Massachusetts Conservatives: "Massachusetts liberal" is one of the most enduring labels in American politics. It's also one of the least accurate.By Noel C. Paul
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=paul072004The myth of Massachusetts as the defiant home of left-wing orthodoxy was probably born on November 7, 1972. That day, Massachusetts was the lone state to vote for George McGovern. The stereotype has been reinforced ever since by the predominance of the Democratic Party in local politics: Democrats make up the state's entire delegation of congressmen and senators; among voters, Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one; Republicans hold just 29 of 200 seats in the state's House and Senate combined; and a Republican has not served as mayor of Boston since 1937. All of which explains why Massachusetts is largely viewed by the rest of America as a sort of Marxist redoubt with great seafood.
But the problem with this line of reasoning is that
Democrats are not the same thing as liberals. Indeed, a close look at the Democratic-dominated legislature suggests that
the state's Democratic Party may be the most conservative in the Northeast. The legislature cut taxes 45 times during the past decade, leading to about $4 billion in savings for state residents. In 1999 a majority of Democrats in the legislature blocked an effort to index the minimum wage to inflation.
The legislation's major opponent was Democratic House Speaker Thomas Finneran, a representative from one of Boston's poorest neighborhoods and a member of the Cato Institute. Massachusetts Democrats "have a fiscally conservative, supply-side mentality," says Harris Grubman, director of the state chapter of Neighbor to Neighbor, one of three major progressive political groups here attempting to make the party more liberal.
And the Democrats' centrism is not limited to fiscal issues. In 1994, the state passed a welfare reform bill Grubman calls "draconian." It gave those enrolled in the state program only two years to find a job, compared to the five years granted by the Republican-controlled Congress. In 1998 Democrats blocked funding for a fair elections bill; they also quashed legislation requiring a reduction in mercury emissions, making Massachusetts the only state in New England not to have passed such a law. The reason: lobbying by business interests, which wield considerable influence in the state legislature.
Taken as a group, the legislature's Democrats are against abortion, but support legalized casino gambling and high-stakes testing as a requirement for graduation from public schools. They recently defeated a bill that would have expanded health care for children. Most observers agree that in a legislature of 200, there are only 30 true progressives.
"If you walk into that body and listen to debate, some of it sounds like it came from South Carolina or Louisiana," says Democratic consultant Michael Goldman.
A good illustration of this took place earlier this year, when the legislature passed a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. The liberal wing of the party had sought to defeat the measure, but was outnumbered by moderate Democrats. Even this compromise, however, came as a disappointment to many because it endorsed civil unions. Finneran had earlier proposed a similar ban with no provision for civil unions. He fell two votes short.
In a legislature that is about 85 percent Democratic, that nearly 50 percent wanted a gay marriage ban and no civil unions says something about just how conservative many Massachusetts Democrats are.
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I just posted this in GD and I noted that my guess is that b/c the Democratic Party dominates so strongly, most aspiring politicians probably join the party in order to have a realistic shot at office. The fact is, the people of Massachusetts aren't significantly more liberal as a whole than the average American. They just tend to sometimes be more influenced by the academic Boston/Cambridge/Harvard liberals. Certainly it's overall a more liberal state, but it's not Vermont or even California. There are many socially-conservative, working-class Catholics. Plus, the GOP runs as moderate-to-liberal. Even Romney had a platform that would make the National GOP go wild.
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