Why does Massachusetts vote for Republican Governers?

[Brittain33]

I don’t know if people actively think the legislature is bad and they want to put a check on it.

It’s more like the conservative Republican base is so tiny here that it is possible for a moderate technocrat like Charlie Baker to run and win over most of the Indies and enough Dems to get a majority against Coakley in a terrible year for Dems, and then win re-election because he’s doing a good job and all the top tier Dems take a pass on challenging him.

Before Deval, the Dem Party was divided between conservatives and liberals, and it was easy for one group to ally with a Republican governor and tacitly support his election over the enemies they hated in the party.

Mostly it involves open-seat governor elections happening in terrible years for Dems (1994, 2002, 2014—2006 being the big exception) and then successful Republicans winning re-election as incumbents in the other midterms which are good for Dems (1998, 2018).

[Brittain33]

How many threads do we need for this question? I feel like it gets asked every other week.

When I first saw this thread, I admit I considered merging and stickying.

[Brittain33]

1994 was an election with an incumbent too: Bill Weld, who won reelection in a landslide (even with 1994 being a GOP year and thus it being logical he was reelected, I'm not sure how he won 70% of the vote, there must be some explanation for that).

The open-seat election that Weld won was 1990, when a conservative won the Democratic nomination and thus a lot of liberal Democrats bolted and supported Weld instead of Silber.

Oh, of course you're right, and the 1990 election is so notorious. Thank you.

[Brittain33]

Romney and Cellucci were both extremely right-wing.

What? No. Romney ran and at least tried to govern as a moderate his first two years. Cellucci was more conservative than Weld, but he was not “extremely right wing.”

[Brittain33]

Romney and Cellucci were both extremely right-wing.

What? No. Romney ran and at least tried to govern as a moderate his first two years. Cellucci was more conservative than Weld, but he was not “extremely right wing.”

Cellucci not only tried to reinstate the death penalty in a state where it had been banned, but his followers also made harassing phone calls to legislators who refused to support him on this.

Death penalty position automatically makes someone "extremely right-wing"? Interesting....

Massachusetts didn't have a death penalty at the time, so he was very right-wing by Massachusetts standards.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of Mass voters supported the death penalty 20 years ago, as a large majority of Americans did. It was the state Dems who were slightly out of step by opposing it. It was a conservative position but far from extremely right wing. It’s a good example of why Cellucci can be described as more conservative than Weld, but “extremely right wing” conjures up someone advocating for positions which are opposed by a large majority of voters in Massachusetts. Cellucci was too good a politician to be a conservative ideologue.