Yesterday my colleague Professor Duquette counseled Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker to forego attacks on the Democrats over corruption. Professor Duquette’s reasoning was that an attack on the leadership in the wake of the Probation Department verdict would incite legislative Democrats to deploy their mighty organizations against Baker; thus campaigning on Democratic corruption would backfire on Baker.
Professor Duquette is wrong. Here’s why.
My colleague cautions that:
Baker cannot go too far in condemning Democratic corruption on Beacon Hill because he cannot afford to provoke Democratic leaders into unleashing the full organizational potential of 160 Democratic state legislators, each of whom has a district level voter mobilization operation. Baker can only win if most Democratic state legislators lack powerful enough incentives to expend too much of their political, financial, and organizational resources on electing a fellow Democrat to the corner office this fall.
To be correct this formulation would need to encompass several steps. Legislative leaders would have to be so enraged at Baker’s attacks that they order their minions into full field battle. That could happen I suppose, though I wonder how much the leaders want to engage in a battle over corruption. Next, the legislators themselves would have to respond to the call. This may be more likely, dependent as they are on the speaker. Then the loyal field soldiers in each legislative district would need to be hailed from their tailgating and apple picking (but not from playoff baseball, alas) in response to their legislator’s prayer: “But Davey, I thought you didn’t have anyone running against you?” “I don’t, but the fair name of Bobby DeLeo has been calumniated and we must rise as one to defend it!” “Davey, f’chrissakes, next time that douchebag (name of hapless Republican candidate here) announces, call me. But right now I’m watching Thursday night football.”
The Democratic Party has become so advanced at organization that a good number of activists will likely be engaged against Baker in the fall anyway. Additional people the representatives could drag into the field would help but offer marginal additional utility. To give up the potential of the corruption issue for such a small risk would be a mistake by Baker.
I say potential because Professor Duquette is right, the value of the corruption issue is not clear cut. The election may be, in part, a test of how important Democratic corruption is to voters. It won’t be important to Democratic voters who will vote about 85-90% for the Democrat anyway, nor to Republican voters who will cast 90% of their ballots for Baker. It might matter to the genuine Independents, who are few, and perhaps some to the Independents who really lean to one party or the other. Those are the interstices in which Baker will likely frame his message.
When do issues matter in a gubernatorial election, what kinds of issues, and to whom do they matter? My research assistant the indispensable Stephen Norris found an article for me that addresses these topics: Jeff Cummins, “Issue Voting and Crime in Gubernatorial Elections,” 90 Social Science Quarterly (September 2009). The economy matters. Non-economic issues also matter. On crime, at least, local conditions matter (this may hold true for other issues too). Higher educated voters are more likely to respond to issues than are lower educated voters.
Also Prof. Cummins mentions ownership theory, the notion that each party owns a better reputation than the other on a range of issues. Such as Massachusetts Democrats not being identified with tireless intolerance of corruption, for instance.
But as the Boston Globe’s Michael Levenson recently wrote, Republicans have been defenders of political rectitude from Bill Weld accusing Senate President William Bulger of “abuse of power” in 1990 to Mitt Romney inveighing against a Democratic “Gang of Three” in 2002.
So why would Baker give up an issue that has worked over and over for Republican gubernatorial candidates and on which the legislature just hit the reset button in a big way?
