State GOP voter rolls on decline
The number of registered Republican voters in Massachusetts has dropped by roughly 15,000 since Governor Mitt Romney won election in fall 2002, despite his efforts to rebuild the GOP in the heavily Democratic Bay State, figures released yesterday show.
The GOP's enrollment stands at its lowest point since February 2000, the figures show, presenting Romney with a stiff challenge as he attempts to seat more Republicans in the Legislature this November. The latest figures show the GOP rolls have dropped to 515,860 voters.
By comparison, the Democratic Party added more than 36,000 voters between October 2002 and August 2004, and the Libertarian and Green-Rainbow parties each picked up more than 2,000 voters in that period. The number of unenrolled voters, who make up just under half of all registered voters in Massachusetts, has fallen by roughly 36,000 since August 2002, after a spike in 2000.
Most of Romney's efforts at party-building have focused on recruiting legislative candidates, not registering new Republican voters, and GOP officials downplayed the latest numbers. Secretary of State William F. Galvin, a Democrat whose office oversees elections, said he sees the decline as less a reflection on Romney than on President Bush's slipping popularity in the home state of his rival, Senator John F. Kerry.
''I'm not saying it's insignificant that [Republican enrollment] went down, but I think it's more reflective of feelings about Bush, and not Romney," Galvin said. ''It would be easy for me to say, 'Aha, look at this.' It's fair to say he hasn't had success in getting people to become Republicans. But what these numbers clearly show is that he's going to have to get a disproportionate number of people who are not Republicans to vote for his candidates. Otherwise, it's impossible."
Unenrolled voters were largely responsible for electing Romney in 2002, and the governor has targeted his campaign since then on what he calls a reform agenda aimed at independent and swing voters.
''The governor faces an uphill battle to restore two-party balance on Beacon Hill," said Tim O'Brien, GOP executive director.
''We continue to face the Democratic monopoly, and this is bad for the people of Massachusetts. If we are going to restore a healthy democracy, we need to focus on electing more Republican reformers to the Legislature."
Today is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 2 election in Massachusetts, and some groups have been conducting voter registration efforts.
Galvin has aired television advertisements to boost registration, and other groups, such as MassEquality and Catholic Citizenship, have been conducting intense voter registration drives, largely spurred by interest in the same-sex marriage battle.
Galvin predicted that the overall enrollment would increase by several thousand when the final figures are tallied for this election season. Voters can register for the first time or switch parties by filling out a form, available at cities and towns or when applying for or renewing a driver's license.
Philip W. Johnston, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said he has made voter registration a top priority of his party, particularly in minority neighborhoods. The recent election of Andrea Cabral as Suffolk County sheriff was largely attributed to get-out-the-vote efforts among African Americans and Hispanics in Boston.
The Democrats now have 1,479,055 voters, the highest number since at least 1948, the earliest figures published by the secretary of state's office.
As a percentage of the total number of voters, however, Democrats have lost ground since the late 1980s, while the proportion of unenrolled voters has increased.
The percentage of unenrolled voters increased from 44 in 1990 to 49 now. The number of Democrats fell from 42 percent in 1990 to 37 percent. Republicans have hovered at 13 percent.
Republican Party enrollment in Massachusetts reached a high point of 743,736 in 1954 and declined steadily for decades until 1988, when Governor Michael S. Dukakis made a failed bid for president. Since then, the ranks of Bay State Republicans had risen until recently.
Carla Howell, a Libertarian candidate for governor in 2002, said the downturn in GOP registrations is a sign that the Republican base is disenchanted with Romney's willingness to increase fees and to close corporate tax loopholes, both of which her party viewed as thinly veiled tax hikes.
''They're all taxes, and he signed them into law," said Howell, whose party is running six legislative candidates this fall. ''The rank-and-file Republicans who want someone who's fiscally conservative aren't getting that. The Republican base includes fiscal conservatives."
It's still unclear what role independent activist organizations have had on the latest voter registration figures, but there's no question that conservative and progressive groups alike have been working hard to add voters, hoping to affect races in which issues like same-sex marriage figure prominently.
Marty
''There's no way I could say we had tremendous success," Rouse said. ''But this was what we called our 'summer of equality,' and we had hundreds of volunteers across the state registering backers of same-sex marriage. That was a key piece of our efforts."
Also, a group called Catholic Citizenship led by Raymond L. Flynn, a former Boston mayor and US ambassador to the Vatican, has spent the last month or so registering parishioners at half of the state's 700 Roman Catholic churches, a spokesman said. That effort has resulted in an average of five newly enrolled voters per church each week.
Spokesman Larry Cirignano said he had no idea which party, if any, the bulk of the newly enrolled have chosen. Of 22 people who became registered voters at a recent event in Springfield, he said, ''I think all of them were unenrolled."
''The difference between us and MassEquality is they're registering people at gay bars, and we're doing it at churches, so you can predict where everyone will come down on the issues," Cirignano said. ''Party's another matter."
