough patch of misfortune, with two separate big hits to his political standing: a series […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download, Transportation
Patrick’s transportation strategy
The Patrick administration’s transportation strategy seems to be working. First came the tease, then the hammer, and now the talk — by others — of new taxes or tolls is […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
The Crosby Show
Even Scott Harshbarger, the Bay State’s most irascible casino critic, could find little to quibble with in Gov. Deval Patrick’s “inspired” selection of Stephen Crosby as the state’s first gaming […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
State House computergate
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. No one has accused Mitt Romney of wrongdoing. It’s been established that Romney aides operated within the bounds of Massachusetts law when 11 […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
The inside games of Murray and Bump
Here’s a question for everybody out there who wants to be governor, as well as the people who are in the business of charging this first group of people several […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Patrick’s compensation philosophy and Mullan
State Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan is leaving his job later this year because Gov. Deval Patrick refused to give him a raise. The Globe broke the story, reporting that Mullan […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Immigration showdown
Gov. Deval Patrick waded back into the immigration quagmire again yesterday, saying Massachusetts won’t join a program sharing the fingerprints of arrested individuals with federal immigration agencies. Patrick said he’d […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
The Download: Heralding Patrick’s new book
As the Boston Herald hits the midway point in its tour through Gov. Deval Patrick’s wobbly early years in office, the governor is showing he’s now a far different politician […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: Patrick as political analyst
Gov. Deval Patrick spent the weekend in Washington, DC, raising his national profile, raising cash, and getting some practice in the role of campaign surrogate for President Obama. The trip […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
The Download: Deval’s road map
increased crime in the region, says a Cape Cod Times editorial.
