ON SATURDAY, Rep. Joe Kennedy formally announced his campaign to challenge Sen. Ed Markey in next year’s Democratic primary. Rumors of a Kennedy run have been swirling since earlier this summer, and with them comparisons to Ayanna Pressley’s successful 2018 primary bid against Mike Capuano. While both Pressley and Kennedy represent a generational shift, the […]
News Analysis
Posted inNews Analysis
Polling, like everything else, is moving online
HE’S NOT EVEN officially running, but we now have two polls showing Rep. Joe Kennedy III with a sizable lead over Sen. Ed Markey in the Democratic primary for US Senate. The first, from Change Research, showed Kennedy with an eye-popping 17 point lead. That margin raised questions about how seriously to take an online […]
Posted inPolitics
Wait wait, don’t primary me
It used to be both polite and practical to wait your turn to run for Congress in Massachusetts. Party leaders and insiders frowned on impertinence, and the very occasional primary challenges that happened were rarely successful. That era is ending. We’ve seen two longtime incumbents unseated in the last few cycles, and the 2020 congressional […]
Posted inEconomy
‘No more real newspaper’ in Worcester
THE “GHOST NEWSPAPER” ERA has arrived in Massachusetts, and the worst is almost certainly yet to come. The state has not yet been hit with vast news deserts, the term of the media moment to describe areas without any newspaper presence following the closure of more than 1,800 US papers since 2004. But the land is […]
Posted inNews Analysis
Did Liss-Riordan overstep on Second Amendment?
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS about American’s constitutional right to bear arms are roiling the Massachusetts Democratic primary for US Senate. After mass shootings, a distressingly occurrence in American politics, the debate typically focuses on incremental changes to gun laws that might be possible in our polarized political environment. But after two back-to-back mass shootings this past weekend […]
Posted inNews Analysis
No beach for Baker
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER hasn’t had much time for the beach this summer. First there was the Red Line derailment on June 11, which knocked the MBTA on its heels and prompted an extended debate about whether the T needed more resources. Baker had insisted the T didn’t need more money, but he hedged a bit […]
Posted inPolitics
Who’s looking at a Markey-Kennedy race?
AN ENIGMATIC TELEPHONE SURVEY raised eyebrows among the Massachusetts political establishment this week. The poll, first reported by POLITICO Massachusetts, pitted Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III against incumbent Senator Ed Markey in a hypothetical 2020 Democratic primary. The survey raised the specter of a race between the longest serving member of the state congressional delegation and the […]
Posted inNews Analysis
Safety allegations raise control board issues
THE MBTA’s FISCAL and Management Control Board is widely viewed as a government success story – five, unpaid gubernatorial appointees who have brought public scrutiny to the inner workings of the state’s troubled transit authority. But the allegations made by former MBTA chief safety officer Ronald W. Nickle suggest the board is far from perfect. […]
Posted inPolitics
Baker flunks driver’s license test
THE REGISTRY OF MOTOR VEHICLES, with its interminable waiting time and paperwork, has long been the state bureaucracy bane of drivers’ existence. Now it’s proving to be the same for Charlie Baker’s political standing. Baker has long eschewed the idea that he must articulate a grand vision, that his stewardship of state government needs to […]
Posted inTransportation
Will Baker get on the T revenue train?
FOR CHARLIE BAKER, when you’ve lost Bob DeLeo and Marty Walsh, along with leading business voices, those infernal MBTA countdown clocks that can’t give Red Line riders a clue to when the next train is coming are instead flashing a big warning to you that time’s up. And so it came to pass, after a surreptitious […]