MassGOP

MassGOP leadership race a mirror to internal division

December 3, 2022 by pkzadmin

A disastrous election showing last month prompted a question among state Republicans: Should the divided party’s next leader be an insider who currently sits on the MassGOP committee or a person from outside the organization?

“I’m someone from the outside so I’m not necessarily caught up in all of the old battles and all of the old grudges,” said Christopher Lyon, a political consultant who declared his candidacy for MassGOP State Committee chair on Wednesday.

“I’m very aware of many of the people, but at the same time I have a bit of an outsider perspective so I think that’s better. When you come in from the outside, you can make the kinds of big changes I think we need. When you have someone from the inside, you kind of get marginal course corrections,” he added.

MassGOP Vice Chair Jay Fleitman, who declared his candidacy the morning after the election, disagreed, saying that he doesn’t think running as an outsider will work to Lyon’s advantage.

“The committee knows me,” Fleitman said. “This particular person is unknown to the party. He may be a bright, shiny thing at this particular moment, but who knows who he is and what he brings to the table. We’ll explore that as time goes on.”

What Lyon and Fleitman, along with two other candidates jockeying for the position, agree on is that the MassGOP committee needs new leadership, with several likening the state’s Republican Party to an underperforming sports team that needs a new manager.

For years, the state’s Republican Party has been divided into two factions, a more conservative wing led by MassGOP Chair and Trump supporter Jim Lyons and another by the moderate outgoing Gov. Charlie Baker.

Lyons, a former state representative who has led the party since 2019, has not said whether he will seek reelection, and did not respond to a request for comment.

Fleitman said Lyons told him prior to the election that he was planning to make a decision this month. Per committee bylaws, a party chair has to be elected in January.

Lyons has not called a date for that election, but he has called a state committee meeting for Dec. 29, when he is expected to discuss the procedures for it, according to Amy Carnevale, a longtime committee member and government affairs advisor who is mulling a run for chair.

Carnevale said she’s still talking to people and working to build a team that would give her the best chance to succeed as chair, should she be elected. She expects to make a decision before Christmas.

“My primary focus would be restoring the image of the party, both as a way to help our candidates successfully run for office, and raise money to support candidates running for reelection to new candidates running for office,” Carnevale said.

Carnevale said she would also bring the focus of the party back to fiscal issues, saying that the party’s defeat on Question 1, or the so-called millionaire’s tax that passed in November, was a “real wakeup call” for Republicans that could have been avoided with strong leadership at the top of the party.

However, Fleitman said Carnevale represents a faction of the party, a direction he said the party should be moving away from when electing its next chair, saying that a committee leader’s personal politics should be “invisible.”

Carnevale denied this claim, saying that she sees herself as someone who’s been “down the middle,” and who can communicate with all Republicans to staunch the infighting that intensified after last month’s failed election.

“I was a Trump delegate twice,” she said. “I voted for Chairman Lyons when he first ran for office because I believed he could be a balance to Gov. Baker. At the same time, though, I have supported Gov. Baker and Gov. Baker’s candidacy and I get along well with more moderate Republicans.”

Jon Fetherston, a former chairman of the Ashland Republican Town Committee who is running for MassGOP chair, said the party needs to establish credibility and start winning elections.

To that end, he said, candidates should be recruited, vetted and trained, and the party’s focus should also include local politics.

“We’re on the cusp of not having a Republican Party in Massachusetts,” Fetherston said, adding that he is prepared to “blow up” the MassGOP and “build it from the ground up.”

MassGOP leadership race heats up, with some candidates vowing to forgo $100G salary to get job done

December 2, 2022 by pkzadmin

MassGOP Chair Jim Lyons rakes in roughly $100,000 per year as leader of a party that failed to win a single statewide election this November, a salary that two candidates eying his job vowed not to take amid the state committee’s fundraising difficulties.

“I have made a commitment to do the job without a salary,” said Amy Carnevale, a longtime MassGOP committee member who is mulling a run for chair.

Jon Fetherston, a former chair of the Ashland Republican Town Committee and longtime host of the “All Politics is Local” podcast, said he would also forgo a salary and work the chair position as a volunteer.

While Carnevale said she plans to make a decision on whether to seek party leadership before Christmas, Fetherston said Friday he is “definitely running” and will make a formal announcement in the “next couple of days.”

Per its bylaws, the MassGOP Committee has to elect a new chair in January, but the meeting has not yet been scheduled, and committee members are hearing that it could be pushed until the end of the month, the Herald has learned.

Given that the MassGOP State Committee has been operating without a budget for the entirety of 2022, it’s unclear how much salary Lyons is taking home this year, Carnevale said.

Carnevale said Lyons’ salary was budgeted at $97,500 in 2020. MassGOP Assistant Treasurer Anthony Ventresca, who cuts the paychecks, said the committee “did not vote any increase in salary” since that time.

But Carnevale, citing a conversation she had Friday with MassGOP Budget Committee Chair Patricia Saint Aubin, said that since fundraising has been down, there were months that Lyons did not take a salary.

Ventresca declined to comment on what months, or during how many, Lyons was not getting paid.

Lyons has not said whether he will run for a third term, and did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. But committee vice chair Jay Fleitman, who is jockeying for chairmanship, said Lyons provided him with a timeline prior to the election.

“Before I decided to run, I sat down and had lunch with him,” Fleitman said. “I told him if we did poorly in the elections, I was going to run. In our discussion, he mentioned to me that he would make a decision about whether to run some time this month, in December.”

Fleitman, a doctor who announced his run for chair the morning after the election, said he expects Lyons will make a decision that is “appropriate for the party, as well as for himself and his family.”

“I think he respected the fact that I’m going to do this,” he said. “I think I will respect whatever decision he makes in terms of whether he’s going to run. I think that’s the way we left it.”

In contrast to Carnevale and Fetherston, Fleitman said he would take a salary if he were to be elected chair, saying that since he lives in western Massachusetts, he would incur an additional expense in having to find an apartment in Boston or one of its suburbs.

“Part of taking a salary would be to accomplish that,” he said.

Christopher Lyon, a political consultant who declared his candidacy Wednesday, also said he had no intention to work pro bono.

“I would take a salary because I think it’s a full-time job,” Lyon said. “I view it as a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year job. I think Jim Lyons is getting paid about $100,000. In my opinion, that’s not a lot of money.”

The candidates vying for chair may disagree on salary, but they all agree that they think it’s time for new leadership following last month’s disastrous election.

The heavy losses further splintered a party that for years has been marked by two clear factions led by the more conservative Trump-supporter Lyons and moderate outgoing Gov. Charlie Baker.

The candidates attributed a lack of fundraising success, or committee leadership’s unwillingness to raise funds for or support certain candidates, such as Charlie Baker’s endorsed pick for state auditor, Anthony Amore, as a contributing factor in those election losses.

“Massachusetts Republicans don’t always agree on a lot, but I think most Massachusetts Republicans acknowledge, at least privately, that we need to make some changes,” Lyon said.

Fleitman said there were a lot of things that were problematic with the election. The MassGOP committee does not have the structures in place to support its candidates, not only financially, he said, and there were problems with some of the selected candidates.

“I know Geoff Diehl — he’s a really good person, hard-working person,” Fleitman said of the losing Republican gubernatorial candidate. “It was clear to many of us that once he was endorsed by Donald Trump, his campaign was dead in the water in Massachusetts.

“Many of us were concerned that that would contaminate the down-ballot races as well. I think that was part of it.”

Sunday Notebook: Charlie Baker among those seeking the national spotlight

November 20, 2022 by pkzadmin

We now have a clearer sense of what will feature on the to-do list for Gov. Charlie Baker’s remaining seven weeks in office: a final flurry of judicial appointments and clemency recommendations, celebrating the long-delayed and often uncertain completion of the Green Line Extension, and, despite his claimed distaste for national politics, pontification about the Republican Party’s future.

Baker made big news Friday morning when he announced he would move to commute the sentence of Ramadan Shabazz from first-degree murder to second-degree murder and pardon six people, including two convicted in a high-profile 1980s abuse case whose validity has long been disputed.

Gerald “Tooky” Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave were convicted of sexually abusing young children at the Fells Acres Day Care Center they ran, but Baker said he has “grave doubt regarding the evidentiary strength of these convictions,” pointing to other experts and judicial officials who have reached similar conclusions over the years.

Baker’s recommendations — particularly the commutation of Shabazz, which would make the 72-year-old eligible for parole after he was initially sentenced to death and has since spent five decades behind bars — tee up noteworthy business for the Governor’s Council to tackle in the ongoing lame-duck session. His latest announcements also came only a couple of days after Baker tapped Parole Board member Tina Hurley to chair that panel.

Green Line extension launch near

Baker, or at least his team, this week circled another date on the calendar with a major announcement: the second and final leg of the Green Line Extension will launch for riders on Dec. 12.

The opening of the first branch, which featured a rebuilt Lechmere Station and only one new stop at Union Square, drew a day of festivities and victory speeches from Baker, his top deputies and former officials who had a hand in the years-long project.

MBTA and Baker administration higher-ups have not yet indicated the level of fanfare over the start of service on the five-station Medford Branch, but they might see it as a way to draw focus back toward a landmark accomplishment after months of intense scrutiny on the T’s safety failures that spiraled out under their watch.

Baker appears on CNN

And as Baker’s eight years in the corner office draw to a close, the governor has started to turn his attention toward a type of political punditry he has often resisted.

During his two terms, he often found common ground with Democrats and sometimes voiced disagreement with or disapproval for former President Donald Trump, a position that both reflected and accelerated the growing divide between the popular governor and MassGOP Chair Jim Lyons.

But Baker also made a frequent point to stay uninvolved in many political fights. For months leading up to and then in the wake of the election to succeed him, Baker declined to endorse either Republican challenger Geoff Diehl or eventual winner Maura Healey, nor any statewide candidate besides Republican auditor hopeful Anthony Amore. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew dozens of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard — an action that prompted a class action lawsuit and an investigation by a Texas sheriff — Baker displayed little interest in publicly criticizing a fellow Republican governor.

Baker apparently decided he had a lot more to say after the dust settled on last week’s elections, when Republicans won back a narrow U.S. House majority but failed to flip the Senate or capitalize on a midterm position that historically favors whichever party does not hold the White House.

The governor sought out the spotlight by inviting CNN to his State House office for an election post-mortem, waxing about how he believes Trump’s influence “probably hurt the (Republican) party and hurt the party’s chances on Election Day.”

“One of the messages from the election is, for Republicans generally, is we need, we need as a party to move past President Trump and to move on to an agenda that represents the voices of all those in the party and the people of the country,” Baker told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

It’s worth noting that Baker chose to deliver his assessment nearly a year after the widely popular governor opted not to seek a third term, during which he might have used his platform to try and push the party in the direction he desired. In his own assessment, what’s next for Baker once he hands over the corner office will be a trip “some place far” and first-time grandparenting, but his comments suggest he’s got more in the tank.

Baker for president

Baker stopped short of ruling out a run for some kind of position down the line, but not in 2024, in an interview with WCVB’s “On The Record” set to air Sunday morning.

“If I was looking at this point in my career to continue to engage in public service, I think (my wife) Lauren and I and Karyn Polito, the lieutenant governor, and her husband, Steve, would have run for another term,” he said. “I certainly plan to be involved in 2024, but I think the likelihood I’d be on the ballot in 2024 is pretty small.”

“I think anybody in public life never slams anything completely (shut), but I’m not going to be a candidate in 2024, period,” Baker replied when hosts Ed Harding and Janet Wu observed that Baker’s name has been floated among some pundits on the national stage this week. After a beat, he added, “If I don’t say that, my wife will be very unhappy with me.”

Wu pressed the governor on whether he would ever be a candidate for public office again.

“I’m not going to rule out ever running for anything,” Baker said.

To which we have to add: “I am not, nor will I ever be — OK? My wife is standing right back there and she will be the first to vouch — a candidate for national office.” That’s a Baker quote from July 2015.

Baker’s not alone on the national stage

Baker was not the only Massachusetts politician to claim a place on the national stage this week. Congresswoman Katherine Clark, who has served as a top deputy to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, announced she would run for the number-two position in the chamber’s Democrat caucus with Pelosi preparing to step back from leadership.

While Clark seeks her own path in the next Congress, the state’s all-Democrat House delegation must prepare for a different dynamic starting in January when they become members of the minority party. That’ll be a shift from the current set-up, which features Congressman Richard Neal as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and Congressman James McGovern as chair of the House Rules Committee.

There’s no guarantee that they reclaim those influential positions if Democrats win back a House majority in 2024 or beyond, especially with new leadership inbound, though a Clark elevation certainly could help the delegation’s chances of controlling some levers of power. If it appears that Republicans will hold on to the House in 2024, that could also factor into the reelection plans of senior Massachusetts U.S. House members.

House Republicans in search of speaker?

GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, face leadership decisions of their own. House Republicans reportedly chose current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as their next top leader, but it’s unclear whether McCarthy has the votes lined up to become speaker. He would need an outright majority in the House, and the narrow majority Republicans are forecast to wield could make any intraparty dissent particularly impactful.

Some high-ranking Republicans signaled Thursday their priorities next term will be investigating President Joe Biden and his family, according to CNN. Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland — a Biden appointee — on Friday named former Justice Department official Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump’s handling of government documents and his involvement in events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The balance of power in Massachusetts remains strongly weighted for Democrats, though party bosses are still waiting more than a week after the election to find out the final Democrat-Republican breakdown in the House and voters in two districts still do not know who their next representative will be.

Recounts still pending

The race between Republican Rep. Leonard Mirra and Democrat challenger Kristin Kassner to represent Georgetown, Hamilton, Ipswich, Newbury, Rowley and part of Topsfield remains undecided, as does the contest between Democrat Margaret Scarsdale and Republican Andrew Shepherd to represent Ashby, Dunstable, Pepperell, Townsend and parts of Groton and Lunenburg.

Both contests appear headed for recounts with only a handful of votes separating the candidates. How those play out will determine whether Democrats pick up three, four or five House seats over the margins they had to begin the 2021-2022 lawmaking session.

LOOSE ENDS: Gov.-elect Maura Healey and Lt. Gov.-elect Kim Driscoll named Danielle Cerny as their transition director and convened policy committees that will focus on housing, transportation, climate and energy, jobs and the economy, youth and young adults, and safe and healthy communities … A new report concluded that telehealth is “here to stay” but warned that its usage remained uneven across different demographic groups … Fare evasion fines are returning to the MBTA after more than a year without enforcement, though arrests and driver’s license impacts will no longer be deployed.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Whether playing out quietly in private committee meetings or broadcast on national news, transitions and a reckoning with what comes next are underway across state government.

SONG OF THE WEEK: A very rough paraphrase of Baker’s message to other Republicans who continued to embrace Trump into last week’s elections: I’m watching you all, I’m seeing you sinking.