Party leaders intensify races for Legislature
Massachusetts voters are expected to turn out in record numbers today to decide the most competitive legislative campaign in memory, choosing among candidates who have latched onto the coattails, strategies, and resources of heavyweights Senator John F. Kerry and Governor Mitt Romney.
With 28 contested Senate seats, 91 House seats, and Romney's reputation as a party builder on the line, Republican and Democratic officials alike say they have infused the legislative races with new technology, organizing, and money, lending the typically disparate legislative races the feel of uniform statewide campaigns.
Romney, aware that Kerry will draw Democrats to the polls, visited eight Republican state Senate candidates who the party has identified as having the best chance of overtaking their Democratic opponents. If all eight win, the GOP would at last have enough seats in the Senate to protect the governor's vetoes and dramatically increase Romney's power on Beacon Hill.
But the governor acknowledged that his bid to increase Republican numbers in the Legislature faces daunting obstacles, even though the party has pumped more than $3 million into the effort and at least three GOP Senate hopefuls have invested more than $100,000 in their own races.
"I don't think anyone expected at the beginning that Kerry was going to be the Democratic nominee, and here he is," Romney said between campaign stops yesterday. "And that, of course, gives the Democrats in this state an additional leg up. In addition to incumbency, the Democratic advantage in registration, and John Kerry, it's a pretty potent obstacle."
Kerry has lent more than his name to the hopes of legislative Democrats, however. According to Democratic party spokeswoman Jane Lane, the Kerry campaign has provided dozens of volunteers and organizational help for the Democratic Election Day machine, giving the party tools it has never possessed in legislative races.
Lane said the Kerry campaign is monitoring 75 to 100 individual precincts statewide to determine voter turnout in the presidential race, allowing strategists to shift workers and phone-calling efforts to the races where they're needed most. The monitoring, in other words, will have a beneficial trickle-down effect on Democrats running for the Legislature, even if that's not the main purpose of the effort, Lane said.
"This is an unprecedented effort on the part of the Democratic Party, because of the top of the ticket, John Kerry and his campaign here in Massachusetts," Lane said. "We will be identifying votes all over the state, and we're happy to have it."
Romney, widely viewed as a potential presidential candidate in 2008, personally recruited many of the more than 100 GOP legislative candidates, putting his name on the line. He called the group "Team Reform," but in recent weeks, only 20 to 30 candidates have received Romney's attention.
Kerry is virtually certain to win Massachusetts in a landslide. Asked why Kerry would exert any effort in his home state, Lane said Kerry wants to turn out as much of the popular vote as possible. She said that the party was not exerting the extra effort to counter the newly invigorated Republican Party legislative push, which is the largest and most vibrant in at least a decade.
The Democratic Party has spent about $1.3 million on the legislative races so far this year, plus considerable help from their traditional allies among labor unions, along with individual candidates' contributions.
The Republicans, who have gradually lost seats in the Legislature over the years, have the enthusiastic leadership of Romney to thank for its largest slate of candidates in more than a decade, many of them wealthy, well-spoken, and running competitive races against longtime Democratic incumbents.
Romney has taken dozens of trips into the districts, including the whirlwind trip to eight Senate races yesterday, to boost candidates he acknowledges are virtual unknowns.
"People want change, they want reform, but they don't know our candidates," Romney told reporters yesterday, taking a break from introducing voters to Republican Senate hopeful Rod Jane of Westborough. Only minutes earlier, the managers of a local sports bar asked Romney to autograph a Boston Red Sox cap, and he happily complied. Jane said: "You want a Jane signature on that? I'm just kidding. I don't want to ruin your hat."
Alex Dunn, Romney's political director, said that Romney and the party have given each candidate a very powerful tool: in-depth lessons in how to get out the vote, including a powerful database that highlights potential swing voters and independent voters.
Dunn said the party's candidates are mounting the most sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort ever, an effort that includes more than a million live and recorded phone calls between Friday and tonight.
"We were very effective in the [2002] Romney-for-governor campaign, we were effective in the Scott Brown special election, and we've done the same with these candidates," said Dunn, referring to the narrow victory won in March by Brown, then a state representative, for the Senate seat vacated by Cheryl Jacques of Needham. "We don't have thousands of bodies at the party, but we could train them to advocate and get out the vote."
Romney spent about a half-hour yesterday campaigning with Brown in North Attleborough, shaking shopkeepers' and bankers' hands, and touting the candidate as ideal for the district. Several dozen sign-toting supporters followed them.
Angus McQuilken, the Millis Democrat taking on Brown in a rematch of their special election, hopes to benefit from Kerry's coattails, even though it didn't work the first time. His first loss took place on the day Massachusetts voted for Kerry in the presidential primary.
"Turnout will be twice what it was in the special election, and in this district a large majority of those voters are going to be Kerry-Edwards voters," McQuilken said
Democrats make up slightly more than 37 percent of Massachusetts' registered voters, while Republicans constitute a hair under 13 percent. Unenrolled or independent voters make up slightly more than half the state's registered voters, giving moderate Republican legislative candidates a reason to believe they can win, even against entrenched incumbents.
Both parties have inundated voters with recorded calls urging them to head to their local polling stations today. Republicans and unenrolled voters have heard from Romney, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, and local candidates.
Democrats have heard from US Senator Edward M. Kennedy and other Bay State Democratic congressmen.
The legislative campaign has already been extremely expensive and may top spending records. With eight days to go before Election Day, Senate candidates had spent $5.2 million, about $900,000 less than the record $6.1 million established in 1992.
Barry Lawton, an aide to Senator Dianne Wilkerson of Roxbury and a Democratic Party activist, said the legislative races are also being seen in part as a party-building exercise and a warm-up for the gubernatorial race of 2006. Lawton said the party has targeted about 100,000 minority voters in districts where Democratic lawmakers face either no opponent or a weak one, hoping to get "more and more minority voters, who are kind of on the periphery of the electoral process, involved."
"We want the governor's office in two years," Lawton said.
Republican Party chairman Darrell Crate said he views today's elections as a first step toward restoring Republican power on Beacon Hill.
"This is just the first part of a long, slow evolution toward restoring two-party democracy in Massachusetts," Crate said.
Romney said he views the entire legislative campaign as something of an afterthought, now that the Red Sox have won their first World Series in nearly nine decades.
"The Red Sox win is the greatest thing I know that's going to happen this year," Romney said, while campaigning for Republican candidate James F. Coffey of Hopkinton. "Everything else pales in comparison."
Scott S. Greenberger of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
