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Tag Archives: Deval Patrick
King Patrick the tyrannical
Governor Patrick issued an executive order on Friday that banned vehicular traffic in the state after 4:00 during a major snowstorm. Cue the overreaction.
Mo Cowan “For a Vast Future Also”
Frank Phillips has a very good story in the Boston Globe today on the Mo Cowan pick, made all the more excellent by quoting my favorite political scientist: me. I was responding to criticisms from bluemassgroup.com founder David Kravitz and other progressives that Barney Frank would have been a better pick: “The impact that someone could have for just five months in the Senate is not great, and the argument overstates the importance of having a Frank, Meehan, or a Kennedy.”
Let me expand on my thought.
Appointment Intrigue and Special Election Tedium
This should be an interesting day here in Massachusetts. Governor Deval Patrick will appoint an interim senator to serve in Secretary of State John Kerry’s seat until a special election is held in late June.
As I’ve written before I think it would be most interesting for the governor to appoint a new and fresh figure who at least cracks the mold somewhat. The appointee would get a political boost and perhaps bypass our sclerotic sort-of democracy in the commonwealth. Perhaps another woman, Hispanic or African-American candidate, someone associated with an important issue like gun control, or someone who has achieved at the highest levels in business or academia or the non-profit world. An ideas person. Someone like Elizabeth Warren, perhaps?
Clearly, Patrick has no plans to run for anything in 2014 or 2016
Governor Deval Patrick’s proposals on taxes are bold and are bound to be quite unpopular. They are also a pretty clear signal that the governor’s immediate post-governorship plans do not include a run for higher office.
Deval Patrick and the State of the State
Opportunity. That was the big theme from Governor Deval Patrick in his 2013 State of the State Address. And while he was prepared to acknowledge that the room would go silent when he raised the topic of taxes, his purpose was clear: tax increases are intended to raise up the poor into the middle class and bolster and secure the existing the middle class, and not to “redistribute” our hard earned money to malingerers like, say for instance, EBT card recipients.
A Different Kind of Temporary Senator?
With all the speculation that Senator John Kerry will be named Secretary of State local politicos are consumed with who will run and who Governor Deval Patrick will name as the interim senator. In that vein Conor Yunits has a very good op-ed Look outside ranks of pols, rich in the Boston Herald today. Conor calls for some outside-the box-thinking; the governor should consider appointing someone from a group that almost never gets senate representation. He suggests a young person; or a veteran; or an African-American (none currently in the senate); another woman; a political outsider; or someone from the 99%.
Luck and Talent in Politics
When I posted Your Next Senator Will Be … last week I was having some fun with the larger point that supposed experts and insiders may enjoy forecasting political events but are often wrong because of the “unknown unknowns” that attend our lives. Two days ago in Algebra of “Your Next Senator Will Be …” I provided a formula evaluating the outcomes of the 2006 gubernatorial, 2010 senate special, and 2012 senate elections. Simple as that equation was I can simplify it further and this time I have the work of a Nobel Prize winner behind me.
Algebra of “Your Next Senator Will Be …”
Last week I posted Your Next Senator Will Be … in which I noted that while speculating on the identity of our next US senator or governor is an entertaining pastime, recent experience with Deval Patrick, Scott Brown, and Elizabeth Warren should caution all of us about our capability with a crystal ball. Some comments and conversations about the topic got me thinking about what common factors might have contributed to each upset victory. So here is my mathematic-looking but unscientific thought on why Patrick, Brown, and Warren won: each ran from the outside and stood for something, and their opponents really didn’t.
Your Next Senator Will Be . . .
Your next senator will surely be (your guess here) and that will set things up for (who knows?) to be your next governor. There is a lot of speculation about how the next two years of politics will play out and it is this sort of expert attention that boosted the successes of Governor Tom Reilly and Senator Martha Coakley, as well as the inevitable re-election of the unbeatable Senator Scott Brown.