Running Unopposed

There's no competition in Massachusetts

By Cara Bayles

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You're being taken for granted. Massachusetts state Legislature elections have been among the least competitive in the nation for years. Only 51 of the 200 legislative races are contested this year.

Politicians who take re-election for granted are more likely to lose touch with their constituents and get cozy with special interest groups, according to Avi Green, executive director of MassVote. "If you know you're going to report to voters consistently, not in a rubber stamp election but in a real election, you're going to pay attention to them more," Green says. "Clearly there are some legislators doing such a good job that no one should run against them. But two-thirds? Give me break."

Massachusetts is characterized as a one-party state, where Democrats control 88 percent of the Legislature, but only 36.8 percent of registered Massachusetts voters are Democrats. Barney Keller, spokesman for the Massachusetts Republican Party, says it is possible for the GOP to win in the state, pointing to the state's recent 16 consecutive years of Republican governors. "I think that the old adage is true, that you love your congressman and hate Congress, and I think that's true locally. Despite a history of overspending, they'll go back to their communities and say, 'Look, I'm not part of the problem.'" Keller adds that this year, the GOP is focusing on quality, not quantity, and is still grooming young politicians for eventual state elections. "Candidates do better when people are used to voting for them. So, we're starting at local level, helping local Republicans run for school committee, selectman and City Council," he says. "Is this going to change overnight? No, but we expect to win seats this year, because the quality of our candidates is good, and problems of Beacon Hill are great."

The last time the GOP blasted the Legislature with candidates was 2004, when 131 Republicans ran, but the party net-totaled a loss of three seats.

"We're not just going to say, 'Here's Bob, he's a Republican, you should vote for him,' like the Democrats do. We want people who understand how local budgets work. Is a Republican resurgence going to happen tomorrow in this state? I don't think so, but has it happened before? Yes, in 1990. Back then, there was a budget crisis and an unpopular governor who was talking about raising taxes."

But David King, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, says past Republican leaders, from William Weld through Mitt Romney, contributed to the party's weakness. "There was a missed opportunity in Massachusetts for the Republican party. When we had Republican governors, they should have been sitting in the living rooms of future legislators, cultivating the next generation. Instead, they had their eyes on other offices, and were incredibly poor stewards of their own party," he says. "The Republican party has fielded weak candidates, and that ends up being a spiraling problem for them. As they continue to lose, it makes it harder to win."

Georgia Hollister Isman, of Mass Alliance, a coalition of organizations that endorse progressive candidates, points out that Democratic policies are just more popular in Massachusetts. "They're more inline with the value of voters, from more conservative, blue-collar Democrats to more progressive folks," she says. "The lack of Republicans in the State House represents a lack of Republicans in Massachusetts."

Still, the majority of registered Massachusetts voters are not Democrats. As of January 2008, 50.3 percent were unenrolled in a party, and only 36.8 percent were enrolled as Democrats, while 12.1 percent were Republicans. Third parties couldn't muster 1 percent combined.

So why don't third-party candidates that lean farther left than Democrats do better in Massachusetts? Eli Beckerman, communications director for the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts, says there's a combination of internal and external forces at play. "The playing field is completely leveled against us, which magnifies internal squabbles," he says. "We haven't sat down and developed the party's strategy for expanding over the next four years. We don't have an excess of people stepping forward to run. Often if someone steps forward, we'll support them, but not a party-led strategy."

Their strategy sounds a lot like the Republicans' plan of focusing on municipal contests. "One of the problems we've had is people don't really see us as a credible voice in terms of what we'd add to policy debates," he says. "The conundrum is you have these opportunities to run at the state level, and you get the most attention for those races. It's an opportunity to basically spread our message, try to capture people's imaginations; it's also where we're least likely to get elected. Municipally, we're more likely to get elected. A lot of town board positions have so many open spots, you just have to step forward. But that doesn't help us register in people's minds across the state."

Despite the Democrats' monopoly in Massachusetts, we still understand politics in a two-party framework, according to King. "Third parties in the US, and certainly in Massachusetts, exist to bring issues to the table," he says. "That won't change in Massachusetts with the Green Party or Libertarian Party. These things are driven by national party identifications. Voters tend to think in those buckets."

But blame for uncontested elections can't be limited to the state's one-party system. In the primaries, 12 seats had no Democratic candidates, and only 36 incumbents (of 191) faced challengers. In fact, Sonia Chang-Díaz's triumph over Dianne Wilkerson in the 2nd Suffolk District primary was the first time a Senate incumbent has been unseated in 14 years.

There's no scientific accounting for why Democrats don't challenge other Democrats, though the theories are abundant: the cost of campaigning in Massachusetts, the perceived power of the Legislature, the denigration of public service, the difficulty of running, the way districts are carved out and political culture. Green says legislators hold on to their seats as tightly as they can. "Politics in Massachusetts is very professionalized. It's their career, and legislators want to protect it, they see it as part of who they are. It's hard to run a race against someone like that as opposed to a part-time legislature."

Most incumbents have a significant "war chest" of campaign cash, and on average, winning campaigns spend twice as much as losing ones. The average war-chest spending in 2002 for winning campaigns was $40,000 for the House and $112,000 for the Senate.

In 1998, Massachusetts passed (by popular ballot) a Clean Elections law, offering candidates anywhere from $6,000 to $1.2 million in public campaign money (depending on which office is being sought and whether it's the primary or general election) if they limited their own fundraising efforts. But the Legislature didn't adequately finance the law until it was taken to court in 2002. The Supreme Judicial Court ordered action, and seized and sold state cars, contributing $176,000 toward the measure. Public finance advocates also tried to sell politicians' office furniture to raise funds; they were so smitten by former House Speaker Tom Finneran's loveseat, he took them to court ... the judge termed the episode "an unseemly media circus."

In the 2002 election cycle, the Legislature distributed $4 million to 12 candidates. The next year, it repealed the law with an amendment to the state budget. Lawmakers claimed the fiscal crunch and the law's unpopularity triggered the repeal, but Beckerman claims legislators were simply pulling for job security. "Legislators have to run for office every two years, and it's a huge inconvenience for them. One year they can do their work, the other year they're campaigning. So they'll flock to anything that makes their job more secure," Beckerman says. "When money isn't influencing elections, the amount of fraud and corruption goes down dramatically ... I'm sure some people felt that it would fund 'fringe political groups,' but the bottom-line criteria was you had to demonstrate a certain amount of credibility and broad support. You had to collect a certain number of $5-$100 donations to qualify for Clean Elections money, so it wouldn't fund the fringe candidate who had no support."

Beckerman adds that in 2002, the one year that Clean Elections was adequately funded, two Green Party candidates came close to winning. Michael Aleo, a Green-Rainbow candidate, won 32 percent of the vote in the First Hampshire District, losing to incumbent Peter Kocot, who won 61 percent, which isn't bad, considering Democrats usually at least quadruple the Greens' voting numbers. Paul Lachelier, a Green Party candidate in Cambridge, did even better, gaining 34 percent to Tim Toomey's win with 58 percent.

Districting also affects competition. Legislative districts are reshaped every 10 years to accord with modified census findings. While "gerrymandering" (the process of strategic redistricting to give incumbents advantages), is hardly unique to Massachusetts, the term is entrenched in our history; it's named for former Gov. Eldridge Gerry, who signed off on snake-shaped district lines in 1812. Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause, a nonpartisan elections-accountability nonprofit, calls gerrymandering the "incumbent protection plan."

"Frankly, every district has some story attached," she says. "And because redistricting can only be done every 10 years, one gerrymander done 10 years ago will be the starting point for redistricting 10 years later."

The last redistricting cycle in 2001 led to a federal court case over Boston's district lines. Activist groups, including Common Cause and Black Political Task Force, argued the map violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because minorities were now the majority of Boston's population, yet the map decreased the number of districts dominated by people of color. In 2004, a federal court found that "this course of conduct sacrificed racial fairness to the voters on the altar of incumbency protection," and ordered that new lines be drawn in Boston.

"But that only affected Boston districts. There are 160 districts across the state," Wilmot points out, suggesting the impact of the gerrymander is still felt elsewhere. Common Cause has pushed for an independent committee to draw up district lines, but it would have to pass in the Legislature. "Just to be clear, this would create a 10- to 20-percent increase in competition at the most. The first time it was done? It would be huge, in the 50-percent range. But there's also a lot of contention about what a district is, what a community is. Is it the cultural identity, the municipal lines? ... There is perception of Beacon Hill that it is 'our districts,' not the voters' districts. There's a very unfortunate, but human, element of protecting one's livelihood."

Green insists that running for local office, even if you lose, has an effect. In 2004, he ran against state Rep. Tim Toomey, D-Cambridge. "I'm sort of biased to question," he admits. "What people don't recognize is, they can lose and still do something good for their community. I did not win, but the incumbent I ran against, his vote moved in a direction I'm happy with."

Isman agrees, pointing out that because Democrats rule Massachusetts, the definition of a Democrat stretches a little further here than it does in other states. For example, while the Legislature is 88-percent Democrat, it's only 57-percent pro-choice (and we've only had that pro-choice majority for four years). "There are real ideological lines in Massachusetts, they just don't break along party lines, they break within the Democratic Party. That's surprising to some people. Democrats come in all shapes and sizes," Isman says. "Our consistent experience has been when progressive candidates run against conservative incumbents. Even if they lose, they will often make the incumbent change their voting record to be more progressive."

Wilmot adds that competition is necessary in order for elections to work as they were designed. "Our democratic system is founded on the ability to periodically and thoroughly vet a candidate. Many lawmakers start to lose touch with what it means to run and what their district is really thinking and feeling," she says. "Some lawmakers have told me they just don't care what people think any more. We can't just have an isolated political class making decisions for everyone else."