brendan halpin

Governor is the only office Massachusetts republicans have shown that they can win, though only if they run someone who is tall, handsome, and not a politician. Their current candidate for governor, Mike Minogue, is tall (I assume, as he’s a former CEO, and C-suite jobs are pretty inaccessible to short men) and not a politician, but he’s currently running over 20 points behind incumbent Democrat Maura Healey in the polls.

He’s going to get crushed in the election. This is a foregone conclusion. And he sunk 17 million of his own dollars into this vanity campaign. Which presumably isn’t real money to him, but think of what else he could have done with it!

So imagine my surprise when I got a mailer sort of supporting his campaign yesterday!

It’s…well, see for yourself.

(alt text: Maura Healey is a liberal. But Andrea James is a SUPER liberal. Some pictures of James supporters holding signs that say “Free Palestine” and “Free Child Care” and a list of James’ policy priorities, each with an X next to it: End all State Cooperation with ICE/Implement Rent Control and Tax the Rich/Provide free child care and health care/Mandate electric buildings and vehicles/Ban Israeli companies from Massachusetts/Stop construction of new state prisons.

(alt text: Stop sign with an arrow pointing at Andrea James. Below, “Stop the Massachusetts Mamdani. We can’t afford socialist Andrea James!”)

Now, why would Mike Minogue be advertising against Andrea James, who is polling at between 8 and 17%? She’s not a threat to him!

Well, first of all, this isn’t from the Minogue campaign—it’s from the Massachusetts First Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee, which is primarily funded, to the tune of a million bucks, by Robert Neuner, a Connecticut resident and CEO of a company that sells “recreational oxygen.” I am not making this up. (It’s also got funding from local sneaker fascists Jim Davis and Paul Fireman!).

And second of all, this isn’t really an anti-Andrea James flyer. Because even the rich idiots running this super PAC in support of a doomed vanity candidacy can use a voter registration list and know that nobody in my house is voting for Mike Minogue. They’re sending this flyer to registered Democrats not to warn us against Andrea James, but to point out that she better represents our priorities than Maura Healey does.

They have to know that we’re out here waiting in vain for the “Massachusetts Mamdani”, and that the bulleted list of priorities mostly reads like a wish list for Democrats. Free child care and health care? Horrors! She must be stopped!

So clearly the desperate play here is to try to divert enough Democratic voters from Healey to James to allow Minogue to win the election.

It’s not going to happen, but here’s what makes me sad about the whole thing: fascists know exactly what Democratic voters want, and they can spell it out in clear language.

Democrats, on the other hand, continue to run away from what Democratic voters actually want. Maura Healey’s campaign website is basically “she’s queer! She played basketball!” No, that’s not actually all—if you dig around you can find some accomplishments she touts, some of which are good, some of which are less good (millions of dollars in grants to state and local law enforcement for programs that have netted 500 arrests. So let’s say it’s 2 million, which is the smallest amount you can call “millions.” That’s $4k per arrest. Not sure that’s the best use of taxpayer money, but whatever.). And she doesn’t fundamentally address the climate crisis or the affordability crisis or the healthc care crisis or…well, you get the idea.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m going to vote for Healey, because I certainly don’t want Minogue and I have some concerns about Andrea James’ past legal difficulties. But I wish there were a Democrat running on the mostly common-sense priorities that Massachusetts fascists correctly identify as appealing to voters.