Hidely-ho, voterinos!
So, here we are. For the next several hours, voters will hit the polls (hopefully in appreciable numbers), and then this evening we all play the waiting game to see who won, who lost, and who will be dragging this mess out for several more weeks with recounts and court challenges.
Around here the big race is, of course, for US Representative of the 10th Congressional District. Who will win? I honestly can’t make a call, but here’s one scenario to consider: moderate and left-leaning unenrolled voters look at Bill Keating and see a guy who more or less represents their own stances on the issues, but has disenchanted voters with his relentlessly negative campaign (and maybe the fact he moved into the district specifically to run for this seat).
Does this drive them all to State Representative Jeffrey D. Perry (R – Sandwich)? Not necessarily. Many are unsatisfied with the answers he’s given to his various controversies, and besides, his very conservative views don’t jibe with voters’ opinions, so the liberally inclined and some of the moderates float over to MaryAnne Lewis, who is close to their own political viewpoints and has run a clean campaign.
The result? Perry has the Republican block sewed up, Keating likewise with the Democrats, but Lewis steals unenrolled voters away from Keating, allowing Perry to score a victory — not a landslide or even a “clear voter mandate” win, but enough of a victory to prevent Keating from challenging the outcome.
The there’s the governor’s race, and my hunch is that we’ve got four more years of Deval Patrick ahead of us, and I say this as a guy who, for most of Patrick’s administration, was ready to dump the guy.
I want to say Charlie Baker will pull off a win, because I’m cool with the idea of a fiscally conservative/socially moderate Republican in the Corner Office to balance what I’m sure will remain a Democrat-controlled State House, but Baker just never lived up to my expectations. His campaign never felt like it hit high gear, his ideas (which were decent, if not especially noteworthy) got buried under all the sniping between him and Patrick, and — like it or not — the state has shown positive steps forward in terms of economic recovery over the past several months.
There’s still a ton of work to do to get the state back on its feet, but it’s heading in the right direction, slowly but surely, and I personally am disinclined to switch horses midstream.
There are a few races I’d qualify as slam-dunks for the incumbents: I fully expect Senate President Therese M. Murray (D – Plymouth), State Representative Susan D. Williams Gifford (R – Wareham), AG Martha Coakley, and Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin to all be returned to office by wide margins.
Tags: 10th Congressional district, 2010 election, Jeff Perry, maryanne lewis, William Keating
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
