by Philibus Phunk
SPECIAL COMMENTARY
On November 8, 2016 everything went wrong for Baker. Whoever advised him to go against Donald Trump and stake his credibility on Questions 2 and 4 should be fired. Talk about bad instincts. After appearing in numerous commercials for the ballot questions, they both went down. No coattails!
If that wasn’t bad enough, Gov. Barack O’Baker pissed off right-wing voters by blanking the race for president – if you truly believe he did not vote for Hillary. Once Trump won the primary, Charlie could have tried to mend fences with the grassroots of the Party, but he further offended it by refusing to support the nominee of our Party. Who told him to do this? Yikes!
For the record, Trump actually got more Massachusetts votes than Baker did in 2014.
Team Baker is not filled with rocket scientists, even though they believe so. We have all seen the attitude and the arrogance by the Team that could barely beat Martha Coakley, who was a horrible candidate.
On Baker’s Team is the infamous Jim Conroy, who was the mastermind behind the State Committee war. They gained two votes, but in the process lost all Party unity and grassroots activists across the state. So it is easy to categorize the State Committee war as a long-term loss for Baker.
Conroy went on to lose both Question 2 and 4 ballot initiatives. Was he even trying to win these ballot measures or just out to make a buck? Conroy got paid $120,000 for his “work” on Question 2. Stop Pot paid him $25,000 for his “sage” advice. Hence, he got paid $145,000 to lose big. Calamity Conroy was also being paid by both the Baker and Polito campaigns. He earned $19,000 and $13,721 from them, respectively.
Will Keyser, Baker’s Democrat consultant, received $135,000 from the charter school Question 2 campaign. He cashed in to make $135,000 from just one client. Too bad it did not work out for his client.
An amount of $21 million was spent on trying to pass charter schools and $15 million was spent on killing the initiative. So if you have heard Keyser and Conroy crying in their beers, don’t believe them that they were outspent.
The charter school campaign spent $255,000 on just two people on its team. That’s two and half times the entire amount spent on successfully repealing the automatic gas tax hikes.
On the pot question, they were outspent, but if you look at the first campaign finance report you will see the entire problem. Out of the $42,000 spent, $2500 went to fundraising expenses, the rest went to six different consultant teams! They did a brilliant job of filling their pockets, not the ballot box.
On neither Campaign 2 or 4 did anyone see an activist. Maybe if they actually had people working for the issue, it might have worked out better. But once again, Baker’s hotshots did not think they needed little people like us.
Where do Baker and Team go from here? He is off to the inaugural. Of course, Charlie is trying to mend fences, but the horse is out of the barn. That’s not going to cut it. Baker has to show real support for conservatives, not lip service. We fell for his nice-guy routine in 2014 and then he showed his true colors by treating Democrats better than conservatives.
No apology and no words can fix the damage. It is time for Real Republicans to have a seat at the table or pay the consequences in November 2018. ♦
