The race for the open seat for governor of Massachusetts has taken a wild new turn. And the campaigns of the leading Republican and Democratic candidates for governor have been deeply undercut by the latest development.
Maverick businessman Christy Mihos, has bolted the Republican Party to run as an independent in the 2006 race for governor. Mihos had, as a member of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority run afoul of the GOP establishment several years ago. Then-Republican Gov. Jane Swift tried to fire him, but ultimately, the courts determined that she did not have the authority. He never got over it.
Mihos, who sold-off most the chain of convenience stores that bore his name, "Christy's" to the 7-11 chain several years ago, will be able to spend millions of dollars of his own money on the campaign.
Mihos announcement undercuts the already shaky campaign of Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, who has worked in the shadow of Gov. Mitt Romney.
Romney is not running for reelection while testing the waters for a presidential bid. Meanwhile, Healey, like successful Republican gubernatorial candidates before her, has been positioning herself as a fiscal conservative and social moderate. The majority of registered voters in the state are not enrolled in either major party. Only 13% of the registered voters are Republicans. Healey, tapped to be Romney's running mate last time, had not previously run for elected office.
State and national GOP leaders reportedly tried to persuade Mihos to stick with the party.
Mihos, who says he is pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-stem cell research, appears to have outflanked Healy. Instead of running to appeal to independents, he actually is one. He says he is "disgusted" with the Republican Party.
Mihos, who is still putting together a campaign team, is a quirky figure, who may very well turn out to be the Ross Perot of Massachusetts politics. The Boston Globe reported that in his first public appearance as a candidate he made a series of oddly inappropriate sex jokes.
On the Democratic side, longtime front runner Attorney General Tom Reilly has made a series of major gaffes in recent weeks, and has fallen precipitously in the polls.
Reilly's main opponent has been Deval Patrick a former civil rights and corporate lawyer who has come up from political obscurity to draw even with Reilly in the polls. Patrick, who is the first African-American to run for governor, is is generally considered to have a formidable field organization, and a state-of-the-art internet component of his campaign. Seeing an opportunity in the wake of Reilly's stumbles, businessman Chris Gabrielli, who was the 2002 Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor, is actively considering getting in the race.
Candidates will need the votes of 15% of the delegates at the state convention to get on the primary ballot. Both Reilly and Patrick will have sufficient delegates, and it remains to be seen if Gabrielli, who has never been elected to public office, can muster enough votes to also get on the primary ballot.
Reilly, like Healey appears to have been outflanked by Mihos. Reilly had been positioning himself as the candidate who could appeal to independents, distancing himself from the party at every opportunity, while Patrick has run as a principled Democrat, who favors the development of alternative energy sources, universal health care, reproductive rights and marriage equality.
Reilly, who has waged a lackluster campaign after collecting nearly $4 million in contributions badly lost to Patrick in the recent Democratic party caucuses that elected delegates to the state convention in June. Patrick beat Reilly by about 2-1. Patrick has challenged Reilly to debate. Reilly has declined.
Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara, among others, is unimpressed.
Patrick has accepted numerous invitations to debate from media outlets and public interest groups in the last several weeks, but Reilly has rebuffed them all, insisting it is too soon in the campaign.
That's an understandable strategic position for a better-known candidate reluctant to raise the profile of his opponent, but it is neither very civic-minded nor historically accurate.
It was not too early for debates four years ago. The first televised debate among the five candidates vying for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2002 was held on Jan. 30 at Boston's Channel 56....
''Of course, it is not too early," Patrick said yesterday. ''One of the things I have learned running a grass-roots campaign is that people have a deep hunger for serious discourse about ideas, not just sound bites about our differences or our fund-raising, but a real conversation about where we are headed. Why would we wait to have that conversation?"
That sounds a lot like what Reilly was saying in 1998 when the Middlesex district attorney and candidate for attorney general challenged his primary opponent to six debates in every region of Massachusetts. Back then, Reilly denounced his competitor, state Senator Lois Pines, for what he called her pre-primary ''debate dodge."
In a letter to Pines that April, Reilly wrote: ''The attorney general is the most important job in the Commonwealth next to that of governor. The voters of our state deserve more than a single half-hour televised debate about our vision for the office." He wrote that he was ''committed to making sure more people feel engaged and participate in the process."...
''I know you agree with me that too few people get an opportunity to see and hear the candidates beyond a 10-second sound bite or newspaper quote," Reilly wrote to Pines six years ago. ''Let's you and I set a new standard for openness and dialogue and involve this party in what promises to be the liveliest Democratic race in this campaign season."
The race for governor of Massachusetts, which has received little national attention, is emerging as a bellwether race that will reshape both the Massachussetts Republican and the Democratic parties; and have ripple effects nationally.
[Crossposted from Political Cortex]
