A woman who delivers the vote
IN THE EVENTFUL days before the Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary, it seemed at a distance as if no other elected official in the state must have been under more pressure to deliver for a favored candidate than the president of the state Senate, Therese Murray. In light of what the press reported at the time, it looked like the chief source of the pressure on Senator Murray was Senator Murray.
She hadn't merely endorsed a candidate - in Murray's case, it was Hillary Clinton - as many others had done. She'd also gone out on a limb by calling out two of the leading men in the state's politics: Edward Kennedy and John Kerry. After all that women had done for the Democratic Party, she said, and after a qualified woman finally had the party's presidential nomination within her reach, these guys decided to back a guy, Barack Obama. As opinion polls of the state showed a late surge by Obama, you had to wonder what Murray's blood pressure might be. But all this was before primary day.
Clinton's victory had to provide some vindication to Murray, as did the 15-point margin of her victory and the high level of her support by female voters. To see if Murray's own backyard had delivered for her choice, I checked the vote in her hometown of Plymouth. It had. Clinton's winning margin there was even greater than her statewide margin. She also carried the other seven towns in Murray's district. Murray had made good.
At a time like this - with Nancy Pelosi serving as the speaker of the US House, with Clinton as a serious candidate for a presidential nomination, and with the gender politics of the Massachusetts primary still in the air - it is natural that Murray is noted chiefly for achieving the distinction of becoming the first woman ever to reach one of the two top positions in the General Court. But once you find yourself looking up the vote count in towns near the southeastern end of Interstate 495, such as Plympton and Kingston and Pembroke as well as Plymouth, you realize that Murray has also achieved an additional first. It doesn't carry the cultural charge of gender, or involve the high stakes of presidential politics, but it is still important in the politics and policy of the state.
Murray is the first suburbanite to make it to the top of the legislative leadership ladder. All of her Democratic predecessors not only were men; they were men who belonged to the urban wing of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
The geography of the party's legislative leadership still lags the geography of the party's rank-and-file voters. A large share of the Democratic electorate has long since settled in the suburbs, notably in towns in the crescent that has been formed by Route 128 and I-495. This lag is a windfall for hard-pressed cities. It supplies them with political leverage that they clearly need and otherwise might not have. But it can also make it harder for urban leaders to get into step with suburban voters. In the Senate, for example, Murray's successful support for gay marriage was closer to the social outlook of the former than of the latter.
Nevertheless, the slice of the suburban crescent that exists in Murray's district shouldn't be confused with the upscale tiers of the crescent. If you look at how the state's 351 cities and towns rank by median family income, the towns that stand at the very top of the list are suburbs: Weston, Dover, Carlisle, and Sherborn. To find Plympton, though, you have to go down the list to No. 91. Pembroke is right below it at No. 92. This puts the two just below the top quarter of the list. Kingston is farther down at No. 161. Plymouth is at almost precisely the midpoint of the list, at No. 178. This is the middle of Middle Massachusetts.
On the possibility of increasing broad-based taxes, Murray seems to differ from both some of her city colleagues and some of her upscale suburban colleagues, The first see higher taxes as a way to help their constituents who have social needs. The second see them as a price that their constituents are willing to pay. For Murray, such increases seem to be off the table. The 2002 call to abolish the state income tax won majorities in only two of the state's 12 mainland counties. Parts of each are in her district. The sources of new revenue she can favor and work hard for, it appears, are cigarettes, casinos, and economic development.
Ralph Whitehead Jr., a guest columnist, is a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
