Posts Tagged ‘Massachusetts’

From the Sun Chronicle:

Martha Coakley is starting to look like a figure out of a Greek tragedy. The state attorney general has made another political miscalculation, one that could conceivably cost the Democrats the second most important statewide office, just as her earlier miscalculation cost the Democrats what should have been a safe U.S. Senate seat.

It’s hard to fathom how one candidate could cause so much havoc in her own party. First Coakley opened the door for Scott Brown’s election to the seat of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. Now she has opened the door for the Republicans to win Coakley’s own seat as Massachusetts attorney general.

In the race to fill Kennedy’s seat last January, Coakley ran a poor campaign. She avoided retail politics, coming off as aloof and entitled. The message was Massachusetts voters wouldn’t dare elect a Republican to succeed Kennedy. That, of course, turned out to be wrong. All that Wrentham Republican Brown needed to win was a last-minute burst of advertising financed from out of state.

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From the Boston Herald:

A Republican write-in candidate for attorney general who wants to do what U.S. Sen. Scott Brown did – beat Martha Coakley – is off to a “pretty substantial” start, the iconic Massachusetts GOP standard-bearer said yesterday.

Brown suggested yesterday that a repeat of his own come-from-behind win by former prosecutor James McKenna of Millbury is possible if voters want to send a message.

“They’re sending a lot of very powerful messages,” Brown noted, in an apparent reference to national upsets and strong Republican turnouts Tuesday in Massachusetts. He called McKenna’s “10,000 times two” write-in vote claim “pretty substantial.”

McKenna won at least 10,000 write-in votes Tuesday to win a place on the Nov. 2 ballot, according to Secretary of State William Galvin. But McKenna claimed yesterday that when the tally is complete, he’ll have at least 20,000.

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From the Examiner:

Jim McKenna has now been officially certified as qualifying for the November ballot to face Martha Coakley for attorney general. He was kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time this afternoon:

DaTechGuy: Jim Congratulations on making the ballot, do you have an exact count on the number of write-in/sticker votes you managed to get:

Jim McKenna: The final count is not in we know of 15k, but it could come in much higher.

DTG: A write in campaign is tough, in a primary doubly so and would be considered impossible for a Massachusetts republican before this year. What happened?

JM: Experienced political people told us we couldn’t do it but the people got involved, there seemed to be more homemade signs and individuals pushing the candidacy than we ever expected. Between myself and Guy Carbone another fine write-in candidate we know at least 20k went to the polls motivated for this race. I’ve never seen people so involved.

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From newstelegram.com:

Republican James McKenna of Millbury is claiming success in his bid to get on the November ballot as a challenger to Democract Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Mr. McKenna and a team of supporters set out yesterday to get the required 10,000 write-in votes that would earn him a spot on the Nov. 2 ballot. Ms. Coakley was running unopposed.

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From Boston Herald:

Standing out in the rain this weekend to collect her own signatures for the ballot, Attorney General Martha Coakley is on a mission to reinvent herself after her bruising loss in the Senate race.

“I’ll always be the woman who lost Ted Kennedy’s seat,” Coakley, 56, told the Herald. “It’s a crushing loss, but I’m hopeful that my record as AG, and the lessons I learned from the loss will help me be a better candidate.”

Though her only potential opponent so far is perennial candidate Republican Jack E. Robinson, Coakley isn’t taking her re-election for granted, she said.

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