Charlie Baker or Jay Gonzalez? Discuss.
Who’s getting your vote: Baker or Gonzalez?
by Village 14 | Oct 12, 2018 | Newton | 23 comments
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
Charlie Baker or Jay Gonzalez? Discuss.
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
Gonzalez. He wasn’t my first (or second) choice in the gubernatorial primaries, but I really don’t like Baker. But I think Gonzalez is a long-shot thanks to Charlie Baker’s inexplicable popularity.
Gonzalez but I think Baker will win by 8 points
Gongalez ‘s best hope would be if he could corner Baker into having defend Trump. Are there any scheduled debates
Jay Gonzalez.
If you’re thinking about voting for Baker, ask yourself, how much do you care about Democrats taking back Congress and defeating Donald Trump’s agenda? Because:
– Charlie Baker supports Geoff Diehl to beat Elizabeth Warren for US Senate
– Charlie Baker supports Republican challengers to several Democratic-held Congressional seats, including an open race for the retiring Nikki Tsongas’s seat
– Charlie Baker would appoint a Republican Senator if either of our Senators retire (or become President)
– Charlie Baker will control redistricting if he wins, allowing him to push for more Republican districts (Massachusetts currently has an all Democratic Congressional delegation)
– Charlie Baker supports state legislative candidates with retrograde views on topics like LGBT rights, women’s rights, criminal justice, and immigration
Very comfortable with Baker. I don’t vote party, I vote person. I believe Baker is an honest, smart, guy who deserves to keep his job.
Definitely Gonzalez and have seven votes from the family voting for him as well.
Charlie owns the T now and hasn’t fixed it and refuses to accept responsibility for it. He’s trying to drop 140,ooo people from medicaid. These are deal breaker items for me.
Gonzalez because he believes in social justice and because Baker is a corporate shill whose harmless-morosoph act has worn thin.
Gonzalez for all the reasons that Bryan stayed.
I wish that this V14 sample was representative of the entire state.
Gonzalez!
Jay supports fixing our broken transportation and education funding formulas and is willing to be bold by supporting policies like the Millionaire’s Tax to pay for it.
A former health care executive who wants to move us to single payer, he knows exactly how to get us there.
As former Secretary of Administration and Finance when Deval Patrick was Governor, he has the experience to lead on day 1.
Jay understands that there are people getting left behind by our booming economy, and wants to ensure our policies help everyone.
He is committed to fixing our broken criminal justice system and has a clear plan on how to go about it.
Jay advocates to be aggressive in our transition to a clean energy future, something that Charlie promised and didn’t deliver on.
Charlie is not moderate – and not “bipartisan”. He just knows how to throw crumbs to Dems where it doesn’t “cost” him anything.
Here are a few examples (I have many more) of how Republican he is:
Charlie wanted to kick 140,000 people off Medicaid, to make it harder to prove you’re homeless to get benefits, and supported a policy that punished mothers on welfare for having more kids, all of which were stopped thanks to the Dems in the legislature
He is only barely committed to transitioning MA to clean energy.
Charlie actively fundraises for and supports candidates who are anti-gay, anti-trans, and anti-choice, while donating millions of dollars to the RNC that will be used by Republicans to try to hang onto Congress.
He appointed conservative justices to the state supreme court, who then voted to overturn longstanding precedent by taking the Millionaire’s Tax off the ballot and taking that decision away from the people.
Charlie supports Trump on his immigration policy, otherwise he would not have actively worked against the Safe Communities Act which would’ve protected immigrants and instead filed a bill to suspend due process rights for “certain people” after the Supreme court struck down his police of making our police part of ICE.
How any Democrat can vote for Baker is beyond me.
Jay
With 10 votes in this thread, Gonzalez leads Baker by 80 points! I guess this is the last time I’ll look at Village14 for insights into electoral thinking. I can hear my own voice echoing…
Baker is a prohibitionist. If he had a Democratic opponent who capitalized on that fact, his reelection would be in trouble. He’s basically gotten a free pass, despite his numerous efforts to roll back the 2016 ballot initiative that legalized cannabis.
Worse, Baker’s record on curtailing heroin deaths is abysmal. He hides the fact that no progress has been made toward curtailing the number of annual heroin deaths in Massachusetts, by lumping those awful statistics together with the numbers from increasingly regulated prescription opiates.
If you care about the environment and climate change, Gonzalez is the clear choice.
June 2018: Coalition of environmental groups gave Baker a C grade
· In 2010 during his first campaign, Baker was asked “Do you believe in human caused climate change?” He refused to answer. This was 4 years after “An Inconvenient Truth”, and 20 years after IPCC report. By his next campaign in 2014 he conceded humans are playing a role in climate change, but is doing nowhere near enough to address it.
· 2015, SOLAR: Proposed legislation to slash reimbursement rates for businesses, municipalities and low-income housing developments that install solar panels. Eversource and Associated Industries of Mass supported the bill. Mass lost 3K solar jobs in 2017, have not recovered, due to anti-solar policies.
· Wind — Opposed Cape Wind. The 2016 bill mandating 1600 MW offshore wind was due to the legislature, not Baker.
· Fracked Gas: Supports taxing ratepayers to pay for $6B in Fracked Gas pipelines AG Healey says we don’t need, which would be obsolete by the time they were built, and which increase climate change. Overly reliant on Eversource—including most recently when put Eversource in charge of Columbia Gas, was rewarded immediately with campaign donations from Eversource execs.
· Supreme Judicial Court found Baker Administration not in compliance with Global Warming Solutions Act (Mass climate change law)
· Baker appointed DPU Chair Angie O’Connor with ties to industry lobbies (Power Generators Association, Associated Industries of Mass) What has the DPU done under her tenure?
October 2016 – Approved Pipeline Tax which was subsequently ruled illegal by Supreme Judicial Court
November 2017 — Approved massive rate hike for Eversource, with –10% return on equity in Mass (vs 9.25% in CT → tens of millions of extra costs on Mass ratepayers.)
January 2018 — Approved unprecedented charges on new solar customers, and elimination of time-of-use rates
· In 2014 Baker pledged by end of first term we would have 1% of budget go to the environment – has not done it.
· Transportation: Has done very little re transportation emissions. Has supported electric vehicles, but is massively underfunding public transit.
· Underfunding enforcement: From March 2017 Boston Globe: “Over the past decade, the state Department of Environmental Protection’s enforcement of air and water quality rules has fallen off sharply, as the agency’s workforce shrunk by nearly a third, according to a Globe review of state records. Enforcement actions for serious violations have dropped by more than half, statistics show, as inspections also declined. Fines collected from violators plummeted during the same period by nearly 75 percent. For example, [DEP] had to cut back on the labor-intensive work of testing rivers for the illegal dumping of sewage and fecal matter, he said.”
I was just talking with a good friend. Someone I have discussed politics with regurally for over 20 years. Through the years he has often chided me for being too liberal, and just described me as being center-left. Here in Newton however, y’all make me feel so conservative.
Jay
Mike, I get your drift but you do in live in Newton which seems to have one of the highest percentages of progressive activists and liberals in the country – and they’re represented on this thread so far.
I will most likely vote for Gonzalez, although I expect Baker to win handily. Certainly most of the critiques of Baker are valid. But once again, I have a feeling that this election day will be a reminder that the rest of Massachusetts is not nearly as liberal/progressive as we may think.
Baker for sure.
The aligning of Baker to Trump just falls flat to me, you can find lots of evidence supposedly tying Baker to Trump, and you can also find lots of evidence of Baker rebuking Trump. It’s just not a good argument, and I think it summarizes the Dems struggle in this election well. I think that if the Dems struggle nationally on election night, it will be because we haven’t promoted our own policies as much as trying to just align GOP candidates to Trump.
That said, looking at policy, I’m pretty satisfied with what Baker has done so far. There are areas I wish he’d do more in – higher education, and the MBTA – but I think he’s been overwhelmingly positive.
He’s been willing to raise taxes to support programs (Medicaid, Police), and his support for the Grand Bargain says a lot about him to me. The economy is doing extremely well, and his support for, and action on, increasing the Earned Income Tax has to be commended.
He’s put in the steps to reform DCF, something badly needed. I don’t think we can fairly determine the impact of this for a few more years, but I appreciate his attention to this critical issue.
Ultimately I like Jay on higher education, but I’m not convinced by his plan on the MBTA. Everywhere else, I struggle to see the merits in electing him over a Baker.
@Marti
I have often thought Progressives are to the Democrats what the Tea Party is to the GOP. Different positions, same psychological makeup. That’s my observation, anyhow.
I wonder: do Newton Democrats who voted against Sanders in 2016 primaries consider themselves Progressives/Liberals?
Enthusiastically with Charlie Baker probably the best Governor in the Nation. This is a Governor that has built the economy and created jobs and has been great for business. He has held the line on taxes and governs in a truly non-partisan
manner. One great term deserves another!
I think Jay Gonzales is campaigning very far to the left of how he would actually govern.
I think Baker will win comfortably, perhaps by 5 or 6 points.
I also think Baker will do relatively well here, certainly topping 40 percent. For a Republican, that’s strong.
IPCC report of last week – only debility explains Silence about its importance to family-centric communities. Nature is not holding our seats for young people after we’re knocked out of them by thermodynamics. Baker has stood in the way of helping young people who’re already grappling with a ruinous future that no amount of careful detailed examination by science community can help them with – if we don’t join their fight.
@Lawrence: I agree 100%. The great concern becomes tangible. Contingent upon the forsaken masses becoming frightened, their obsequiousness exhausts itself. Comprehension escapes many who are entrenched but still, appallingly, unwilling to recalibrate. Toward a day with no reservations, the mighty orb spins randomly and uncontrollably. Jay Gonzalez in 2018.