Call him Celebrated Charlie. Buoyant Baker. The Much-Loved Gov.
Massachusetts’ chief executive remains the most popular of all the nation’s governors, according to a new poll of more than 66,000 voters across the United States.
The Morning Consult survey, conducted from January through early May, found 72 percent of Massachusetts voters approve of how Republican Governor Charlie Baker is doing his job, while a stunningly small 16 percent disapprove. Twelve percent of those Bay Staters polled said they did not know or were undecided on Baker’s job performance.
Baker won a narrow victory over then-Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat, in 2014. But he’s managed to stay above the fray in a state that leans Democratic. His key issues have included tackling the state’s opioid overdose crisis and flexing his management muscles — working to reform two of the state’s most beleaguered bureaucracies, the Department of Children and Families and the MBTA.
The governor has also mostly steered clear of the presidential race after endorsing failed GOP candidate Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. Baker has said he won’t be voting for either of the major party’s presumptive nominees, HillaryClinton or Donald Trump.
But he’ll probably be casting a ballot for himself in 2½ years: Baker is poised to run for a second term in 2018.
The new poll, which was conducted online, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. Online polls are often seen as less accurate than traditional telephone surveys. But a recent Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll, conducted by telephone, found Baker with a 71 percent job approval rating.
Joshua Miller
Democrats pick delegates — without insurrection
For all the intra-camp turmoil that went on among Hillary Clinton’s supporters in Massachusetts leading up to Saturday’s Democratic State Committee votes to elect her convention delegates, the event itself was relatively tame.
About a dozen Clinton backers spoke up to sound their disapproval with the Clinton campaign’s delegate selection methods, but no formal insurrection materialized at a Newton American Legion post where the meeting was held, according to several attendees.
The Clinton campaign’s delegate slates, which stirred controversy because campaign officials told other supporters their candidacies would be struck down under party rules, sailed to election. Among Bernie Sanders’ supporters, there was more competition, which resulted in one senior Democrat, House Ways and Means Committee vice chairman Steve Kulik of Worthington, getting bounced from a delegate slot.
Kulik, who did not attend the vote because he was at his hometown’s town meeting, said he was “certainly disappointed’’ because his area of the western part of the state had turned out for Sanders in force.
The unusually spicy delegate selection process stemmed from the narrow margin of victory Clinton squeezed out over Sanders in the March 1 presidential primary, just over 17,000 votes. Under party rules, that meant a nearly even split in the delegation Massachusetts will send to the Philadelphia convention, divided between Clinton and Sanders supporters.
Clinton’s camp decided that it wanted to hand-pick its delegates, a move that some of her most seasoned loyalists saw as undemocratic.
But, in the end, the criticism amounted to little beyond shouts of protest during voting. Even so, said some Democrats, those who spoke up against the Clinton campaign’s decision did little to endear themselves to the party’s reigning dynastic clan.
“They can assure themselves they’re never going to get a Christmas card from a Clinton White House again,’’ one attendee said.
Jim O’Sullivan
Party chief endorses Clinton
State Democratic Party chairman Thomas McGee, a Lynn state senator, has endorsed presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.
McGee held off on backing the former secretary of state over Senator Bernie Sanders in deference to the party’s delegate selection process, which concluded Saturday.
In statement released Wednesday, McGee praised both Clinton and Sanders for “a substantive debate about the issues affecting working families across America including health care, income inequality, college affordability, and foreign policy.’’
But McGee, who stayed out of the 2008 primary, calls Clinton the candidate “best positioned to take on Donald Trump and, once elected, build on the progress we’ve made over the last eight years.’’
Nationally Clinton is far ahead of Sanders in the delegate count, and it’s nearly mathematically impossible for Sanders to win the nomination.
Jim O’Sullivan
Green Rainbow Party raises money for delegates
The Green-Rainbow Party — the state offshoot of the Green Party of the United States — is gathering this month for its annual confab. But this conference won’t be where delegates are elected to head to the national convention in Houston in August.
Those folks, 10 in total, have already been selected, but half of them need help getting to Texas, according to the state party’s website.
“The Green-Rainbow Party aspires to incorporate viewpoints from fiscally diverse backgrounds into selecting the Green candidate for US president,’’ the website says. “That means helping cash-strapped people get to Houston, Texas, to this year’s Green Party of the US’s Presidential Nominating Convention.’’
Two candidates have received the national party’s seal of approval — Jill Stein of Lexington and William Kreml, professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Carolina.
The goal is to raise $2,500 to send five Massachusetts delegates to Houston, and so far the state party has raised about $400.
The theme of this year’s state convention, which will be held in Worcester, is Green Rainbow Party Rising — Go Green in 2016, which according to the party’s website, “accentuates the need for us to continue rebuilding our party in the face of today’s reality of a broken political system in America.’’
There are a slew of workshops and speakers slotted for the May 21 event that will address everything from climate change to criminal justice.
Akilah Johnson
Capuano’s phone ‘spoofed’
WASHINGTON — Representative Michael Capuano’s office phone number has been co-opted by an unknown fraudulent source, resulting in what his office described as many lewd calls to people around the country.
Known as “spoofing,’’ the information transmitted to the call’s recipient can be changed to show a different number as the source — in this case, Capuano’s office line on Capitol Hill. Although the exact number of forged calls is unknown, one telecommunications carrier told Capuano’s office it had handled more than 20,000 spoofed calls from the number.
One individual reported receiving a call from a man who “tried to sell her drugs and made graphic sexual comments,’’ Capuano wrote in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission. “This is deeply disturbing.’’
Capuano’s spokeswoman, Alison Mills, said their office has heard numerous accounts of inappropriate phone calls from the office’s Washington, D.C., number.
“Many of the folks who received these calls are then contacting the D.C. office to report the matter to us,’’ Mills said. “Some people report speaking to a male caller; others simply saw the number on caller ID and thought someone was trying to reach them.’’
Mills said the office does not know the reason for the spoofing attack, which she said appears to be random. The incidents started in late April.
But the high volume of phone calls to the office has impeded communications, causing a busy signal or full voice mail, Capuano wrote in his FCC letter. As a result, the Massachusetts Democrat announced the incident in a Facebook post and e-mail message on Monday.
“We apologize to anyone who has had difficulty reaching our office,’’ he wrote. “We hoped that the calls would subside but since they have continued at a high volume, we wanted to let you know.’’
Capuano also said that he has reported the incident to the US Capitol Police because spoofing is classified as a federal crime under the Truth in Caller ID Act.
Alice Yin
