Scandals may influence U.S. Senate race
Sometimes important national events overtake more parochial affairs in state elections, and this may be happening in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate special election.
The race between Democratic Cong. Edward Markey and Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez to succeed former Sen. John Kerry had been a sleepy affair. Polls consistently showed relatively little voter interest and Markey was leading Gomez by a comfortable dozen or so percentage points.
But a new Suffolk University poll released Monday showed Gomez has narrowed the gap to just seven points and the pollster, David Paleologos, said the shift could be attributed to fallout from the scandals enveloping the White House.
The poll was taken last weekend, following a series of startling revelations.
The administration had seized phone records of reporters, the Internal Revenue Service was found to have targeted Tea Party applications for nonprofit status and, in the most far-reaching measure of all, a national security insider’s leak showed that the federal government compiles records of nearly every phone call and electronic communication made in this country.
These measures, with the exception of the alleged IRS wrongdoing, grew out of the Patriot Act, the law passed and revised several times following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Paleologos acknowledged Markey had nothing to do with these recently disclosed invasions of privacy, but pointed out just being the Democratic nominee is enough for some voters to identify him with these excesses.
A similar thing happened in the last special election for this senate seat. The contest between Attorney General Martha Coakley and then-State Sen. Scott Brown to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy was Coakley’s for the taking.
But Brown played on voters’ dissatisfaction with the president’s Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, and this helped carry him to a surprise upset over Coakley.
Brown was ousted by Elizabeth Warren last year when a unified Democratic Party took nothing for granted and came out in force for the former law professor, and she is now the state’s senior senator.
But bad memories linger from the Brown-Coakley contest, and national events may again play a role in this race.
Democrats, although still strongly supporting Obama, have expressed alarm at the administration’s snooping. Warren herself and other prominent state officials have decried the federal invasion of privacy and are talking about amending the Patriot Act to end some of the more egregious domestic spying practices.
But, with few exceptions, Democrats will also still support Markey.
Independent voters are the key
However, independent voters remain the largest bloc of those casting ballots in Massachusetts elections, and they already favor Gomez over the Malden congressman by a significant margin.
If the Cohasset businessman can convince more independents and a relative handful of Democrats to support him in what’s expected to be a low turnout election, Markey could see that seven percent margin shrink further or disappear entirely.
At this writing, there are still two candidate debates left to go and even though a substantial percentage of poll respondents thought Markey won the first debate last week, popular opinion can change almost overnight.
Just a couple of weeks before the Brown-Coakley contest, the Democrat held a comfortable lead over the Republican, only to see it evaporate in the final days.
Markey is still the front-runner and would likely win the election if it was just going to be determined by voter sentiments about the two candidates themselves.
But sometimes outside and outsized national issues can strongly influence a race, and with less than two weeks to go before this year’s special election, this could turn out to be one of those times.
Posted by Bruce Garlow
on June 13, 2013. Filed under Berkshire Beacon Hill Spotlight,Columns,Opinion.
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