The Boston Globe’s Adrian Walker recently made a good case that Governor Charlie Baker should leave the Republican Party. My colleague Professor Ubertaccio responded with some solid reasons for the governor to stay home. They’re both right. Charlie Baker is trapped. His escape hatch may be a new party, but what kind of party?
Walker’s case was that the national Republican Party, now abetted by a Trump worshiping Massachusetts GOP, has become an immoral “literal lunatic fringe.” Trump is racist, sexist, a serial liar, ignorant, lazy, incompetent, and corrupt. Baker is thoroughly decent, hardworking, good at his job, and honest. Still as Professor Ubertaccio argues of Baker running as an Independent for a third term: “That will take courage, but it’s the courage to lose because that is the likely result of Charlie Baker, Independent, running in 2022.”
But now according to Ed Lyons’s Is Baker Starting a New State Political Party? at Commonwealth Magazine, the governor is preparing a different path. There are plenty of questions involved here but one is will the new party be a Traditional Conservative Party, or a Charlie Party?
Let’s get a few things out of the way first. While Ed Lyons sees the Massachusetts Majority Independent Political Action Committee as a political party, it isn’t. Anyone interested in a review of what parties are can check out John C. Green, Daniel J. Coffey, and David B. Cohen, The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary American Parties. But just because Massachusetts Majority isn’t a party doesn’t mean it isn’t a way to get Baker out of his trap.
Back in 2014, Baker raised about $6 million for his campaign. In 2018 he took in about $4.4 million. But in 2014 the Commonwealth Future Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee raised $13.5 million to spend on Baker, $10.75 of that from the Republican Governor’s Association. In 2018 the RGA kicked in all but $20,000 of $6.625 million raised by the Commonwealth Future IEPAC. In modern campaigns SuperPACs routinely outspend candidate committees and as with the RGA, their money is not easy to trace to the ultimate donors.
Before leaving the GOP Baker may think back to 2010 when the RGA got involved in spending against an Independent candidate for Massachusetts governor. That Independent was one time Democratic Treasurer Tim Cahill and the RGA was spending to get him out of the race. At one point Cahill was ahead of Baker in a three way contest with incumbent Democratic Governor Deval Patrick. Until the RGA got through with Cahill, that is.
The governor’s team has been successful at devising fund raising programs that hide or obscure donors, often in concert with the Republican State Committee and national party vehicles. The Massachusetts Victory Committee was an innovative construction that raked in money, as described in Frank Phillips’s Fundraising Loophole Fills. Mass. GOP’s Coffers. (Under current Mass GOP management, Ed Lyons notes, the Victory fund is dead). When Baker first gained control of the Republican State Committee he did so with dark money as Phillips reported in Baker Taps Wealthy Donors in Bid to Shape Mass. GOP. The governor’s top ballot priority of 2016, the charter schools initiative, relied on about $20 million in dark money. His other top priority, opposition to legalization of marijuana did too. Strong Economy for Growth, a dark money operation that contributed to both causes, retained Baker’s chief fundraiser to raise money. Strong Economy was later forced to disclose its true donors by order of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. (I summarize a lot of this in Charlie Baker: Governor of Dark and Grey Money).
There are also plenty of people who would like to thank Governor Baker:
Patients for Affordable Drugs Action IEPAC is actually Texas billionaire John Arnold. Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions is a front for energy interests.
The money is there. The question is going to be funneling it through the Massachusetts Majority SuperPAC in an environment in which big money donors will have to go on record. Since OCPF’s 2017 Disposition Agreement requiring Families for Excellent Schools to disclose the wealthy individuals who were funding the operation, donors have been on notice that dark money avenues will be carefully scrutinized. It is not well known by the public but the big money donors know that OCPF came very close to referring the Families for Excellent Schools case to the Attorney General.
Thus we can go to OCPF.us and find the true source donors behind Massachusetts Majority, most prominently ($50,000 each) from the Wayfair guys. Right now the new party is only the SuperPAC and it looks like the CEO Party.
You have to start somewhere though and as Ed Lyons says, a new party headed by Charlie Baker would have a lot going for it. The fund raising base could be broadened, and the governor is extremely popular. A new party is no easy thing to start but even as an independent Baker would be formidable in 2022.
So to return to what kind of party might emerge, would Massachusetts Majority really be the Charlie Baker party? What happens when Baker leaves? Is anyone going to commit to build this thing for a decade? (That’s when we can judge it, not before). Is Baker style conservatism really enough to command broad public support, will politicians run under the party banner, will activists throng to political moderation, will the party earn ballot position, will it be durable?
Is this new party going to supplant the Massachusetts Republican Party? The party of Trump is one that, if justice is serves, should disappear from American politics. The Massachusetts Republican Party, by hitching its wagon to Trump, richly deserves to collapse and may well do so. One ominous sign is that as Matt Szafranski writes in Western Mass Politics & Insight, Republican state senator Donald Humason was expected “to waltz right into” the Westfield mayor’s office, but instead he barely cobbled together a victory. Now the GOP is scratching to find a candidate to run for the senate seat when Humason leaves to become mayor. Baker is departing after the state party’s new leadership made it the first order of business to exile the most popular governor in the nation, and crashed its own fundraising apparatus in the bargain. A party this dumb does not deserve saving.
The Republican Party after Trump isn’t going to right the ship; it’s more likely to turn to a Tom Cotton or Ted Cruz than to Charlie Baker. But if Baker could plant the germ of a true traditional conservative party based upon Burkean principles, then Massachusetts might just lead the nation forward once again. It’s going to take more than a SuperPAC though.