A new poll conducted for Republican Gabriel Gomez’s campaign shows Gomez trailing Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey by just 3 points.
The May 5-7 poll of 800 likely special election voters by OnMessage Inc., a Republican political consulting firm, found Markey leading Gomez 46 percent to 43 percent, with 11 percent undecided. According to an OnMessage polling memo, respondents “were stratified by county based on previous election results to reflect historic voter trends.” Full story
Markey, who has been in Congress since 1977, begins the Senate race as the clear frontrunner. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
The Senate special election in Massachusetts took an interesting turn this week, when former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez drew more than 50 percent of the vote to win the GOP nomination.
Gomez will face Rep. Edward J. Markey on June 25. Markey won the Democratic nomination with 57 percent of the vote over Rep. Stephen F. Lynch.
The total GOP primary vote was less than what Lynch received in the Democratic race, and the Bay State’s Democratic bent is undeniable. But Gomez has an interesting story, and at least the GOP didn’t nominate an old white guy who had served in the Massachusetts Legislature. (Gomez beat former U.S. Attorney Mike Sullivan and Dan Winslow, a current member of the state House.)
Democrats won’t allow themselves to be surprised the way they were when Scott P. Brown beat Martha Coakley in the last Senate special election, in early 2010, and the national party’s image can’t do anything but hurt Gomez’s already uphill chances. But there is no reason to rush to judgment on this race, at least for a couple of weeks, and it’s worth watching to see how it unfolds. Obviously, Markey begins as the clear favorite.
Last week, I wrote a short item about reports that former Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott P. Brown was not ruling out a run for the Senate in 2014 — in New Hampshire.
I argued that the idea was a bad one and that running in the Granite State after passing on the 2013 Senate special election in Massachusetts would make Brown look like a carpetbagger who was “seat-shopping.”
Not long after my post, National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Brad Dayspring shot back, not by answering my points but by tweeting about a column I wrote in this space in the summer of 1999, about Hillary Rodham Clinton and carpetbagging.
Rothernberg on HRC in '99: "anyone who dismisses the impact of carpetbagging issue in New York probably is offering more spin than insight."
— Brad Dayspring (@BDayspring) April 5, 2013
The column examined a number of races in which carpetbagging or residency was an issue, including Jay Rockefeller’s 1972 West Virginia run for governor, Oregon Rep. Al Ullman’s 1980 re-election bid, John McCain’s 1982 Arizona House race and Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 New York Senate run.
I noted that sometimes a carpetbagging charge was enough to destroy a candidacy (e.g., Rockefeller’s and Ullman’s) and sometimes it wasn’t (e.g., McCain’s and Kennedy’s). But it was almost always a significant problem for a candidate with weak ties to a state. Full story
Two of the Republican Senate hopefuls in Massachusetts are out with new campaign videos. Do yourself a favor and give them a look.
First up is Gabriel Gomez, who is out with a 2-minute introductory video. The spot opens with eight seconds of Gomez, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Colombia, speaking Spanish. The former Navy Seal with an MBA from Harvard Business School is shown in various settings talking about his background and values, as well as about Washington, D.C.’s problems. He bills himself as a “new kind of Republican.”
State Rep. Dan Winslow also has a new video. In it, he rails against “Washington insiders.” It is worth a look as well.
Gomez and Winslow face former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan in the GOP primary. The winner will be the underdog in the special election against either Rep. Edward J. Markey or Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, who are vying for the Democratic nod. The two Democrats launched the first ads of the Senate race on Tuesday. The primary is April 30.
