TODAY IS Labor Day, a demarcation between seasons, the old one hot and lazy, the new intensely political.
For many candidates, particularly those of Democratic stripes, the morning will be spent breakfasting with union leaders. If the bowing and scraping during the meal seems sincere enough, those candidates may walk away with an endorsement, a prize promised to bring them money, workers, and votes. The first two will certainly be delivered; the last, perhaps not.
Union members, about 17 percent of the employed in Massachusetts, are often disinclined to follow their bosses’ lead, a phenomenon to which Martha Coakley can attest. This year, indeed, some canny politicians may avoid the labor breakfasts altogether, or at least downplay whatever support they might be receiving. The reason is Scott Brown. The winner of last January’s slugfest is Exhibit A for the argument that something is different, that the old rules of the Massachusetts political game are, if not abandoned, at least in flux. When reliably Democratic cities such as Quincy or Lowell — not left-wing communities, but certainly blue-collar communities — vote Republican, shivers run down some spines. Winning a Democratic primary, it is now feared, no longer is tantamount to winning the whole thing.
One fundamental that hasn’t changed, however, is our obsession with politics. It’s an obsession with defined parameters. From June through August, politics takes a backseat to vacations and another local mania, the Red Sox. Sure, there are plenty of events over the summer where eager pols will show their faces, shaking hands and feigning interest in the lives of potential voters. Yet the attention isn’t reciprocated. The September and November elections still seem a long way off and the needed critical mass of media and water-cooler conversation has yet to develop. That makes summers frustrating times for those running for public office. That all changes today. With the post-season prospects for the Red Sox seemingly doomed and the football season just gearing up, politics now takes center stage. Absent some natural or man-made disaster, it’s what we’ll be talking about.
Inevitably that talk will be about what the whole thing means. One supposed theme of this year’s election season is “voter revolt in the Bay State.’’ Voter anger — and the seemingly spontaneous rise of the Tea Party movement — is the national zeitgeist, of course, but it has particular resonance here. Brown’s win marked the first major victory of the Tea Party movement, one that gave rise to an astonished hope (or dread, depending on your perspective) that if it can happen in Massachusetts then it can happen anywhere.
So how does that theme play out? Republican Charlie Baker certainly could beat Deval Patrick to become governor, but that hardly marks a major change in Bay State politics. For decades, the top job in state government has been the one position voters have felt free to hand to the GOP. And in any event, Baker, an establishment stalwart, is hardly Tea Party material, notwithstanding his recent clumsy efforts to glom on to the Scott Brown sheen (of course, as Sarah Palin has made clear, Brown too is not Tea Party material). Moreover, the other races around the state still look to be dominated by Democrats, in part because incumbents (mostly Democrats, of course) are hard to beat but also because of the surprising lack of strong GOP candidates. (Martha Coakley, for instance, is literally unchallenged for attorney general, a situation a close adviser told me was almost as shocking as her Senate loss.)
But the revolt theme may play out in a different arena: the three statewide ballot questions. One would reverse the newly imposed sales tax on liquor. A second would eliminate section 40b of the state’s housing law — the one that compels communities to allow housing in their midst that meets state standards for affordability. The third would cut the sales tax from 6.25 percent down to 3.0 percent. Most members of the state’s political establishment oppose all three, making them, in a sense, perfect indicia of the voters’ mood and their appetite for rebellion. If those measures pass, then perhaps politics really is different in Massachusetts. Glenn Beck undoubtedly will look on with interest.
Originally published September 6, 2010, in The Boston Globe, op-ed page.