Surprise....

Suzanne Bump was re-elected as State Auditor by a bare 57% of the vote. :) Well grudging congrats to our Governor Elect, Charlie Baker, we are about to find out how good a school of statecraft is the Swampscott Board of Selectmen. As for what happened last night, I'm honestly surprised Coakley hung in as long as she did and drove it down to under two percentage points or roughly 36,000 votes statewide. She had the Very Gods of Olympus and the Editorial Board of the Boston Globe against her....let us not forget that. Otherwise this was the Closest Gubernatorial election since 1998 when Cellucci beat Harshbarger. Moreover the polling data on this one seemed very faulty most of the polls trended towards Baker over the last two weeks and yet his final tally was a bare plurality and 1.4 % margin. The democratic primary had this same problem as well I suspect there are some polling models out there that are past their expiration date. The precise modalities will have to wait on better more reliable numbers and keener wits than mine, but if I had to hazard a hypothesis I'm gonna guess Charlie's winning formula was Ticket Splitting Independent Women + The Endorsement of the Boston Globe + Evan Falchuk (who carried off 62,000 votes that Martha desperately needed). The whole independent women thing, is pure conjecture on my part, the final polling numbers will confirm or deny it. Nonetheless clearly this was a cohort Baker was obsessed with getting at all costs up to and including popping Midol in front of the cameras. This is also a cadre famous for splitting tickets in droves. As for the Boston Globe's endorsement, clearly that has some serious utility in a close race as when applied to a GOP candidate it instantly confers "Republican Moderate" status...Said endorsement is conversely almost useless and likely a burden to any democrat occupying statewide office who aspires to the Governorship. Lastly Evan Falchuk ran up some good numbers last night, mostly in the form of disaffected independent radicals....in the past I've been known to bemoan this cohort's inability to join any broad coalition against the GOP. However over time I've come to the conclusion that this is a somewhat vengeful bunch whose sheer hatred of the the two party system makes most of them "ungettable from the git-go" for any serious democratic candidate. In short they LIKE skewing elections, it suits their vaguely Leninist notions of "chaos and or reaction all benefits me". Well be that as it may, the rest of the democratic ticket did very well indeed and the GOP's alleged surge never materialized with respect to the Great and General Court. As for Baker I have strong doubts of his alleged managerial acumen or his patience with State House milieu....to his credit he has been handed a relatively robust state economy but this is Charlie Baker we are talking about he could as always screw up a two car funeral.

Thought for the Day...

Voting for Charlie Baker is like voting for your landlord. Not the nice man and his family that live on the third floor of your triple-decker and does all his own maintenance, no the absentee landlord.
You know that selfish whining dick who lives in a hideous McMansion in Wellesley and won't turn on the heat til November th or fix the stuck window in the bathroom no matter how often you complain.

When greedy HMO CEO's like Charlie Baker have their

hands deep in your pocket, there may not be enough left over for even the basics...like fire protection.
Given what we all shell out to the likes of Harvard Pilgrim, I can easily see how ugly scenes like this go down.
***
Okay all cheap shots aside, when the fire department allows a house to burn to the ground for want of $75 that sends a powerful message to the other rate payers to stay current with their fire protection obligations, or else.
La Cosa Nostra couldn't be more succinct.

A single thought on a Saturday Night...

It is Charlie Baker's simple contention that the current administration on Beacon Hill is rife with ineptitude and corruption which stands in sick sad contrast to his tenure as Secretary of Whatever under Bill Weld when the cost of the Big Dig only went up 200% in four years.
That is his argument in a nutshell.