This guest blog entry was authored by Reed Hillman, candidate for Lt. Governor of Massachusetts.
This election presents a clear choice for voters. Massachusetts has the opportunity to move forward and change for the better, or move back to the days of one-party rule, closed-door meetings and perpetual tax hikes.
I am honored to run for Lt. Governor alongside Kerry Healey. She has demonstrated a vital understanding of the criminal justice system. Over her term as Lt. Governor, Kerry has successfully worked with the legislature to toughen our sex offender and drunk driving laws. Her passion for the protection of victims makes her an ideal candidate to be chief executive of the Commonwealth.
Over the next four years, the governor will be the last barrier to a legislature that has shown a bottomless appetite to raise taxes and spend your money. Deval Patrick has proposed over $8 billion in new spending for the special interest groups. He has snubbed his nose at the voters of this state by refusing to support the rollback of the income tax. He refuses to sign the ‘no new taxes’ pledge and has even said that tax hikes would be “on the table” in his administration. We should not risk our state’s future on intentions like those.
Although Deval normally refuses to give specifics on his plans, fortunately he has given us a few. He says he wants to subsidize higher education for illegal aliens by giving them in-state tuition breaks, paid for by you. He wants to give them drivers licenses and public housing, which would encourage even more illegal immigration to this state. Deval may be a principled advocate for those who break our laws, but he has the wrong priorities for the job of governor.
Kerry and I want to reform our pension system to eliminate pension abuse and save $200 million a year for local cities and towns. We will reform our auto insurance system, allowing for more competition and lower rates. Most importantly, we will lead the fight to roll back the income tax which the people overwhelmingly voted for and the hardworking taxpayers deserve.
When you go to the polling booth on Tuesday, think of these choices and vote your future.
Tags: Reed Hillman
November 7th, 2006
This article was authored by Barbara Anderson, a Marblehead resident and executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, and appears in today’s edition of the Salem News.
About my prediction that Christy Mihos would run as a Republican, not an independent: So I was wrong.
Actually, I wasn’t so much predicting as whistling past the graveyard, hoping that the scary things — like Democrats again being totally in charge of the commonwealth — wouldn’t materialize.
But here we are. Mihos has decided to make it a three-way governor’s race featuring himself, Republican Kerry Healey, and whoever wins the Democratic primary.
Worst-case scenario: Healey and Mihos split the pro-taxpayer vote, or whatever that vote is called that elected Republican governors since 1990; and the Democrat wins, bringing back the aging Dukakis operatives, the fudged revenue projections, new programs, hostility to Proposition 21/2, and annual tax increases.
After four years, our economy is a wreck. More productive citizens flee, more illegal immigrants arrive for more benefits, the Big Business community continues to compromise for peace at any price, the price gets steeper, and as tax rates increase and tax revenues decline, benefits are cut for the remaining citizens.
Here’s Barbara The Optimist’s prediction:
Massachusetts must hit bottom in order to bounce, so in 2010, Republican Charlie Baker becomes governor and a fresh bunch of pro-taxpayer legislative candidates win, just in time to turn the commonwealth around.
But what if The Optimist is wrong again? With the taxpayer base depleted and the major baby boomer-related health and retirement issues arriving, there is no bounce, just a splat, and no one can save the commonwealth.
Back to 2006. Best-case scenario: The Democratic nominee and one of the other two makes lots more campaign mistakes than one pro-taxpayer candidate, who catches on with voters, and squeaks through.
Considering the bonehead mistakes Tom Reilly has already made, and the campaign inexperience of both Deval Patrick and Mihos, Healey might yet win under this scenario.
Looking back at 2002, Mitt Romney won with 1,091,988 votes. He would have prevailed, barely, even if all the Green candidate votes had gone to Shannon O’Brien. But if the Libertarian, independent and other votes had also gone to her — probably not likely — he would have lost.
However, there wasn’t a serious independent campaign in 2002 to attract many votes from the almost 50 percent of Massachusetts voters who are unenrolled. As an independent voter myself, I can imagine choosing a pro-taxpayer independent if no other candidate took the “no new taxes” pledge.
At the presidential level, I understand why some people voted for Ross Perot, even though voters elected Bill Clinton; and some were attracted to Ralph Nader, even if they elected George W. Bush. Both those third-party candidates were different enough from the major-party candidates that they had something to offer.
If Jesse Ventura had done a better job as governor of Minnesota, and was running for president on a strong national and border defense, national debt reduction, tax reform, personal freedom, pro-evolution and less political correctness platform, I’d be tempted to go third party myself.
But here at the state level, I don’t see enough ideological difference between Mihos and Healey to risk turning over the state to the Democrats again.
It would have been fine and fun to have a Republican primary so we could choose the personality we preferred. I can understand, however, why Mihos might have been concerned about his ability to get the required 15 percent of delegates at the Republican convention that would allow him to get his name on the primary ballot in September. He hadn’t organized early enough to seriously compete in the Republican caucuses that elect delegates, and while the Healey campaign seemed sincere in its pledge to help him get enough support to compete in the primary, the convention chairman is state Sen. Brian Lees after all.
I am still waiting for those Senate roll calls that Lees tricked another senator into not requesting when the Senate minority leader apparently determined they would embarrass either other Republicans or even Democrats. If I were Mihos, I wouldn’t trust him with my political future either.
The question is, how much leeway would Lees have had, and why does Mihos want to run so much that he would jeopardize the commonwealth with a three-way race?
Of course, everyone is entitled to his dream. It’s a wonder anyone wants to run for office, considering what happens to them when they do.
Reed Hillman is the excellent choice by Healey to run with her as the lieutenant governor candidate. He was immediately attacked because when head of the State Police, he thought his officers, male and female, should be in top physical shape, which included not being eight months pregnant. Watch any cop show on TV, and imagine a very pregnant woman chasing the bad guys down the alley and over the chain-link fence. You can then appreciate the common sense that is part of Hillman’s general persona, along with a certain maturity and class.
Ah well. I admit I’m evolving from concern over the worst-case scenario to the political junkie’s fascination with the bizarre world of Massachusetts politics. Disastrous as its consequences might be, the three-way campaign itself will be interesting, dramatic, and often hilarious, at least to those of us who get the jokes.
Tags: Barbara Anderson, Christy Mihos, Deval Patrick, Reed Hillman
March 16th, 2006
