Karyn Polito: Boon or Bust for Baker’s Central MA Image?
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Nicholas Handy, GoLocalWorcester Contributor
As the momentum in the Massachusetts Governor’s race seems to shift more and more in Charlie Baker’s favor as we reach the final week before election, Martha Coakley has been looking for any advantage she can find in exploiting Charlie Baker and has taken to the stage on multiple occasions to try to expose Baker’s running mate Karyn Polito.
Originally brought in as a way for Baker to connect with women voters throughout the state, as well as the Central Massachusetts region - Polito was born in Shrewsbury and previously served as a selectman for Shrewsbury and a Representative for the 11th Worcester district – Coakley has keyed in on a few issues in an attempt to cut those ties.
These issues include Polito helping family members and friends get limited edition Red Sox license plates and lobbying for millions for a road project that connected Shrewsbury to the commuter rail station in Grafton, something Coakley’s campaign is saying directly benefitted her family's business.
"Between helping family members obtain valuable Red Sox vanity license plates, lobbying for millions of dollars in state spending for a project to benefit her family's business and her close connections to Chanel Prunier, an outspoken anti-gay, conservative activist, Charlie Baker needs to answer for Karyn Polito's shady past,” said Steve Kerrigan, Coakley’s running mate. “Massachusetts simply cannot afford to have someone like Karyn Polito one step away from the governor's office."
The Coakley campaign has additionally called out Polito for being a radical Tea Party supporter and someone who has largely been uninvolved in the political season.
Defending Polito
While Polito has been the figure head for many of the Coakley campaign’s attacks which are working to show that Polito and Baker lean more toward the right then they are letting on and that they don’t have the best interests of Central Massachusetts residents or women, the Baker campaign has said that these campaign attacks are a pattern in a growing line of attacks that Coakley has began since the polls began to shift toward Baker.
While Polito’s Tea Party ties have been well documented, Baker’s campaign points out that she previously voted to ensure access to emergency contraception for rape victims and for the state’s 35-foot abortion clinic buffer zone law. Additionally, Polito has voted for a variety of other initiatives in Massachusetts, including: an increase in the minimum wage to $8 dollars, for MA health care reform, for the Green Communities Act, for the Green Jobs Bill, and for the Global Warming Solutions Act.
Coakley has been on the attack lately. Is it because momentum is shifting away from her once again? |
Too Little, Too Late
While the polls may never show how much of a factor Karyn Polito had on the gubernatorial election – polls typically don’t ask potential voters how much of an impact the Lt. Governor has on their voting decision for governor – but may political insiders feel that Polito could have helped at least a little in pulling in a Central Massachusetts voter on familiarity.
With that being said, Erin O’Brien, Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Boston, says that the real missed opportunity is not for Baker and Polito, but for Coakley and the rest of the Democrats. While O’Brien feels that Polito didn’t have the raw ability to lift Baker up among women – many of the polls still show that Baker is lagging behind in the women’s vote, although not as much as in the beginning of the election season – Democrats had a real opportunity to lambast Baker for choosing a candidate that was so far to the right while he has based his campaign on leaning more toward the center, politically speaking.
“I think that this was a huge missed opportunity for the Democrats,” said O’Brien. “It is not an allegation that Polito has historically leaned very far to the right, which is out of step with Baker’s message of appealing to all voting bases. Baker has done a great job as coming off as a light Republican, which is very benefitial in a highly Democratic Massachusetts. I think Polito’s biggest advantage for Baker is that he has the ability to say that she is from Worcester County, something that helps to balance his ticket geographically speaking.”