With the passage of health care, Democratic hopes are once again soaring—or at least, the party is increasingly confident that the midterms won’t be the total debacle they once feared. But in Massachusetts, the site of the special election that sent national Democrats into a spiral of dread, the party remains in a state of high anxiety—fearful that the lightning that helped deliver Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate could strike again.
There’s a palpable sense of desperation around Beacon Hill. The incumbent governor, Deval Patrick, has presided over a series of budget shortfalls, leading his poll numbers to plummet. His Democratic colleagues aren’t helping much. Three straight state house speakers have faced legal investigations, giving the Democrats the stink of scandal that’s proving hard to scrub off; Patrick may be forced to testify in one of the probes this fall, just as his campaign for re-election shifts into high gear. A pair of other Democratic officials are being investigated by the federal government for bribery. Even demographics are conspiring against the Democrats, as the 2010 is likely to take away one of the state’s 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The circumstances that propelled Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate are very similar to the circumstances that are going to propel Charlie to the governor’s house,” says Baker press secretary Rick Gorka.
The chief beneficiary of all this turmoil? Charlie Baker, a rangey Republican charmer with an impressive resume and a background in health care, who could just become the next Scott Brown.
Since Brown’s stunning upset in the race to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, Baker’s poll numbers have doubled—bringing him within three points of the incumbent governor. And that’s with most respondents still saying that have no idea who Baker is.
“The circumstances that propelled Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate are very similar to the circumstances that are going to propel Charlie to the governor’s house,” says Baker press secretary Rick Gorka.
On paper, Baker doesn’t have much in common with the pickup-truck driving, underwear-modeling populist sensation. Baker’s a WASP think-tank veteran whose father worked in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Where Brown prizes his GMC Canyon pickup, Baker prefers a minivan. The Baker camp knows it won’t be a simple matter to bottle Brown’s magic for a win this November. They also know the momentum from Brown’s shocking upset will help.
A Baker win would be felt far beyond the Bay State. Yes, all politics is local, as a Massachusetts sage once said, and Patrick’s sinking numbers have next to nothing to do with Washington politics (see a fine summary here). But a repudiation of Patrick, whose message of uplift was a blueprint for Barack Obama’s, would be felt in the West Wing. And Republicans will surely tout an upset as a sign of things to come for the president in 2012.
Back in 2006, Patrick was seen as a stalking horse for Obama. His rallies resounded with chants of “Yes, We Can.” His message hinged on uplift, the same one that would become distilled into the hope and change mantra of the Obama campaign. So similar were their tactics that Obama took whole cloth from one Patrick speech and was razzed about plagiarism. Patrick said his friend had borrowed his words and that was fine with him. Both were advised by master strategists David Axelrod and David Plouffe. The latter has returned to work on Patrick’s re-election bid—providing Plouffe a chance to test-market themes that could well show up in Obama’s 2012 campaign.
The Democratic scramble is traceable directly to Brown. Only three years ago, Charlie Baker, then CEO of one of the region’s largest health management organizations, was carping about the trouble with being a Republican in Massachusetts.
"The big problem...that Republicans in Massachusetts in general have had...is that the message of the national party doesn't play well here, and it creates a huge problem for anyone here who is a Republican," Baker said.
But these days, the state’s Republicans feel a little like rock stars; the national party’s most attractive new player is from Massachusetts. Everywhere you look, there's a self-proclaimed “Scott Brown Republican.” From Florida to Nevada, the GOP is looking to the land of Dukakis and Kennedy and Kerry for a set of coat tails.
At 33, Baker joined Gov. Bill Weld’s administration, four years removed from business school at Northwestern. Big Red entrusted Baker with trimming the health and human services’ $6 billion budget by $500 million. He cut state Medicaid costs, which were growing at 20 percent a year down to 4 percent growth. He shuttered nine institutions for the state’s mentally ill or disabled. Under Weld’s successor, Paul Celluci, Baker served as the state’s top financial offer. At some point during his quick rise, Baker became tagged “the smartest man in government.” In 1998, he left the public sector to work at Harvard Pilgrim, an HMO that was $227 million in the red when he arrived. He eventually turned it around, further burnishing his impressive resume.
Since Celluci’s election, in 1998, party leaders have been eager for a Baker run. But as the GOP’s resident whiz kid, Baker showed signs that his transition into elder statesman wouldn’t be easy. A 1998 Boston Globe profile—“The Man Behind the Curtain”— detailed Baker’s occasional lapses into the profane. In 1993, he told one unfriendly union crowd that focusing on Weld’s finances was “bullshit.” Once, he stormed out of a press conference with the statehouse press corps, cursing reporters and calling them “idiots.”
Supporters see these episodes as a welcome sign of life—of blood flowing through the technocrat’s veins. Opponents eye them hopefully, as an indication that Baker could be easily ruffled during a tough campaign. Baker admitted as much to the Globe. “"I'd need, like, 11 handlers,” he said about a possible run.
Fortunately for Baker, he’s had time to staff up. He declared his candidacy last July, two months before Scott Brown entered the U.S. Senate race. Comparing the two campaigns, Baker spokesman Rick Gorka, who also worked for Brown, described Brown’s staff as a “barebones operation.” The head start has also helped Baker’s fundraising. In February, the campaign pulled in $560,000, more than doubling Patrick’s haul. That deficit has sent the governor scurrying out of state, attending fundraisers in New York and, just last week, California.
Local handicappers see the race differently than the national ones do. Rasmussen’s pollsters claim that Scott Brown’s victory had little impact on the popularity of Baker’s chances. David Paleologos, a pollster for Suffolk University, says that it was Brown’s ascendancy which pushed Baker into second place this winter. Similarly, the analysts at the non-partisan Rothenberg Report, who tipped this race into the toss-up category recently, claim that the independent candidate Tim Cahill causes trouble for Patrick rather than Baker. Local observers like Paleologos and University of New Hampshire pollster Andrew E. Smith think that an effective Cahill campaign may be Patrick’s only viable path to victory. He provides an outlet for anti-Patrick voters without risking them tending ballots for Baker. The winner could triumph with less than 40 percent of the vote.
The battles lines are forming. Patrick will try to make Baker seem responsible for spiraling health care costs in Massachusetts because of his tenure at Harvard Pilgrim. Cahill will attempt to borrow Scott Brown’s barn jacket and present himself as the race’s true populist. Cahill adviser Tad Devine says Patrick and Baker are on the “wrong side of the Charles River, the Harvard side” while his candidate represents the interest of the working class. It will be a tough line to walk with pay-for-play allegations brewing. In return, Baker’s camp will repeat the fact that under Patrick and Cahill’s stewardship, Massachusetts saw 22 straight months of increases in unemployment.
Speaking shortly after Brown’s victory, former Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman Philip Johnston tried to find a silver lining for his side.
“The good news is that it has woken up the Democrats to a very dangerous year,” Johnston said.
The bad news: being awake would make losing the governor’s office sting all the more.
Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
