December 31, 2008
The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are barely three years away, so for your year-end enjoyment I am going to give you my rankings of the Top 25 Most Likely 2012 Republican Presidential Nominees.
Mind you, there are big question marks clouding the crystal ball. Most importantly, we simply don't know how good or bad the country and the Obama Presidency will look in a couple of years.
If the status quo is looking peachy keen, then you can expect some of the Bobby Jindals and Charlie Crists to wait for '16. Also, in that scenario the Republican contest would likely be a lower-participation affair, boding well for solid conservatives, and boding ill for moderates who need to count on independents and moderate Republicans voting in the GOP primaries (as John McCain did).
There are plenty of other unknowns, but that's never stopped me before. So, here are the candidates I believe are most likely to be the GOP nominee for President in 2012, ranked in order of likelihood. With very brief comments. Keep your eye out for them in New Hampshire, any day now.
1) Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina. The sane conservative choice.
2) Mike Pence, US Representative from Indiana. The insane conservative choice.
3) Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota. No strikes against him. Slogan: "If McCain had picked me, who knows?"
4) Rick Perry, Governor of Texas. If he thinks he can win re-election in 2010, he'll do it and then run for President. If he thinks Hutchison will beat him (see #9 below), he won't run for re-election, and then run for President.
5) Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts. He has to be on the list because it's possible that nobody else with access to serious funding will run. In the meantime, will he run for governor or senator of one of his various home states (which now includes California)?
6) Jim DeMint, US Senator from South Carolina. Sure acts like he wants it more than anybody else.
7) John Thune, US Senator from South Dakota. It's a shame that Daschle isn't going for the rematch in 2010. That would be a great race.
8) Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana. Says he's not going to run in 2012. They're so cute the first time they say that!
9) Kay Bailey Hutchison. Assuming she becomes governor of Texas (see #4 above) she'd be in great position for it. Slogan: "A Republican woman who knows stuff."
10) Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana. A rarity: a Republican who has recently won an election.
11) Bill Frist, former Senator from Tennessee. Consider yourself warned: the doctor is planning a comeback.
12) Jon Huntsman Jr., Governor of Utah. Mormon, but less creepy than Mitt. Would be higher on this list, but I assume that Romney will torpedo him as revenge for endorsing McCain.
13) Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House from Georgia. Running for President is a great way to meet chicks.
14) Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi. A real rarity: a competent Republican.
15) Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska. Would be lower on this list, but how do I know it isn't God's will?
16) Charlie Crist, Governor of Florida. He got married to a woman earlier this month, which is supposed to put the gay rumors behind him. Good luck with that.
17) Eric Cantor, US Representative from Virginia. He's Mr. Ambition. And conservative Christians don't think Jews are as weird as Mormons.
18) Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas. Have you noticed that he's been putting the weight back on? Remember when everyone was watching Al Gore's waistline for signs that he was getting in shape to run last year?
19) John Ensign, US Senator from Nevada. As chair of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, he cleverly cleared away much of the field of prominent Republicans.
20) Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security. Great candidate, but his pro-choice position makes him unfeasible -- unless he can concoct a better magical sanctity-of-life conversion story than Romney did. Possible campaign slogan: "I left Homeland Security WAAAYY before Katrina!"
21) Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida. Perhaps the next US Senator from Florida. Still, 2012 might be too soon for rehabbing the family name.
22) Gen. David Petraeus, CENTCOM Commander. An awful lot of conservatives seem to think this is a serious possibility, and I guess it makes at least as much sense as Wesley Clark did.
23) Lindsay Graham, Senator from South Carolina. Third most likely South Carolinian.
24) Don Carcieri, Governor of Rhode Island. Sure, nobody knows him. That's his upside.
25) Unknown business tycoon. I'm sorry to wimp out like that, but I think there's a legitimate chance that the nominee will be some extremely successful but relatively little-known executive -- a center-conservative version of Virginia's Mark Warner, or a Christian version of Michael Bloomberg -- who has never run for public office before. And I have no idea who it might be.
December 30, 2008
--Felix G. Arroyo is running for at-large city council in the 1st person plural.
--If you're having trouble getting ahold of the chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, it's because he has recently discovered Facebook, and is making friends by the dozens.
--While you're looking him up, feel free to friend me!
--Jacobs scoops that Scotland Willis is running for city council, but Universal Hub had already spotted it.
--Andrew Kenneally is acting serious about running for at-large city council.
--This is going to be a fun game of "guess the Boston-linked entertainer" for a couple of days!
December 26, 2008
In a contribution-soliciting email from Sam Yoon to supporters this afternoon, the city councilor taps directly into the notion that he might run for mayor in '09. This is a good ploy whether you're running or not, but if you get this direct and then don't run, donors might feel duped. Here's the pitch:
A lot has been written about next year’s mayor’s race. You may have even read some of the stories about who’s in and who’s out, and yes, my name is being mentioned. See the most recent Boston Globe article from Wednesday.
While I’m still considering all my options, the insiders say it takes a hundred thousand dollars going into next year to be competitive.
It looks like we may fall just short of our year-end goal.
Your help now will make the difference. 
That’s why I’m asking you to please make a contribution of $100, $50, and $25 - anything you can afford.
Your small donation will have a big impact.
You will be sending a message that we’re ready for new leadership with vision to move Boston forward.
Thank you, and may 2009 be a healthy, happy and prosperous new year for everyone.
December 23, 2008
Last year, Tom Menino raised $1,171,133 in campaign contributions -- a fairly impressive sum when you remember that the maximum individual donation in a calendar year is $500.
He's a little behing that this year. Menino's report for mid-December puts him at $828,647 for the year through 12/15, according to my math. He had already hit the million-dollar mark by that point in 2007; he then added another $146k in the final two weeks of Happy Holiday fun.
This year, he has already deposited just over $80,000 since the 15th -- but that still leaves him almost a hundred grand shy of a million for the year, and more than $250k shy of his '07 total.
Still pretty impressive -- but not knock-'em-out, scare-'em-from-running impressive.
The big question is whether a million represents just about all the dough he can squeeze out in a calendar year, or if there's another level he can take it to next year, with the election on the line. In 2005, his last election year, he raised $1.3 million, which was a very big bump up from his previous levels -- but can he go up yet another notch?
The answer is probably yes, especially if he calls in some fundraising help from folks he's helped out in the past (paging Secretary and Mr. Clinton!). Still, it's tough to boost the number when the max is so low -- you have to draw in new, untapped donors somewhere.
Because he maintains a small year-round operation (and because fundraisers cost money to host), Menino spends about $430,000 a year, so he hasn't exactly been stockpiling a massive war chest. He has roughly $1.5 million or so on hand.
If he boosts his fundraising by 50% next year, that gives him a total of about $3 million to spend for the year. That's almost double the $1.7m he spent defending his title in '05 -- but that was against weak competition. Maura Hennigan spent less than $700,000 that year, much of it her own. Michael Flaherty already has about $450,000 on hand, and from what I'm told he believes he can raise at least another million if he runs. And we have no way to guess what Sam Yoon can raise, from local-area progressives and Asian-Americans nationally, if he runs -- but I'd put his over/under well above Hennigan's figure.
Of course, the economic climate might not be favorable for fundraising next year, for anyone.
December 22, 2008
Congressional Quarterly's latest roll-call vote analysis confirms yet again what we already know -- that Maine's Republican Senators are out of step with their party.
In fact, they are the most out of step, and are the only two to vote against their party more than they vote with it. Olympia Snowe voted with the majority of Republican senators just 39% of the time, and Susan Collins just 46%.
I realize that it would be impolite of Collins to change parties so soon after letting the GOP spend a bunch of money helping her get re-elected. But Snowe could certainly jump. Jump, Olympia, Jump!
Snowe and Collins are likely to only grow further estranged from the Senate's Republican caucus. Only 12 other Republicans voted with the party less than 85% of the time. Of those 12, three have just retired (Warner, Hagel, Domenici), three have just been voted out (Smith, Dole, Stevens), another might be on the way out (Coleman), and one has announced he's retiring in 2010 (Martinez). Two more (Specter, Voinovich) face very difficult re-elections in 2010.
December 22, 2008
I agree with Dan that David Gregory's debut as Meet the Press host was inauspicious. Gregory did seem to go easy on Condi Rice. He also continued the Russert prediliction -- in both the interview and the roundtable -- of spending an awful lot of time reading quotes and showing clips in the process of getting around to asking a question.
More broadly -- and what I think Dan might have been picking up on -- is that Gregory seems like he will continue and perhaps accelerate what I think of as "conventional wisdom interviewing." It's not just a matter of horse-race politics trumping substance. It's that everything -- what topics to discuss, what questions to ask, how those questions get phrased -- always seems predicated on assumptions and opinions formed by the same circle of people.
That problem permeates NBC and MSNBC, and figures to only increase with the further elevation of Chuck Todd. Todd is a terrific political analyst. But he should be kept in that box -- he's a guy to interview about politics, not a guy to be leading the overall coverage.
(Side note: why do all of NBC's top on-air political people -- David Gregory, Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell -- have two first names? And would Chris Matthews get to be on the big network if he dropped the "s" to fit in?)
Todd was reportedly a finalist for the MtP job, which seems to me would have been a disaster: can you picture him asking serious, urgent policy questions of a major cabinet secretary, or foreign head of state? Now he will be the White House correspondent and MtP contributing editor. I suspect that and the Gregory choice are leading indicators of the direction of NBC's political coverage.
December 22, 2008
Jim Ogonowski's bid for US Senate ended in embarrassment when he failed to get enough signatures to qualify for the Republican primary ballot. Today comes news that he's facing an FEC complaint and lawsuit over unpaid bills.
Roll Call reports that Jamestown Associates, a Republican consulting firm in DC, claims that Ogo owes them roughly $27,000 for an ad buy order back in May. (This is presumably the ad released in May featuring ordinary Massachusetts diners grousing about John Kerry.) Not only has the bill never been paid, Jamestown also claims that the campaign didn't include the debt in its filings with the Federal Election Commission. (For those without a Roll Call subscription, you can read about it here.)
December 20, 2008
You probably know that Eric Holdren of Harvard's Kennedy School has been picked to be Barack Obama's top science advisor. Today Obama named a few more members of his "science and technology team," and guess what smarty-pants campus they all have some connection to?
Jane Lubchenco, nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, got her PhD in marine ecology from Harvard. Eric Lander, who will co-chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), is founding director of the Broad Institute and teaches systems biology at Harvard (and has long taught at MIT as well). Harold Varmus, another PCAST co-chair, got his masters degree in English from Harvard (after graduating from Amherst College).
On another note, we have another appointee who went to a gals-only college in Massachusetts: SBA administrator-designate Karen Gordon Mills, Radcliffe '75.
December 19, 2008
It is Friday afternoon heading into Christmas week, as the first flakes of a massive snowstorm start falling, so for all you Massachusetts pols out there: this is the perfect time to release controversial news that you don't want anyone to pay any attention to.
Oh, hey -- look what just showed up in my email inbox:
Moving forward in his efforts to reform the state’s transportation system, Governor Deval Patrick today announced the appointment of James A. Aloisi, Jr. as Secretary of the Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works (EOT).
To be honest, I don't have the big problem with Aloisi that others seem to -- and I've been right up there among the deriders of the Big Dig bureaucracy. (And, as a habitual reader of campaign finance reports, I am also certainly accustomed to seeing his name, alphabetically prominent, on many, many of those reports.)
But something tells me that in this particular case, neither snow nor rain nor sleet nor Christmas will prevent the news of the Aloisi appointment from making the rounds.
December 18, 2008
Some ten months after Deval Patrick took office as Massachusetts Governor -- in large part due to the hard work of grassroots progressives -- I wrote an article called The Left, Left Out?, reporting on how those very progressives felt like they were losing steam, and influence, as a movement.
Will something similar happen on a national scale with Barack Obama? My Portland colleagues Jeff and Deirdre do not intend to sit around quietly and then engage in woeful retrospection. No, they intend to stay right on top of the new President, and watch him closely for evidence of caution, compromise, and centrism.
They have launched a blog called Take Back Barack, and want their fellow liberals to join them in keeping a solid, leftward tug on the President-elect.
Go check it out. And if you are so inclined, jump in and join them. It's never too early to worry about being left out.
December 18, 2008
AG Martha Coakley has scheduled a 2:30 press conference to announce "the indictment of Richard Vitale on lobbying and campaign finance violations in
connection with work on behalf of ticket brokers’ organization."
This can't be good news for Speaker Sal, at least in the short term. In the longer term, if he's got truly clean hands then this could be the best path to a full airing of the facts.
BTW, we may be seeing the start of the path that always seems to prevent our AGs from climbing to higher office: creating enemies through investigations that embarass powerful people.
December 17, 2008
In the new issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I have a feature story looking at some of the many, many reasons that George W. Bush has been, and continues to be, bad for the environment. I call it "20 Reasons The Earth Will Be Glad To See Bush Go," and I invite you to check it out.
I also encourage you to read the accompanying article by my colleague Mike Milliard, in which he analyzes the key environmental appointments that President-elect Obama has announced this week -- what Milliard calls Obama's Green Dream Team.
December 17, 2008
I've generally give short shrift thus far to the 2009 at-large city council campaign of Douglas Bennett, a young, enthusiastic Republican who works at the Suffolk County Criminal Clerk's office. Unfortunately, that will continue tonight, as I am unable to get to his Campaign Christmas Bash in Southie.
So, I want to encourage you all to go to the event for yourselves. He's worked hard enough to have earned a listen -- he claims to have knocked on 30,000 doors already, which is a heckuvalot more than most candidates will do by election day to woo your vote.
In any case, here's the info for tonight, from a release:
Wednesday December 17th from 6-9P at SLAINTE (gaelic for cheers) located at 28 West Broadway in South Boston, MA. The Bennett Campaign expects a crowd of 100 to attend the event.
His web site is www.BennettforBoston.com.
December 17, 2008
I whacked Sam Yoon around in last week's issue of the Phoenix -- not that I'm apologizing mind you -- so I'm glad to have a reason to speak well of the councilor and potential possible might-be mayoral candidate.
It also helps that in doing so I get to make fun of state lawmakers who are probably all dead by now.
Anyway, to the tale: You may have noticed that an awful lot of pols around town are putting themselves on record in favor of ethics reform these days -- and then skulking back inside their offices hoping that their newfound proactive public stance against corruption will help them, in case their names should turn up in any depositions or documents today.
Instead of just yapping about it, Yoon took some leadership and proposed a couple of fairly simple, common-sense reforms to help let in a little of that sunlight disinfectant we always hear about. He introduced them last week, held hearings yesterday, and the council put them to a vote today.
The first one passed unanimously, Yoon's office reports. That one will require all city commissions and boards to post information on the city website -- information such as the members' names, for example, and when they have meetings, and what they do in those meetings. You know, answers to those arcane questions that certain wild-eyed 'process liberals' are always pestering city clerks with, like: "Who is doing what in our city government?"
Yoon's staff has identified at least 34 commissions and boards that will have to post this info, dealing with all manner of important matters including health, schools, zoning, environment, libraries, housing, and women.
This new requirement will be a godsend for lazy journalists like myself, who will be able to easily find things out about all these groups and their activities, without all the frustrating and time-consuming prying that is usually required. But more importantly, it will be good for basic democracy -- and just maybe, maybe, maybe, it will make some people with authority think twice before doing something they shouldn't do. Anonymity and secrecy are the devil's handmaidens, you know. Or maybe I just made that up; I'm just a lazy journalist after all.
But Yoon also had a second, equally radical proposal, which was that the City Council should produce minutes of its own meetings -- get this -- written in such a way that the public citizenry can understand what happened in City Council meetings.
Anyone who has ever tried to find out what happened at a City Council meeting will understand what a dramatic departure this would be from the status quo.
What most of us did not know, until today, was that publishing a written account of City Council meetings is such obvious common-sense good government that the Massachusetts state government made sure to specifically prohibit it.
That's right, there's a state law, dating from 1947, that prevents the city from publishing City Council debates. I can only assume that the legislature feared that once published, the information might fall into the hands of the Soviets.
So, the council had to table that second vote -- which I suppose I would never have known about, thanks to those 1947 lawmakers (well, that and my own lazy avoidance of City Council meetings), except that Yoon's office sent out a press release.
Yoon will try to tackle this by seeking to change the law through a home-rule petition -- which, perhaps, helps makes him look like Boston's good-government champion. Or, a commie sympathizer. You be the judge.
December 17, 2008
I've been away on a little vacation to Mexico, where the pols had me yearning for some real action back home to write about. (There's some Solons Gone Wild to keep Herald scribes busy!)
Of course, back home our pols are mostly keeping prosecutors busy. Subpoenas, get your subpoenas here! The Globe reports that the COGNOS investigation has now reached the grand jury stage, so we can officially add that to the pile. And, as if we're in some danger of having our legislature run too smoothly, we've had it ground to a halt over a dispute about whether or not to allow some real job-creating development to take place. (No, no, it's not casinos this time.)
Meanwhile, the state government's revenues are rapidly heading toward a cliff, heralding disaster for towns all across the Commonwealth; and from what I hear our transportation infrastructure is approaching DEFCON 5. I've been out of town, but if I've got my facts straight: an angry East Boston commuter through a shoe full of pennies at transportation secretary Bernard Cohen, whose job is now being sold by the governor to the highest bidder -- however, since interest has been outlawed by the federal reserve, and holdings in the Ponzi Investment Fund have vanished overnight, the only valid forms of payment accepted as holding value anymore are liquor licenses and famous last names.
So far, though, no punches thrown. Maybe the pols have been too distracted, like Howie Carr, by the Herald's latest set of state salary figures. Hacks! Hacks everywhere!
Well I'm back now, rested and ready. So c'mon Boston, get your fight on!
