Mitt Romney Trailing in Massachusetts poll

October 5, 2005

Comments

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a purported 2008 presidential candidate, is behind all of his likely rivals for re-election in the latest polls.

From Ron Gunzberger

A new University of Massachusetts poll shows Governor Mitt Romney (R) trailing any of his potential 2006 re-election opponents. Romney trails Attorney General Tom Reilly — the Dem frontrunner — by 15%. Secretary of State Bill Galvin and former USDOJ official Deval Patrick (D), by contrast, only leads Romney by single-digits. However, if Romney passes on the race to focus on a likely 2008 Presidential campaign, GOP chances of holding the Governor’s Mansion fade even further. The poll showed Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey (R) trails any of the Dems by wider margins than Romney. Healey trails Reilly by 25%, trails Galvin by 13%, and trails Patrick by 4%.

While it’s probably true that Romney would fare better in a national contest than in the liberal capital of the country, the prospect of a guy who can’t win re-election in his own state moving on to the presidency is quite bizarre. Of course, Richard Nixon did just that, losing the California governor’s race in 1962 and then getting elected president in 1968 and 1972.

6 responses to “Mitt Romney Trailing in Massachusetts poll”

Anderson

October 5, 2005 at 10:34 am

I think Nixon ought to be the exception that proves the rule ….
Johno

October 5, 2005 at 10:56 am

Mitt Romney — and I say this as someone who at the time of his election was a registered Massachusetts Republican — has done nothing to endear himself to the state he ostensibly runs.

I mean, say what you want about all the hairy-pitted Birkenstocked lezbos and their emasculated companions up here setting policy and performing marriage rites, but that caricature doesn’t really fit the nature of the state outside a couple prominent enclaves. It’s just folks up here, churchgoing people who drop their r’s some places and put them in other places where they don’t belong, who watch the Red Sox and don’t quite know what to think about hippie college kids. And to have our governer – who we elected – go out of state (for example to South Carolina) and openly mock the morals and intellect of us who put him where he is, really stings. That’s a pretty sh***y thing to do.

Not to mention the complete hash Romney has made of his policy initiatives. He failed to overhaul the Mass Highway Department even after one highly paid featherbedder was photographed checking out for the day at 10 AM repeatedly while drawing a massive paycheck. He openly and unapologetically flipflopped on the gay marriage/civil unions question, changing his rhetoric to match his audience. He failed to carry through on his promise to spread the state’s attention west of the I-95 beltway outside Boston to the neglected rest of the state. The Big Dig just sort of… gets worse by the day.

Speaking as someone who was cautiously optomistic about Romney’s governership, he’s been a total bust, a mealy-mouthed panderer whose naked national ambitions have never taken a backseat to actually getting down to the brass tacks of running (and hopefully cleaning up) our corrupt, cash-poor commonwealth.

I predict he’ll lose in 2006 and parlay that loss into a moral win for his conservatism – “America’s gonna love the man those Massachusetts liberals hated!” (most of the country doesn’t know that MA has had a string of Republican governers going back to Bill Weld in 1991, so any failure will be simply failure and not a sign of partisan animus), and be a serious player for the Republican nod in ’08. And given his tragic unseriousness about the job he has now, that would be… great for the Democrats in ’12.
legion

October 5, 2005 at 12:19 pm

Wasn’t Romney being cast as a potential candidate for _NY_ Gov? Was I merely having a psychedelic episode, or did that idea get laughed out the door too fast for me to even notice?
Brian

October 5, 2005 at 1:36 pm

You’re thinking of William Weld, not Mitt Romney.
McGehee

October 5, 2005 at 2:30 pm

William Weld running for NY governor — that belongs in a psychedelic episode.
legion

October 5, 2005 at 2:45 pm

YouÃ¢Â€Â™re thinking of William Weld, not Mitt Romney.

Ah, that’s it. I must need to re-fill my meds.