Up From Defeat
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Two decades ago, the Republican Party in Massachusetts faced abject humiliation. One of its candidates for governor withdrew from the race after being caught exaggerating his Vietnam War record. Another imploded when news broke of his proclivity to occupy his office in the nude. A loyal Republican soldier, George Kariotis, stepped into the breach — only to be defeated by Michael Dukakis by almost 40 percentage points in the general election.
Mr. Dukakis used the force of that victory and the tale of the “Massachusetts Miracle” to propel himself to the Democratic nomination for president in 1988. Today, the state GOP confronts a situation that is almost as bad — although not as embarrassing. The party failed to put up candidates for two statewide offices, secretary of state and treasurer, whereas the Green Party did. The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate lost by almost the same margin as Mr. Kariotis did in 1986. And the Republican candidate for governor, Kerry Healy, fought ferociously, losing by 21 points to Deval Patrick.
With the gubernatorial defeat, the 16-year-long Republican experiment in Massachusetts, which began with the patrician William Weld in 1990 and extended through A. Paul Cellucci, Jane Swift, and the current governor, is now over. Now, amid the shambles of the present-day Republican Party, another Massachusetts governor is attempting to run for president. Only this time, his name is Mitt Romney. And he is a Republican.
For the Republican Party in Massachusetts, the defeat means a return to the political wilderness. The names of a number of prospective candidates are being raised to serve as the head of the state party. Those names include, according to the Boston Globe, Peter Torkildsen, one of two Republican congressmen who went down in defeat in 1996 leaving the delegation completely Democratic; John Racho of Ipswich, and William Barabino of Wakefield. Stephanie Davis, a financial services executive, is basing her candidacy on the need of the party to get back in touch with the grass roots, the 12.5% of the state’s electorate that identifies itself as Republican.
“I happened to have come of age during Ronald Reagan’s administration,” Ms. Davis says, lamenting the party’s fixation on holding on to the governor’s office at the expense of building up the party as a whole. “It’s like running a football. It’s not something you can do overnight, you have to do it over and over and over again.”
Ms. Davis, who has words of praise for Mr. Romney, cites Ray Shamie as her role model as chairman. A local businessman, Shamie ran for Senate against Senator Kennedy in 1982 and against Democratic candidate John Kerry in 1984. His victory in the 1984 primary for Senate ended the elective political career of Elliot Richardson, attorney general under President Nixon and the apotheosis of the New England liberal Republican. He used the visibility he won from those races to vault himself to the chairmanship of the party. Shamie was eager to take the backseat and let other candidates run for office. He discovered a young Joe Malone, who campaigned vigorously against Mr. Kennedy in 1988, and became state treasurer in 1990. Shamie is still credited with the Republican resurgence in 1990.
Shamie’s protégé, Mr. Malone, knows as much as anyone else about the state of the Republican Party in Massachusetts and says that Mr. Romney fought the good fight. As evidence of Mr. Romney’s commitment to the party, he risked antagonizing Democrats in 2004 when he recruited candidates statewide to run for House and Senate races and helped them raise money. In the most recent election cycle, his Commonwealth PAC, divvied out $35,000 to candidates in the state, and he and his wife donated another $23,000 directly. While the overall effort in 2004 resulted in a net loss of seats, no incumbent lost his or her race.
“I think he made a sincere effort and worked very hard to recruit Republican candidates,” Mr. Malone says, adding that the 2004 unsuccessful effort made things more difficult for the 2006 election cycle. “The problem was that was the year Kerry ended up being the Democratic nominee for president … and this time around, it was very difficult after the blowout of 2004 to get people reenergized and to run and to win legislative seats.”
The knowledge that his efforts failed to garner him the requisite one-third of the votes necessary to sustain his vetoes may have been one factor that drove Mr. Romney into running for president when his term ended instead of running for governor again. Without a doubt, both 2004, in which Boston hosted the Democratic National Convention and gave the nation another Democratic presidential nominee, and 2006, where Republicans fought for their political lives throughout New England, made the climate extraordinarily difficult for the party in Massachusetts.
Eric Fehrnstrom, the chief spokesman for Mr. Romney, says that while it is a period of soul searching for Republicans, larger forces are at play. Many conservative voters have moved South and elsewhere leaving behind “young urban professionals who went to college up here and are more liberal,” he says.
Even so, the number of unenrolled voters — as Massachusetts calls independents — in the state grew to 54.35% of the electorate as of November 2006. Even if the times in Massachusetts are bluish, voters are still more likely to be independent than Democrats.
Republicans, such as Ms. Davis, contend that the current circumstances dictate a return to the party’s flinty roots in New England, fiscal conservatism. “You can’t get away from the fiscal issues,” she says.”The Republican Party is united on the issues of fiscal responsibility and limited government.”
If Mr. Romney proceeds into the 2008 presidential contest, he will do so with Beacon Hill in unequivocally enemy territory. Democrats will use their control of executive state offices against him. For the next two years, at least, both he and his party will be cited for every misdeed that emanates out of state government.
It is possible that Mr. Romney will be able to engage in an act of political jujitsu, wherein the higher the taxes, the bluer the acts of the executive branch, the more liberal the laws being passed on Beacon Hill, the more purely Republican he will appear to a primary electorate. “I,” he can potentially argue, “was the voice of reason. Look what it’s like without me there.” That is not a classic roadmap to a party’s nomination. But his status as a governor is. No Republican since Eisenhower has been elected president without first being a governor or vice president.
In the meantime, Massachusetts Republicans like Stephanie Davis will pick up the pieces and try to find the next Ray Shamie.
Mr. Gitell (www.gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.