Last Day to Register Before Caucuses!

Today is the last day you can go to your city or town hall and register as a Democrat to be eligible to attend your local Democratic caucus in Februrary. Only voters who are registered Democrats as of December 31 will be able to vote in the caucuses, and it's unlikely that your town clerk's office will be open tomorrow. If you are planning on changing your registration today, be sure to call ahead and check the hours.

If you absolutely can't get to the town hall today, you can print out a registration form from here and mail it in. You should still be eligible for the caucuses if your letter is postmarked by tomorrow, the 31st. You may want to check with your town/city clerk beforehand, though, to make sure.

If you live in Watertown and are interested in the caucus here, drop me a line or post a comment and I'll make sure you're kept in the loop. The time and place is supposed to be announced beforehand in the Tab, but last year I don't think I would have known when it was if I hadn't already been going to the Town Committee meetings.

Population Woes

Last week, the Census reported that Massachusetts lost population for the second year in a row according to its estimates. While some people don't seem to think that this is a big deal, it is. Fewer people means less access to Federal funds, and fewer dollars for Massachusetts. When that happens, who do you think has to make up the revenue shortfall? A loss of a Congressional seat (or two!) not only means less clout in Congress, but also means that Massachusetts will lose electoral college votes -- while states like Texas increase their influence on the presidency. With less people, an economic recovery becomes even harder, as companies don't move jobs to places that are losing people, and without access to jobs, people leave creating a death spiral. There are already areas of this and neighboring states where this has happened at the local level and we certainly wouldn't want this pattern repeated on a statewide scale.

There are two things we should do to combat this. The first, and comparatively easier, course of action is to make sure that we have the most accurate count of residents possible. This is particularly challenging in a state where so many of the people here are students and immigrants -- two of the hardest groups to get a reliable count of. Holly St. Clair of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council has an opinion piece in today's Globe outlining the difficulties with getting accurate numbers. She gives the following recommendations for producing a more accurate count:

First, the Legislature and governor should reinstitute funding for the estimates and projections program, which can be managed by the UMass Donahue Institute, whose staff is highly qualified to handle this responsibility. Second, the secretary of state, colleges and universities, and community-based organizations with ties to immigrant communities must begin planning for the 2010 Census immediately. Cities such as Boston and Cambridge that have lots of students and immigrants need to be at the table, too.

Of course, it's one thing to make sure that no one currently in Massachusetts is left out of the Census in 2010, but it's another thing entirely for the state to lure people here in advance of that count. It's going to be too late to do anything about that in a year or two, so it's particularly important for the state government to act now. This means that they have to address the high cost of living in the state. To my mind, that means increasing the affordable housing stock -- and by that I don't mean subsidized housing, I mean housing that an average couple can afford when they're looking to put down roots. That also means attracting jobs to the state -- something Governor Romney promised to do, but he has been less than mediocre at. These things have to go hand in hand, because companies won't relocate here if there's no place for their employees to live, and people won't move here if there's no place to work.

Of course, if you're like the Boston Herald Editors, you think that making sure people have access to health care will drive them away. That's a bit counter-intuitive, particularly since the kinds of jobs that we need to attract in Massachusetts are the ones that are the most likely to already offer health benefits -- associate level white collar type jobs that can lure recent graduates into staying put for a few more years. Massachusetts is well positioned to keep these people in state because there is always a new supply of students graduating from our excellent colleges and universities every year. They're leaving because of cold weather, a cold job market, and no place to live. We need to do a better job of holding on to these people, because that's where this state's future lies. Massachusetts can't compete globally for manufacturing jobs, so they need to keep as many knowledge workers in the area as possible so they can lure companies here with high-quality employees.

As an aside, around the same time my wife and I bought the .08 Acre Homestead in Watertown, we visited some of her relatives just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. They lived in a mansion -- their garage alone was close to .08 acres -- in a community full of mansions with, they assured us, great schools, an easy commute to the city, and other sundry amenities. Down the street, a similar house was for sale -- used to Boston prices, we laughed about how we could be neighbors. When we took a look at the flyer, however, we saw that it was on the market for less than what our own shoebox on a postage stamp's original asking price was. One thing that we forget is that it's not just housing prices that are ridiculously high, but housing value is very low. You simply get more for your money elsewhere.

Mihos Wants No Part of Senate Race

Imagine that you wanted to buy a house, not just any one, but a particular one you'd been wanting for some time. The problem is, there are other bidders, and one in particular doesn't like you driving up the price. Now, that bidder comes up to you and says "Look, we really want this house, and we think it would be best for everybody if you just let us have it. But, if you're interested in spending all that money anyway, we'd really appreciate it if you just took it and flushed it down this toilet."

That's exactly the offer the Mass GOP are giving to Christy Mihos, at least according to the Boston Globe.

Mihos confirmed that [Governor Mitt] Romney asked him to enter the Senate race earlier this month, just hours before the governor announced he would not seek reelection. [White House political director Sara] Taylor has placed a number of calls to Mihos over the past 10 days, and Mihos said he has returned each call but has missed her. The White House declined to comment, but state GOP party sources confirmed that she called to urge Mihos to run for the senate.

Mihos is predictably uninterested in challenging Senator Kennedy. It's hard to blame him -- if you're going to choose a seat to run for, do you pick an open seat that you have a decent chance of winning or do you challenge a popular and well funded incumbent you have no shot against? The party bosses aren't even offering Mihos any help should he go up against Kennedy. They, too, know he has little chance of winning and just want someone who's willing to spend his own money to tie the Senator down. Why should he do them any favors if they're only offering him the opportunity to waste a couple million bucks?

Fellow blogger David Eisenthal has more on Mihos's impact on the governor's race.

Globe Profiles Mass. Political Internet Scene

Yesterday the Boston Globe profiled the Massachusetts political Internet scene, and while this little slice of the web was too insignificant to mention, they did link to Romney is a Fraud and its sister site Healey is a Fraud along with Blue Mass. Group.

They spent a little too much time, I think, talking about a couple of out-of-state Romney for President blogs. That's not my real problem with the article, though. The article was headlined "Politicians search for the Web advantage" but very little of it actually focused on what the politicians were doing -- there were a couple of paragraphs on the Mass Dems and their Ani-Mitt animations, and the efforts that the state GOP went to earlier this year to snatch up a couple of domain names out from under Attorney General Tom Reilly. The rest of the article focused not on the pols, but on regular people, like the Romney bloggers and the others, who support a particular candidate or political philosophy and want to talk about it. The interesting part of the story was not that politicians are trying to take advantage of the Internet but that concerned citizens are using the web as a way to get involved in the process, completely apart from the political establishments.

Michigan, He's Yours If You Want Him

Sometimes the front page of the Boston Herald is ridiculous, but today it was just perfect:

Consider me convinced, Mitt, because I think that's something we can both agree on. the article that follows contains portions of a Herald interview with the Governor, where he admits that if he had originally thought about entering politics, he'd have done it in his home state of Michigan and never have moved to Massachusetts. Here's what he has to say about that:

"Running as a Romney in Michigan is golden for a politician. I would have never thought about Massachusetts had I anticipated that politics was going to be in my future," he said.

I know it's been a while since Mitt left Michigan, but maybe he doesn't remember his Mother Lenore Romney's failed Senate campaign (1970), his brother Scott Romney's failure to get out of the GOP primaries in the Attorney General's race (1998), and Scott's ex-wife Ronna Romney's two failed Senate bids (1994 and 1996). Now, it's been a long time since I've been to Michigan, but if that's what passes for gold there, it's no wonder the US auto industry is in trouble.

Talking About Taxes

Chris from Left Center Left had a very thoughtful post last week about the need for Democrats in Massachusetts to appeal to unenrolled voters, particularly on the issue of taxes. I disagree with Chris on who unenrolled voters actually are -- I think he makes the mistake that they are synonymous with centrists which obscures the fact that they are, in the aggregate, more aligned with state Democrats on policy issues than state Republicans (such as they are). I was rummaging around the Internet looking for 2002 exit polls, which were not released that year, to prove my assertion and found instead the quality of life survey sponsored by MassINC in 2003. After reading through that, I am beginning to think that Chris is right that "independent voters don't trust us progressives to decide the appropriate tax rate or even to insist on government services." In fact I think he understates the problem -- voters of any stripe may not trust the state government in general to decide the tax rate or deliver services.

Taxes ranked fifth among "areas that need major improvement" in that survey, behind affordable housing, traffic, health care and the cost of a college education. What's interesting to me, though, is that the respondents most likely to think that average families need major tax relief were minorities (57%), working mothers (57%) and those who identified themselves as working class or poor (54%). Of course, those subsamples are subject to larger margins of error given the smaller number of people in those categories than the entire sample, but it does make sense that those with the least amount of disposable income would be concerned about holding on to as much of it as possible.

That said, these three groups are not exactly your core Republican constituencies, so finding that a tax message could resonate with them particularly is concerning. Overall, Democrats polled were more likely than Republicans to indicate that major improvements were needed in all those areas aside from taxes. Independents were more similar to Democrats in those areas as well, and on taxes Republicans were only marginally more likely than both Democrats and Independents to think that major improvement was needed to decrease the tax burden.

That's not to say, of course, that taxes are not an important issue. In the survey, 79% of respondents claimed that the amount of taxes an average family had to pay needed either "major" or "some" improvement (as opposed to "satisfactory as is" or "more than satisfactory as is"). That's a lot of people, but it's smaller than those who want to improve the traffic situation or want affordable housing. In addition, 79% of the respondents also wanted to improve "the way the political system is working."

So, how do three year old survey results inform the 2006 elections? Well, one thing's for sure: if people were concerned about the cost of living then, they're probably even more concerned today after the cost of heating oil has skyrocketed.

Democrats have to worry that when the focus is on taxes, they're alienating groups that traditionally vote for them -- minorities, women and the working class. They can try to shift the conversation so that the services your tax dollars pay for get the spotlight, but ultimately, people don't trust the state government to deliver services. In that poll, only one-in-ten people said they trusted the state "a lot", and slightly more than half said they trusted it at least "some". I doubt there's been much movement on those numbers under the Romney administration.

So how should Democrats talk about taxes? In my opinion, the focus should be on the property tax first, since it's more regressive than the income tax, and it also adds to the high cost of housing. I think given the choice, most homeowners would prefer a reduction in property tax rates over a reduction in the income tax anyway, but I don't have any data on that myself other than my own experience as a landowner (all .08 acres of it). What I'd really like someone to show is that a dollar of income tax goes farther than a dollar of property tax. I think that this has to be the case because every community that takes in property taxes must duplicate the administrative means to collect it, and to distribute the services -- town agencies, school administrators, etc. The state needn't have those sorts of inefficiencies; the overhead cost to the state should theoretically be lower than that for the sum total of all 351 cities and towns. If this is the case, then lowering the income tax could cause property tax rates to end up costing taxpayers more than they saved with the tax cut, assuming that the amount of money spent by localities stays even with inflation.

Romney's Last Pre-Announcement Poll

Survey USA has released what might very well be the last poll of Governor Mitt Romney's approval rating taken before he announced he wasn't seeking reelection. Romney made his announcement on the 14th, and this poll was taken between the ninth and the eleventh of this month. He clocks in at 49% approve, 45% disapprove, putting him in the bottom half of the nation's governors. That's fairly anemic for an incumbent governor, but it's around where he's been all along -- in fact it's remarkable close to his 2002 election percentages. It will be interesting to see how his impending retirement effects his approval rating in future polls. Of course, now that he doesn't have to worry about being reelected, what does he care?

Rep. McGovern on Fire!

Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Worcester) has been on a tear recently. On Friday, he went after the President and the GOP Congress for putting forth a second resolution rejecting a timetable for the Iraq war, calling it "inconsistent with achieving victory." McGovern pointed out just how ridiculous that was:

"What is victory? Nobody has defined what victory is," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said.

And that's the question that no one seems to be asking, at least not the press. What exactly does it mean to be victorious? How will we know? When the last insurgent is dead? Or, is the administrating setting up a condition for victory that will require them to put permanent bases in Iraq?

Then today, Rep. McGovern gave a blistering indictment of the Republican Party on the floor of the House, captured by georgia10 of Daily Kos:

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I am tired of the speeches. I, like so many others, want genuine reform and change. I want accountability.

This all brings me to this Congress. There is a reason why this Congress has only a 25 percent approval rating. It is because you are doing a lousy job. You are trashing the rules and regular order. The selling of legislation to the highest bidder, the hard-ball tactics against your own Members to win votes, your lack of oversight and demand for accountability from this administration, all that and more is catching up to you. People are watching. People do care. They believe that you cannot competently run this government, and they want the government back.

The mess that we have before us cannot be blamed on Democrats. After all, as I have said, Republicans control everything. You cannot blame this on Bill Clinton, even though some of you try, because he has been gone now for a full 5 years. This is your fault. The battles going on behind closed doors are between your right wing and your far right wing. For those of us in the minority, and many on your side who want good government, this is a frustrating period.

Read the rest of the speech here.

Reilly the Minority Candidate

The Boston Phoenix last week had an article on Attorney General Tom Reilly's minority outreach in Roxbury on Tuesday. When asked whether being the non-minority candidate in the race would hurt his chances among minority leaders, he quipped:

"I am a minority in this campaign. I'm the only one who's not a millionaire."

Look for Reilly to continue to play up his 'regular guy' image as the campaign goes on.

Insiders Higher on Romney

My anonymous source in Washington clued me into the newest version of the National Journal's 2008 Republican Insiders Poll. This time, they asked 100 Republican insiders -- Congressmen and other political types -- to rank potential candidates' chances of winning their party's presidential nomination. I commented on the April edition of the insiders poll, where our favorite Governor, Mitt Romney ranked fifth. This time, the gov jumped up to third, behind Senators George Allen and John McCain. Here are the top ten on the Republican side, according to those inside the Beltway, from the poll (PDF):

Rank	Candidate	Points	First-Place Votes
1.	George Allen	365	(39)
2.	John McCain	337	(38)
3.	Mitt Romney	168	(4)
4.	Rudy Giuliani	149	(7)
5.	Bill Frist	93	(1)
6.	Haley Barbour	92	(0)
7.	Condoleezza Rice	61	(4)
8.	George Pataki	39	(2)
9.	Newt Gingrich	37	(0)
10.	Chuck Hagel	35	(1)

Notice, however, that Romney jumped up in rank even though his point total actually decreased slightly from the last time. I think a lot of that might have to do with Senator Bill Frist's falling stock more than anything Romney himself has done. Hopefully, this won't all go to the Governor's head. The National Journal also reports that the most recent polling of Republicans voters has Mitt clocking in at a whopping 2% -- just below "Other" and "None". Here's what one insider had to say about the Governor:

"Regardless of his record, our base will wonder what in the heck he had to do to become governor of the Kennedy-Dukakis state."

The National Journal also polled Democratic insiderts, and among them the Bay State's other 2008 Presidential contender, Senator John Kerry, fared less well, dropping from fifth last time to eighth in this incarnation of the poll. Predictably, among the insiders, Senator Hillary Clinton towers over the rest of the Democratic field.

John Bonifaz Conference Call

On Tuesday night Joe Trippi hosted a blog call with John Bonifaz, who is running in the Democratic primary for Secretary of the Commonwealth against incumbent Bill Galvin. Bonifaz came to last weekend's BlogLeft conference, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to talk to him there, nor was I able to make the conference call. Luckily for all of us, there is a podcast of the event. During the call, Bonifaz focused on his ideas for reforming our voting system. Simply, he wants to make sure that every vote is counted, that it's easy to vote, and that big money influence is removed from our elections.

Bonifaz also argued that Secretary Galvin has dropped the ball on his election monitoring responsibilities, siting election problems in Lawrence and Boston that happened under his watch, saying that Massachusetts deserves to have a leader in that office. He also mentioned how Galvin killed a pilot program for same-day voter registration that cities and towns could participate in, if they chose to do so. Bonifaz does have a point that Galvin has not been particularly focused on elections, but in fairness Galvin has been aggressively fighting corporate malfeasance through the Securities and Corporation Divisions of his office.

The Things He Did and Didn't Do

In today's column, Scot Lehigh diagnoses Governor Romney with a case of Potomac Fever:

Instead of conceding what everyone knows to be true -- he isn't seeking re-election because that will make it easier to run nationally in 2008 -- Romney declared that he had done most of what he set out to do. Consider this howler: "I have loved the whirlwind of accomplishment of the last three years."

Did I miss the National Weather Service bulletin redefining whirlwind as an intermittent breeze? Or has the Mittster been boasting so much out on the hustings that he has begun to believe his own stump speech?

I imagine the betrayal stings more for Lehigh, who has been writing thinly veiled pleas for the Governor to stay for months. Now he's rightly criticizing Mitt for claiming that his work here is done, and it's time to move on.

One more thing about Mitt's list of accomplishments. Since when is not doing something an accomplishment? All the GOP spokespeople I see on the television of late (Joe Malone, Charlie Manning, et al) claim that Romney's biggest accomplishment was that he didn't raise taxes. Big deal. I didn't raise taxes either -- it was easy. Nor did I raise fees or close tax loopholes to increase revenue, but of course, Romney can't say the same for himself. Anyway, If you want to start including the things he didn't do in his list of accomplishments, I think you'll have a much longer list -- he didn't fully fund UMass, he didn't send enough local aid to municipalities, he didn't bring back the death penalty, he didn't really care about being governor. The list goes on.

Mittpocalypse Now

The Mass Dems have brought Ani-Mitt back. Join Willard as he travels from Massachusettsia to Washington. It's hilarious, and it smells like... victory.

Where is Kerry Healey?

That's the question that Eileen McNamara asked in her column yesterday. McNamara wondered why the Lieutenant Governor has not spoken up now that the public has turned its attention to crime, her supposed area of expertise. Instead of using Romney's continued absence and detachment from the state as an excuse to speak out, she's tooling around the state, holding low-profile roundtable discussions that maybe a dozen people outside of the Massachusetts Executive branch will ever hear about.

Healey should be the political beneficiary of Romney's detachment. He delegated criminal justice to her. If she is not the dominant voice on these issues now, when will the public get to hear her?

Maybe soon, now that Mitt Romney has finally announced his intentions. But maybe Healey just isn't comfortable using her position to speak out. After all, the last time she was given a microphone in front of a large audience, she was called "a new contender for Most Revolting Politician in America" by Slate's William Saletan. Even yesterday, Healey shied away from the spotlight.

"Today is a day really about Gov. Romney and I would like to keep the focus on him," she said. "My intentions haven't changed."

Healey said she expected to make a formal announcement about her candidacy sometime during the winter, which ends March 20.

As an aside, what is the Romney/Healey administration's obsession with the exact starting and ending dates of the seasons? Romney said he'd make his decision in the Fall, which he reminded us doesn't end until December 20th -- even though a quick look out the window confirms that it's Winter, despite what the calendar may say.

Oh, and to the person who found my site yesterday by searching for the terms 'Kerry healy will get trounced', we can all hope you're right. In the meantime, perhaps this will be a better resource for you.