The Independent-Minded Voter: The Significance of a New Political Ethos in Statewide Elections in Massachusetts

by Sarah Kahan
Undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
8 April 2002

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge and thank a number of individuals whose gracious assistance contributed immensely to this thesis:

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

From seventeenth-century Salem, when Puritans, convinced of their spiritual correctness, burned witches to preserve their godliness—to the Hartford Convention in 1814 where Federalists, convinced of their constitutional correctness, urged secession to preserve state rights—to the turn of the century when Progressives, convinced of their cultural correctness, reconstructed politics to preserve Protestant values—to the present when champions of social justice, convinced of their political correctness, advocate a multi-cultural regime of rights—Massachusetts has been a cauldron of political activism, of movement and counter-movement, of accusation and recrimination, whose participants, though often in error, were never in doubt.1

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

As the respected political scientist V. O. Key wrote, “Political systems evolve; they are not made. The character of political systems reflects the pattern of the heritage through which they are extruded into the present, as well as the insistent determinism of the environment.”2 There is indeed no single cause for the existence of a particular political system, as political systems develop over long periods of time and are thus influenced by many factors. Moreover, even once particular political systems emerge, they continue to evolve and can change radically depending on the social environment in which they exist.

The lively contemporary political climate in Massachusetts is undoubtedly the product of its long and rich history, which has been marked by notable activism, progressivism, and fierce rivalries.3 The citizens of the Bay State have always been great political activists, beginning with John Winthrop’s 1630 proclamation to the settlers of Salem, in which he declared they would “be as a city upon a hill.” Never doubting the great import or the correctness of their own personal beliefs, these citizens have always sought to voice their political opinions—of which they have many—in the gatherings of their local representative bodies, known as town meetings. This tradition of political activism compels the state’s politicians and political hopefuls to appeal directly to voter demands. In order to win elections, politicians must thus seriously consider the political culture of their constituency.

Despite this tradition of civic activism, a small number of “first families” traditionally served as the main power brokers in the state’s political life. The “Boston Brahmins” were recognized as some of the nation’s most powerful political elites. These Boston Brahmins gained their power and respect through their great wealth. Such important families included the Bradfords (beginning with William Bradford, who long served as governor of the Plymouth Colony), the Saltonstalls, the Cabot Lodges, the Coolidges (including President Calvin Coolidge), the Codmans, the Curtises, the Parkmans, and the Wigglesworths.

Although the Bay State’s political life was long dominated by a single political elite, the state’s political life has been far from peaceful, civil, or gentle. Jerome Mileur explained in his 1997 review of Massachusetts politics that although from the outside “Bay State politics appears to be like that of any other northern, urban state, . . . beneath the surface run strong and ancient currents of regional, ethnic, and religious antagonisms, fired by its moralistic culture, that trace to the earliest years.”4 As a result of all this antagonism, one writer remarked in the journal Commentary: “Politics in Massachusetts . . . has in practice always been the systematic organizing of hatreds.”5 Historically, politics in the Commonwealth has been defined by much controversy, which some political analysts have characterized as “internecine warfare.”6 One Boston Globe columnist has even brutally described Massachusetts political life as full of “self-serving bureaucrats, bloodthirsty politicians, and ice cold revenge.”7 This fierce political climate that has always existed in Massachusetts results from strong factions, which themselves are due to intense rivalries among those who belong to differing national, religious, and economic groups. The Commonwealth’s political circus can be understood as a long-standing battle that pits “English, Protestant, upper-class Republicans vs. Irish, Catholic, working class Democrats.” Such protracted and bitter rivalries, which are marked by absolute moral uprightness, make the political life of Massachusetts uniquely hostile among the various political climates within the fifty states.8

Because of these underlying hatreds, Massachusetts voters have generally not been remarkably independent-minded. Instead, voters in the Bay State have selected candidates who represent their particular socio-political interest. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, voters in Massachusetts have become significantly more independent-minded. Thus, while ethnic, religious, and class tensions linger in the background—always frustrating and complicating the process of governing the Commonwealth—recently, statewide politicians have been forced to become increasingly more attuned to the developing independent-minded ethos of Massachusetts voters.

OVERVIEW

Historically, in Massachusetts, particular ethnic populations and industrial sectors have wielded significant political clout due to their staunch solidarity. Basic information regarding population demographics and industrial development as well as occupation and voter enrollment is therefore important for understanding politics in the Bay State. Specifically, this data offers information concerning the development of newly-significant voter blocs. In chapter two of this thesis, I briefly examine such demographic and industrial trends in Massachusetts in order to explain how the Democratic Party rose to dominance in the Commonwealth due to the support of urban ethnic laborers. Next, based on Edgar Litt’s 1965 study entitled The Political Cultures of Massachusetts, I explain the concurrent development of the state’s newest and most independent-minded political culture, suburban managers, with the growth of the high technology industry. I conclude chapter two by discussing how a number of statewide candidates have appealed to this newer political culture. In chapter three, I examine different notions of independent-mindedness, and then, using U.S. Census data and Massachusetts voter enrollment data, I identify a particular statistical area and analyze occupational and voter enrollment trends within that statistical area, as compared to the rest of the state. Out of this analysis, I identify independent-mindedness as the state’s developing dominant political ethos. I then offer one explanation regarding the meaning of this new ethos. Finally, in chapters four and five, I discuss the issues of the 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial campaigns in order to better understand this new independent-minded attitude. Based on my study, I argue that candidates who aim to win statewide elections in the Bay State must garner support specifically from suburban managerial-professionals—precisely those voters who are guiding the development of this new political ethos.

  1. Jerome M. Mileur, “Party Politics in the Bay State: the Dominion of Democracy,” in Parties & Politics in the New England States (Amherst: Polity Publications, Inc., 1997), 77-78 ⏎
  2. Cited in, Edgar Litt, The Political Cultures of Massachusetts (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1965), 5 ⏎
  3. Here, I make a distinction between progressive and Progressive. While Massachusetts politics has not always been devoted to the causes of the U.S. Progressive Party’s various incarnations, politics in the Bay State has always been devoted to the ideal of progressivism—that is, social and/or political improvement ⏎
  4. Mileur, 77 ⏎
  5. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  6. Richard Hogarty, “The Harringtons of Salem: A Study of Massachusetts Politics,” New England Journal of Public Policy (Fall/Winter 2000-2001): 7 ⏎
  7. Joan Vennochi, “Florida is acting just like Massachusetts,” Boston Globe (12 December 2000), A23 ⏎
  8. Mileur, 93-94 ⏎

CHAPTER 2
Urban Laborers to Suburban Managers

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Until the late nineteenth century, ethnic minorities had very little sway in Bay State politics. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, Irish immigrants flooded into the Bay State, and together with other ethnic immigrants, the Irish began to challenge the dominance of Boston’s wealthy Brahmin Republican politicians. Thanks to the support of the Irish, Democratic politicians first won considerable victories in Boston.9 And in 1884 when an Irish-Catholic named Hugh O’Brien was elected the mayor of Boston, the Boston Brahmins began to see signs of a rapidly approaching and very different future for themselves.10 Later in 1914, the supreme Irish-American politician James Michael Curley was elected mayor of Boston. Curley amassed a huge following as a “flamboyant and . . . charismatic politician, who had the indispensable personal traits for leadership and the capacity to inspire intense loyalty.”11 Because he championed the rights of the poor Irish laborers of Boston, he became known as the “Mayor of the Poor.” Enabling the Democratic Party’s rise, Curley served his poor, hard working, Irish constituents and in doing so, reminded them of “the deprivations and social injustices inflicted upon them by their wealthy Republican employers.”12 Curley, thus, helped the Democratic Party benefit and forced the Republican Party to suffer from the social hostility bred by the harsh realities of industrial life.13

From 1928 on, after New York Governor Al Smith became the Democratic nominee for President, Democratic politicians gained more support in Massachusetts. The national election of 1928 was an extremely important political moment for the Irish of Massachusetts. As Mileur suggested, many Irish immigrants living in Boston saw Al Smith as “One of their ‘own kind’—Irish, Catholic, big-city son of immigrants.” This sense of kinship united these working class Democrats and compelled them to vote in large enough “numbers to make him the first Democrat in the state’s history to win a majority of the popular vote for President.”14

In the election of 1928, the Republican Party maintained its majority in all Bay State offices, including the two houses of the state legislature. But, after that year, they would no longer maintain their hegemonic dominance over Massachusetts politics.15 Ethnic urban laborers continued to enable Democratic electoral success. In 1936, an Irish Democrat of Cambridge, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Later, in 1949, he became its Speaker, when the Democratic Party gained a majority of its seats. The fact that Democratic candidates won this majority of seats in the Massachusetts House of Representatives did not, however, indicate that Democratic candidates had achieved widespread voter support outside of urban areas. As Mileur and Sulzner explained in Campaigning for the Massachusetts Senate, legislative redistricting in the Bay State has not always kept pace with the state’s rapid suburbanization. The districting for the state legislature has in the past thus tended to overrepresent urban areas; and as a result, the Democratic Party was able to gain a majority of seats in the House while maintaining only minimal influence in suburban areas.16

As Illustration 1 reveals, Massachusetts voters elected a Democratic majority to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1948 and to the state’s Senate in 1958.17 Two years later, when the Commonwealth’s own Irish Catholic Democrat, John F. Kennedy, received the Democratic nomination and then won the presidency in November of 1960, Irish voters helped Democratic politicians take complete control of political life in the urban centers of Massachusetts. After the election of 1968, the Democratic Party held control over two thirds of the entire Massachusetts General Court—the Bay State’s storied legislature—a majority which it has maintained almost without interruption since then.18 Illustration 2 clearly indicates this shift to primarily Democratic voting in all of the state’s urban areas.19

Although the Massachusetts Democratic Party gained solid urban support fairly rapidly at the beginning of the twentieth century—as the Democratic Party’s majority in the General Court suggests—widespread support for the Party in the Bay State developed very slowly.20 Because the Commonwealth’s Irish immigrants settled and stayed primarily in urban centers, they enabled the first major Democratic electoral successes in those urban centers. As significant numbers of these recent immigrants moved and settled in suburbia—traditionally old-stock Yankee territory—Democratic politicians began to threaten previously assured Republican victories. But, these first threats did not translate into victories for many suburban Democratic politicians until the late 1950s, when the Democratic Party took control of both the Massachusetts House and Senate. Even into the 1950s, as Lockard explained, the small number of Democratic Party victories in statewide elections resulted from “the concentration of Democratic votes in urban areas.” In urban areas, Democratic candidates would regularly defeat their Republican challengers by large margins. But, in other parts of the state, Democratic candidates would frequently lose very close races.21 Very gradually, as Massachusetts became “one of the most industrialized, Catholic . . . states in the nation,” Massachusetts Democratic politicians gained significant support statewide.22

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Democratic Party in Massachusetts sought to respond to the new demands of the state’s changing electorate, while the Republican Party in the state remained committed to its traditional political base. As Mileur explains: “Through the 1950s, the GOP leadership remained predominantly Brahmin, the party constituency mainly rural, small town, white, Yankee, Protestant, and upper-middle class, and its ideology a moderate business conservatism.”23 As exemplified in the successes of James Michael Curley and Tip O’Neill, the Massachusetts Democratic Party initially gained power and the Republican Party correspondingly lost power in the state’s urban centers because Democratic candidates were more capable of responding to the needs of the ethnic laboring masses than Republican candidates were. While the Democratic candidates were outside observers who could rally around the cause of improving working conditions, the Republican candidates were the corporate owners who were actually creating the terrible conditions. The Republican candidates thus were not able to achieve substantial support from the laboring urban ethnic poor. Moreover, as Lockard indicated, interests groups in Massachusetts have, over the years, become strictly allied with one of the two parties. Because the state’s farm organizations maintained close ties with the Republican Party while the state’s labor organizations became linked to and thus campaigned solely for Democratic candidates, Republican candidates lost out as ethnic laborers became a more significant voter bloc than rural farmers.24

In 1948, Massachusetts voters as a whole were evenly split between the two parties: 25 percent were registered Democrats, and 25 percent were registered Republicans. By 1968, the Democratic Party had clearly gained substantial voter support, as a full 43 percent of registered voters were Democrats, and a mere 22 percent were Republicans.25 Clearly, by 1968, considerably more of the Massachusetts electorate chose to identify with the Democratic Party than chose to identify with the wealthy conservative elites that had historically dominated Massachusetts political life. But, this statewide preference for the Democratic Party was not due solely to the support of the state’s urban laborers. Indeed, the Democratic Party was able to achieve this statewide preference only when it received additional support from many suburbanites. As Illustration 3 suggests, this suburban support had increased substantially by 1988.26

INDUSTRIAL CHANGE: THE RISE OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FOURTH POLITICAL CULTURE

Following the Second World War, the Massachusetts economy has become less dependent on blue collar industry while it has become more dependent on the developing high technology industry. Indeed, the high technology industry has grown steadily in the Bay State, and today it is one of the state’s single largest industries.27 The Commonwealth’s urban ethnic laborers initially enabled Democratic politicians to rise to power in the Bay State, but these laborers never amounted to a large enough voter population outside of urban centers to elect Democratic politicians all across the state. In order to gain statewide support, Democratic politicians had to appeal to and gain the support of the suburban professionals laboring in the state’s burgeoning high technology sector. As this high technology sector has expanded and its managerial-professionals have thereby become an increasingly more significant voting bloc relative to urban laborers, Democratic politicians have been forced to devote themselves even more fully to appealing to this rising voting sector. Over the last thirty years and especially in recent years, Republican politicians have also begun to identify these suburban managerial-professionals as an increasingly important group of voters. Because the high tech industry and the process of suburbanization enabled the emergence the of this new type of voter, the development of the high tech industry and the movement towards greater suburbanization in the Bay State are two extremely important trends that deserve attention.

The high technology sector developed steadily in Massachusetts after the Second World War because of the defense contracting that had taken place in the state during the war. Once the war was over, many of the high technology companies that had worked for the government continued their business in the state. Since the nation’s defense needs did not cease with the end of that war—as the nation’s military encounters during the Cold War, specifically in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, required new defensive capabilities—the government continued to provide these companies with significant incentives to engineer “highly specialized defense goods.” The technological advances achieved in Massachusetts were not confined to the realm of national defense, however, as military improvements spawned the invention of many consumer goods. Massachusetts was particularly well-suited to such high technology advances, and “[t]he combination of government contracts, private venture capital, and the research facilities of the area’s universities resulted in the evolution of a fresh industrial base in Massachusetts, which increased per capita income and generated widespread employment.”28

In the 1950s and 1960s, the high technology industry, which today thrives along Route 128—often called “Silicon Highway”—was just developing (see Illustration 4, for a map showing the locus of the high technology industry along Route 128).29 Well in advance of new highway construction, many high technology companies searched for undeveloped land that was in close proximity to the great educational and research institutions in Boston and Cambridge. As the state devoted its resources to building Route 128, new companies hurried to plant their businesses in the suburbs along the highway.30 These many companies lining Route 128 employed numerous professionals who quickly settled with their families in the suburban communities near their jobs. It was this rising professional class that began “the massive suburbanization process,” the results of which are displayed in Illustration 5.31

Today, the employees of this new high technology sector and the state’s urban ethnic industrial workers (who, as discussed above, enabled the initial ascendancy of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts) are two of the state’s significant voting blocs, but these two groups are certainly not the state’s only classes of voters. In his 1965 study of political culture in Massachusetts, Edgar Litt described four main political cultures—yeomen, patricians, workers, and managers—which together direct the political life of the Bay State.32 These four political cultures range from reactionary conservative (the yeomen) to liberal progressive (the managers). Essentially, as Litt defined them, the yeomen are lower-middle class, conservative, Protestant old-stock Yankees of the state’s rural areas and small towns; the patricians are elite, wealthy, upper class, socially conservative, Protestant old-stock Yankees of the outer suburbs; the workers are urban, lower-middle class, socially liberal, Catholic new-stock ethnics of the core cities; and the managers—the newest group of the four—are intellectual, upper-middle class, socially liberal, new-stock ethnics of the inner suburbs. (An overview of more of the characteristics that Litt discussed can be found in Table 1.)33

The patrician class—whose members (such as, the Bradfords, the Saltonstalls, the Cabot Lodges, and the Coolidges) had long controlled Massachusetts politics—no longer presents the great political force that it did in the past. By the mid-1960s when Litt developed his theory regarding the four Massachusetts political cultures, the patricians were just beginning to exit the realm of politics.34 The departure of the patrician class from the political hierarchy left the door wide open for newcomers because, as Litt explained, “[a] nation which does not have an aristocratic past and has an eye on a self-made future will eschew the political notables of the past and shape new political elites which win deference through time, money, and inclination.”35 As the patrician class withdrew from the Commonwealth’s political life, it left a void for the rising newer political cultures to fill.

Like the patricians, the yeomen have also become less relevant in Massachusetts politics, as their overall percentage of the state’s voter population continues to decrease (see Illustration 6, for a cartogram showing the small size of the state’s rural population relative to its urban population in 1980). Litt described the yeomen as “the old-stock residue of small businessmen and rural workers, from the solid core of the Massachusetts Republican Party.” These individuals maintain the “ethos . . . of nineteenth century America with its emphasis on individual initiative, its distrust of bigness in government, corporations, labor unions, and international organizations, and a personalized, informal attitude toward friends and neighbors in the school committee, the bank, and the State House in Boston.” The downfall of the Massachusetts yeomen mirrors the situation of yeomen across the nation, who no longer shape the nation as they once did. Indeed, all across America, rural areas and less populous towns are much less politically and economically relevant in the context of American society than they once were.36

While the influence of the patrician and yeomen classes initially declined, the urban ethnic laborers (which Litt simply called workers) gained significant electoral strength. As explained above, Republican politicians continued to draw support from their traditional ideological adherents in the patrician and yeomen classes but ignored the demands of the rising class of workers. Democratic politicians, however, were particularly attentive to these demands. And as a result, these workers enabled the Democratic Party to achieve substantial electoral victories. These victories, though, remained localized in urban areas until Democratic politicians began to devote themselves to appealing to the newest of the state’s political cultures, which gradually took hold in the state’s suburbs.

The heritage of this new political culture—the suburban managers—is, as Litt explained, “Democratic, urban, immigrant, blue-collar, and entrepreneurial.” In other words, they come from the background of the workers. When many of today’s middle-aged managers were growing up in the 1950s, they yearned “for ‘status,’ defined as upper class, patrician Protestantism, and Republican Party membership.” But, beginning in the late 1950s, as Litt suggested, two developments radically altered their outlook on life. Americans were starting to look upon professional ability and achievement with much greater respect; for example, social status was certainly no longer among the most important criteria for gaining admission to select universities. Also, in the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy’s presidency imbued Democratic Party members with a new sense of pride.37 Politically, many managers thus found a welcome home in the Democratic Party, where managers were accepted for their academic achievements and where managers could find many causes to inspire them. Increasingly more as John F. Kennedy’s legacy fades with time, however, managerial-professionals have become less bound to the Democratic Party and more concerned with issues and candidates than with party affiliation.38

As Litt explains, the managers are focused on promoting “rationality, efficiency, organization, and progress” not only in their professional lives, but also in the public sphere that surrounds them.39 Because neither political party vociferously promotes these underlying premises strictly, managers are not closely tied to either party. Instead, managers are politically independent-minded: that is, willing to vote for a particular candidate of either party as long as that candidate upholds the aforementioned managerial values. Concerned with promoting such broad norms, managers have displayed commitment to a wide array of causes, including initiating state constitutional reform, investigating potential governmental corruption, stream lining the state’s bureaucratic processes, improving the state’s system of public education in order to enable all students in the Commonwealth to achieve same high level of professional ability that the managers have achieved, and diminishing the heavy burdens on workers that the managers’ parents had experienced.41 Because managers are particularly independent-minded voters, both parties have sought to appeal to them for support.

APPEALING TO MANAGERIAL-PROFESSIONALS

During the 1950s, these managers were quickly becoming a new political power base. In 1952, Massachusetts voters elected Democrat John F. Kennedy to the United States Senate, but they did not reelect Democratic Governor Paul A. Dever. In contrast to Kennedy, whom Dever had once nicknamed the “Irish Brahmin,” Dever, himself, was a “party regular of the urban lower-middle classes.” Dever’s 1952 defeat and Kennedy’s 1952 victory thus indicated, as Litt wrote, the “‘last hurrah’ for the urban, industrial centers as the unquestioned molders of the Democratic Party, its programs, and candidates.”41 The Democratic Party would not be able to achieve success in statewide elections unless it fielded candidates who were capable of appealing both to the Party’s urban base and to the state’s rising suburban managerial-professional class, who had come to include not only those working in the high tech industry, but also those well-educated managers and professionals of the legal, medical, and educational fields.

Litt offered clear evidence of the increasing need to appeal to this newer political culture. By 1964, the Democratic Party in Massachusetts had not fully learned from the Commonwealth’s most recent gubernatorial races that in order to win a statewide race the Party had to gain additional support outside of the Party’s traditional urban ethnic laborer base.42 Thus, although Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson won Massachusetts with a whopping 76 percent of the vote, the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Francis Bellotti, lost to his Republican challenger, John Volpe.43 A quick review of some of those preceding gubernatorial contests indicates Litt’s point. In 1952, the incumbent, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Dever lost to his Republican challenger Christian Herter because the Democrat was not able to respond to the suburban managers concerns regarding the more complex issues of “metropolitan planning, taxes, transportation, and education.”44 Herter was then reelected in 1954.45 In the 1956 and 1958 gubernatorial elections, the Democratic candidate Foster Furcolo won essentially due to his own membership in the suburban managerial class that supplanted his ethnic attraction.46 In the gubernatorial election of 1960, the Democratic candidate Joseph Ward lost because he “represented the party’s old urban-industrial core” and could form no connection to the managers of suburbia.47 In the gubernatorial election of 1962, the Democratic candidate Endicott Peabody won because as a Harvard-educated suburbanite, he was able to achieve the support of the “issue-oriented suburbanites,” in addition to successfully mobilizing the party’s urban base due to President Kennedy’s “strong personal endorsement.”48 As these gubernatorial elections reveal, Democratic candidates would have to reach out to this well-educated, professional sector if it wished to achieve statewide success.

By 1962, the managerial-professionals of the metropolitan suburbs were the most active voters, while the yeomen of the small towns were the least active. In addition, the percentage of urban voters among all voters had decreased. In 1940, voters from the state’s industrial centers comprised 47 percent of all voters who participated in the gubernatorial election, and voters from the state’s more rural towns constituted 39 percent of all voters. Voters from the metropolitan suburbs comprised the remaining 14 percent of voters. By 1962, however, voters from the state’s industrial centers comprised only 40 percent of all voters who participated in the election, and voters from the state’s more rural towns constituted just 32 percent of all voters. Thus, by 1962, the percentage of voters from the state’s suburban areas had doubled to comprise 28 percent of all voters who participated in the election. The metropolitan suburbs had thereby replaced the cities and towns as the locus of political participation in the Bay State.49 In the election of 1920, in which the desire to return to the pre-First World War lifestyle dominated the campaign, the rural yeomen constituted the political culture that displayed the highest percentage of voter turnout. However, just 40 years later, the conservative dominance of the yeomen had been replaced by a new political ethos. In the gubernatorial election of 1962, in which the desire to alter the state’s governmental process and structure dominated the campaign, the suburban managers constituted the political culture that displayed the highest percentage of voter turnout.50

Whereas in the gubernatorial elections of 1952, 1954, and 1960, the suburban managerial-professionals displayed their Republican tendencies, in the gubernatorial elections of 1956, 1958, and 1962, these managers exhibited their Democratic inclinations. Just as the ethnic laborers of the cities had originally, the managers and enabled the Democratic gubernatorial candidates to win in 1956, 1958, and 1962. By the 1960s, “the Massachusetts ‘progressive class’ [was] becoming increasingly composed of managers of communications, advertising, aerospace, and other bureaucracies.”51 In the 1960s and 1970s, these managers were many of the frontline activists in the efforts to oppose the Vietnam war and other progressive social movements of the time.52 Back then, they sought “to wrest political power from the local representatives of the rural, small-town, and core-city masses,” and since then, as their numbers have increased steadily with the high technology industrial boom in Massachusetts, they have succeeded in doing so.53

The Commonwealth’s fierce political climate—which was always marked by a long-standing tradition of bitter religious, ethnic, and social rivalries—attempted to challenge the evolution of this newest political culture of suburban managerial-professionals. Moreover, because the severe “political schisms between Irish and Yankee, Catholic and Protestant, Italo-American and Irish American burn in the recorded history of Massachusetts politics,” ethnicity and the “localism of the past” continue to play a significant role in all aspects of life in the Bay State.54 But, as managerial-professional voters have more forcefully articulated their concerns regarding the lack of government efficiency and their desires for improved government services, politicians have responded to their concerns; and as a result, the state’s traditionally ethnically oriented ideological politics have significantly diminished in fervor.55 With the increase in political activity of many members of the managerial-professional class relative to those in the urban working class, “ethnopolitical loyalties are no longer inflamed with the passions of old hatreds.”56 Today, this ethnic and economic class legacy is less resistant to the demands of the managerial-professional class. Thus, while candidates have had to appeal more seriously to this newer managerial political culture—whose members are more concerned with “technological, social, and political management” of government than with the basic labor-related social welfare concerns and ethnic rivalries of the workers—the state’s political parties have become devoted to substantially different causes than they had been devoted to previously.57 As I will discuss in great detail with respect to the Governors Francis Sargent, Michael Dukakis, and William Weld, and with respect to the 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial races, statewide political candidates in Massachusetts have responded to the new demands of active suburban managerial-professionals by focusing on managerial issues, such as promoting efficiency in government, improving the state’s public school system, and providing more extensive child care for working families. As many candidates have sought to respond to the concerns of the state’s more independent-minded managerial-professional suburban voters, both of the state’s political parties seem to have become less ethnically oriented and more technically oriented.

Thus, as well as decreasing the ethnic flammability of politics in the Bay State, the rise of the managers has brought about the rise of expert-based politics. The managers maintain particular notions of good management, which include an emphasis on “rationality, efficiency, organization, and progress,” and their emphasis on such issues has induced their political representatives to seek expert advice for those ends.58 Because politicians recognized the need to gain managerial support in order to win elections, politicians responded to managerial concerns. Indeed, the managers have thereby caused a major shift in the entire institutional process of government: the public sector now reflects the realities of the postindustrial private sector. In summary, as Litt explained in 1965:

At various points in its historical development, Massachusetts has been dominated by the political ethos of the rural, small-town yeomen, the Brahmin patricians, and the urban workers, especially the Boston-Irish community. Today, Massachusetts is part of a postindustrial society that emphasizes technical, clerical, and professional skills to man the burgeoning scientific, defense, educational, and administrative institutions. At the same time, the older industries based on water power, the soil, and unskilled labor are in decline. While the older core cities and small towns have contracted in population and importance, new suburbs of white-collar and professional people have developed.59

The state’s political elites have certainly always responded to demographic and industrial changes within the Commonwealth, and the present political landscape reflects this response. As the Bay State’s high technology sector has boomed in the four decades since Litt completed his study, the suburban professionals have become an even more important voting bloc. Thus, the views of this managerial-professional class now dominate current political debates in Massachusetts.

With the rise of this newest political culture, the candidates of both parties have sought to devote themselves to its demands. In the past three decades the Democratic Party has almost continuously maintained control over two thirds of the Commonwealth’s General Court.60 One might thus extrapolate that such dominance suggests that Democratic candidates have successfully aligned themselves with the managers. But, because, as Mileur and Sulzner explain, “the suburbs are generally underrepresented in the state legislature, so that the voice of the ‘managers’ is not as strong as it [could be],” this long-standing Democratic dominance in the General Court does not by itself suggest that the Democratic Party has achieved substantial managerial support.61 Currently, however, a full slate of Democratic politicians also represents Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress—including the districts of the suburban managers—which does seem to indicate that Democratic candidates have become more successful at appealing to this newer political culture than Republican candidates have. Certainly, one can conclude that the Democratic candidates for U.S. Senator have been able to achieve significant managerial support in the past thirty years, as Massachusetts voters have elected the Democratic candidate in ten out of the last eleven senatorial elections.

But, the Commonwealth’s gubernatorial election results do not offer the same picture of statewide Democratic dominance. Indeed, as these gubernatorial elections indicate, there are a number of Republican politicians who have successfully garnered significant managerial support in statewide elections. In fact, the Democratic and Republican candidates have evenly split the last eight gubernatorial elections. All five of the candidates who have been elected governor of Massachusetts in the last thirty years have had to appeal to and gain support from suburban managerial-professionals. Their election experiences are clearly worth noting, as they indicate how both Democratic and Republican candidates can be successful when they appeal to the managers. Moreover, if the state’s Democratic Party wishes to extend its dominance over state politics to include the dominance of the governor’s office, it would be wise to heed the following examples.

The Republican Francis W. Sargent was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1970, after having served as governor during the final two years of John Volpe’s term. Sargent “was a purebred New England Yankee” who had studied architecture at MIT. Because of his concrete technical schooling, Sargent was not the typical patrician Massachusetts Republican politician who had attended Harvard Law School.62 He was thus personally quite appealing to professional-managers who dealt with concrete technical matters on a daily basis. Sargent was also not the prototypical Republican ideologically, for he had been “an environmentalist before the term came into popular usage” and had sought to separate himself from Richard Nixon and other solidly conservative Republicans. As a politician, Sargent “championed the needs of the poor, but socially he gravitated toward the rich and the powerful”—making him quite compatible with managerial-professionals who grew up as the children of blue-collar urban immigrants and who dreamed of attaining upper-class status. Sargent’s breeding and learning thus made him “a leader whose popular appeal transcended party lines.” Moreover, Sargent attempted to cultivate this characteristic, for during his campaigning, he focused on gaining the support of “women, blacks, Hispanics, and the elderly.” 63 In his two years serving as governor prior to his election, Sargent had demonstrated his desire to surround himself with the most knowledgeable and most qualified advisors, even if these individuals were not Republicans—a keen managerial style that enabled him to gain substantial support from suburban managerial-professionals. Sargent’s personal and political manner made him the managers’ obvious choice for governor in 1970.

Aided by the state’s developing economic woes (for which Sargent received the blame), by increasing racial unrest in Boston due to school integration efforts, and by public dissatisfaction with the Republican Party following Watergate, Democrat Michael Dukakis soundly defeated Frank Sargent in 1974 and became the Commonwealth’s new governor.64 To a far greater extent than Sargent, Dukakis was intimately concerned with the details of legislation—thereby epitomizing the term “policy wonk.” Although not as amiable as Sargent, Dukakis was particularly appealing to managerial-professionals because of his great intelligence and interest in promoting professionalism in the state’s civil service.65 Like any good manager, he was truly devoted to improving the functioning of bureaucracy by doing away with “fraud, waste, and corruption in state government.” During his challenging first term as governor, however, Dukakis learned the hard way “that campaigning was not the same as governing.”66 Dukakis served a rather unsuccessful first term as governor, and then in 1978 failed to win his party’s nomination for a second term as governor.

After spending a few years away from state politics while working at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Dukakis was again able to garner enough managerial support and to be reelected governor in 1982. Armed with a plan to invigorate “several lethargic departments, like mental health and public works, and [force] them to run a little less dysfunctionally,”67 Dukakis once again seemed particularly appealing to managers, who “seek to transform [political] institutions into rational instruments that will cope with public problems.”68 Because of his great success in improving the quality of life in the Commonwealth during his second term, Dukakis was reelected to a third term in 1986, receiving almost 69 percent of votes.69 By the end of his second term, however, Dukakis’ “Massachusetts Miracle”—the state’s amazing economic recovery in the 1980s—was beginning to fade. Shortly after losing the 1988 presidential election to George H.W. Bush, Dukakis declared that he would not seek reelection as Massachusetts governor.

In 1990, in the next gubernatorial election, the Republicans once again took control of the commonwealth’s executive branch. Although currently the Republican Party continues to receive the bulk of its support mainly from the rural and patrician interests “found in the small towns south and west of Boston, on Cape Cod, and in the Berkshires, as well as along the northern and southern borders of the Commonwealth,” the Party’s most recent gubernatorial candidates were able to capture enough additional managerial support to win control of the governor’s office in 1990, 1994, and 1998.70 Because suburban managerial-professionals are increasingly more concerned with issues and with candidates than with party affiliation, these professionals are dropping their Democratic status and re-registering as unenrolled voters.71 Indeed (as I will describe in great detail in the following chapters), this same group of suburban professionals who elected Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1982 and in 1986, also elected Republican William Weld as governor in 1990 and in 1994, and Republican Paul Cellucci as governor in 1998.

Weld was particularly appealing to managers because—rather similarly to the managers themselves—“[h]is political views fit no discernible pattern,” as he is both socially liberal and fiscally conservative.72 After several years of recession, increasing deficits, and rising taxes, Massachusetts voters were displeased with the Dukakis legacy and were ready for meaningful political change.73 Weld’s libertarianism thus seemed like the proper antidote to Dukakis’ “‘hands-on’ management style.”74 During the gubernatorial campaign, Weld also benefited from the abrasive manner displayed by his Democratic opponent John Silber during a televised interview with a very well-respected Boston-area newscaster. Weld’s pleasant and well-bred demeanor and his exceptional intelligence combined to make him the managers’ most obvious choice for governor. Due to high approval ratings, Weld was reelected in 1994 with almost 69 percent of votes.75 Weld’s Lieutenant Governor Paul Cellucci finished out the final years of Weld’s term after Weld resigned in July of 1997, in an attempt to become the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Working from Weld’s high approval ratings and against a fractured Massachusetts Democratic Party, Cellucci defeated his Democratic gubernatorial challenger, Scott Harshbarger, and was elected governor in 1998.

Cellucci’s election was particularly revealing in regard to the importance of managerial-professionals. Although, as Illustration 7 indicates, Cellucci did not fare well with voters who had postgraduate education; he won only 39 percent of their votes.76 Cellucci did, however, do extremely well in a number of towns with some of the highest concentrations of managerial-professionals in the state. In Andover, Bolton, Boxborough, Boxford, Carlisle, Dover, Harvard, Sherborn, Sudbury, Topsfield, Wellesley, Weston, and Winchester—all towns in which, according to the 1990 U.S. Census, managerial-professionals constituted over 50 percent of all employed persons—Cellucci defeated Harshbarger by 5 percentage points or more.77 Clearly, as I will discuss in great detail in chapter four, managerial-professionals played a key role in Cellucci’s 50 percent to 47 percent victory over Harshbarger.78

Today in Massachusetts, the Democratic Party continues to dominate the elections of local officials, state legislators, and U.S. congressmen, while the Republican Party has won many of the state’s gubernatorial elections. Though Republican gubernatorial candidates have capitalized on the independent-mindedness of managerial-professionals, Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, on the other hand, have not focused on deriving support from these independent-minded managers. The state’s extremely respected Democratic Senators, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, have, however, successfully appealed to this group of voters. In 1994, Republican venture capitalist and political newcomer Mitt Romney ran against the very politically experienced Senator Ted Kennedy. Although widely respected for his business expertise, Romney eventually lost to Kennedy by a margin of approximately 17 percentage points.79 In 1996 (as I will discuss in greater detail below), Governor Weld challenged Senator Kerry for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Focusing on a traditionally Republican set of issues (crime, welfare, and taxes), Weld failed to address the issues that were most important to suburban managers and lost the election to Senator Kerry by 7 percentage points.80 In 2000, Republican Jack E. Robinson and Libertarian Carla Howell sought to challenge Senator Kennedy. Robinson, a cellular communications executive, never gained much support even among Republicans. Following several allegations of serious violations of the law, the state’s Republican Party even withdrew their support for Robinson. Howell, meanwhile, simply did not have enough financial resources to compete. Winning 72 percent of the votes, Kennedy—the obvious choice among managerial-professionals for his great legislative experience and understanding, and for his professionalism in the Senate—easily defeated both candidates.81

With respect to senatorial campaigns, managerial-professionals have been particularly kind to candidates from the state’s Democratic Party. However, with respect to gubernatorial races, over the past three decades, independent-minded managers have helped and hurt both parties. In 1974, 1978, 1982, and 1986, they enabled Democratic gubernatorial victories; and in 1970, 1990, 1994, and 1998, they enabled Republican gubernatorial victories. Candidates of both parties who wish to attain statewide offices must thus garner support from this newest and most independent-minded of the four political cultures that thrive in the Bay State.

The 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial race will present an interesting case study for testing my theory regarding the importance of appealing to and garnering the support of the managerial class. Acting Governor Republican Jane Swift wisely realized that she would face significant and insurmountable challenges from the very well-liked Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitt Romney and from a strong cadre of Democratic gubernatorial candidates who were all potentially more appealing to suburban professionals than the scandal-prone Swift. Concerned about complex issues of government management, the managerial-professionals have little patience for ineffective managers. Swift would not be their likely choice for governor. She had been investigated for serious state ethics violations for requiring her government staffers to take care of her young baby (for which she was punished with a $1,250 fine) and had also carried out a whole host of questionable decisions (which I will examine in great detail in chapter five). If Swift had remained in the race, she would have had to bear the tremendously difficult burden of convincing a majority of Massachusetts voters—many of whom are the suburban managerial-professionals who are most concerned about managerial ability and professionalism—that she was capable of managing the state’s affairs while simultaneously attending to her own personal affairs.82

It is quite telling that Swift realized that she would not be capable of garnering this managerial support, on which her electoral success depended. Because Swift was not at all attractive to the managers, her Democratic opponents would have far more easily garnered managerial support. Before Romney entered the race, the Democratic Party leadership was certain that one of the Party’s candidates would prevent the Republican Party from maintaining its control over the state’s executive branch. Romney’s entrance into the race slightly complicated the situation facing the Democratic gubernatorial candidates, whose party had been trying to retake control of the governor’s office since William Weld was first elected governor in 1990. Even with Romney’s candidacy, however, the Democratic Party leadership was in a significantly stronger position entering the 2002 gubernatorial election than it had been entering the 1994 and 1998 elections. Despite Romney’s managerial success at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, which he presided over as president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee, Bay State Democratic politicians would find ways of discrediting his managerial abilities, just as Ted Kennedy had during the 1994 senatorial race. In order to maintain its stronger position, the Democratic Party would have to begin appealing directly to and garnering the support of the state’s more independent-minded managerial-professionals. Indeed, this voting bloc will be the key to the success of both parties in future statewide contests.

  1. Ibid., 79 ⏎
  2. Duane Lockard, New England State Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 121 ⏎
  3. Richard Hogarty, “Chapter 1: On Understanding Power in Massachusetts, 2001,” TMsS, 13 ⏎
  4. Ibid., 14 ⏎
  5. Lockard, 122 ⏎
  6. Mileur, 79 ⏎
  7. Ibid., 80 ⏎
  8. Jerome M. Mileur and George T. Sulzner, Campaigning for the Massachusetts Senate: Electioneering Outside the Political Limelight, vol. 1, The University of Massachusetts Series in Government (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1974), 23, 28 ⏎
  9. Richard W. Wilkie and Jack Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 58 ⏎
  10. Mileur, 79-80 ⏎
  11. Wilkie and Tager, 74 ⏎
  12. Lockard, 121 ⏎
  13. Ibid., 152 ⏎
  14. Ibid., 120 ⏎
  15. Mileur, 81 ⏎
  16. Lockard, 163 ⏎
  17. Wilkie and Tager, 74. As of the most recent (18 October 2000) Massachusetts voter enrollment data, 36 percent of Massachusetts voters are presently registered as Democrats, 14 percent are registered as Republicans, and 49 percent are registered as unenrolled voters ⏎
  18. Ibid., 74 ⏎
  19. Hogarty, “On Understanding Power,” 1 ⏎
  20. Wilkie and Tager, 46 ⏎
  21. Ibid., 52 ⏎
  22. Ibid., 47 ⏎
  23. Ibid., 46-47 ⏎
  24. Mileur, 82-83 ⏎
  25. Litt, 24 ⏎
  26. Ibid., 7 ⏎
  27. Ibid., 8 ⏎
  28. Ibid., 12 ⏎
  29. Ibid., 20-21 ⏎
  30. Mileur and Sulzner, 22 ⏎
  31. Litt, 88 ⏎
  32. Ibid., 22-23 ⏎
  33. Ibid., 46-47 ⏎
  34. Ibid., 2 ⏎
  35. Multieducator, Inc., “1964-State Results,” available from http://www.multied.com/elections/1964state.html; accessed on 31 January 2002 ⏎
  36. Litt, 50-51 ⏎
  37. Until the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1919, governors of the Commonwealth served only one-year terms. Following that convention and until 1966, governors served two-year terms. From 1966 through the present, governors have served four-year terms ⏎
  38. Litt, 45 ⏎
  39. Ibid., 46 ⏎
  40. Ibid., 150, 145 ⏎
  41. Ibid., 48 ⏎
  42. Ibid., 52-53 ⏎
  43. Ibid., 61 ⏎
  44. Mileur, 93 ⏎
  45. Litt, 61 ⏎
  46. Ibid., 64 ⏎
  47. Ibid., 3 ⏎
  48. Ibid., 67 ⏎
  49. Ibid., 1 ⏎
  50. Ibid., 88 ⏎
  51. Ibid., 201 ⏎
  52. Wilkie and Tager, 74 ⏎
  53. Mileur and Sulzner, 23 ⏎
  54. Hogarty, “The Sargent Governorship: Leader and Legacy,” New England Journal of Public Policy (Fall/Winter 1999-2000): 116 ⏎
  55. Ibid., 117-121 ⏎
  56. Hogarty, “On Understanding Power,” 32 ⏎
  57. Hogarty, “The Sargent Governorship,” 134 ⏎
  58. Hogarty, “On Understanding Power,” 32-33 ⏎
  59. Ibid., 33 ⏎
  60. Litt, 209 ⏎
  61. Mileur, 88 ⏎
  62. Ibid., 93 ⏎
  63. Mileur and Sulzner, 22 ⏎
  64. Hogarty, “On Understanding Power,” 12 ⏎
  65. Cited in Ibid., 34 ⏎
  66. Ibid., 33 ⏎
  67. Mileur, 87 ⏎
  68. “Town by town: The vote for governor,” Boston Globe (5 November 1998), B1 ⏎
  69. This data will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter. See appendix for actual census occupational data ⏎
  70. Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts Elections Statistics: 1998, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43: 1998, (Boston, 1998), 83. I have included the percentages from Public Document No. 43, which disagree slightly with those indicated in Illustration 7, because the data reported in Public Document 43 represent the state’s official election results ⏎
  71. Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts Elections Statistics: 1994, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43: 1994, (Boston, 1994), 81 ⏎
  72. Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts Elections Statistics: 1996, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43: 1996, (Boston, 1996), 261 ⏎
  73. Frank Phillips, “Kennedy wins big for 7th term Robinson still upbeat, vowing ‘I shall return,’” Boston Globe (8 November 2000), B1 ⏎
  74. Frank Phillips, “Swift amasses funds, stirs talk of likely run,” Boston Globe (1 May 2001), A01 ⏎

CHAPTER 3
Increasing Independent-Mindedness

NOTIONS OF INDEPENDENT-MINDEDNESS

One month before Paul Cellucci defeated Scott Harshbarger in the 1998 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, a staff writer for the Boston Globe cited the increasing independent-mindedness of suburban managerial-professionals and suggested that in order to win the election, Cellucci would have to appeal to the growing number of independent-minded voters who lived in the suburban towns located between Routes 128 and 495. In his article, Brian Mooney argued that these independent-minded voters “hold the balance of power in Massachusetts.”83 Indeed, as I explained in the previous chapter, Massachusetts has become increasingly suburbanized with the development of the high technology industry along “America’s Technology Highway” (Route 128) and Route 495. What is particularly interesting about this growth, as Mooney noted, is the fact that this rapid suburbanization has radically altered the makeup of the Massachusetts voter pool. The Boston Globe’s demographic analysis revealed that by 1998, the numbers of suburban voters had “grown at three times the rate of the rest of the state” and encompassed almost one third of all voters in Massachusetts.84 According to Mooney’s figures, 48.9 percent of all voters in Massachusetts were registered as unenrolled, while 54 percent of voters were registered as unenrolled within just the particular region that the Boston Globe defined as suburban. Suburban voters, as Mooney argued, were thus a major portion of the state’s electorate who were notably more independent-minded than the rest of the state.

Mooney maintained that this group of suburban voters enabled the Democratic candidate Senator John Kerry to defeat his Republican challenger Governor William Weld in a hard-fought 1996 senate campaign. As I noted in the previous chapter, Kerry harped on the issues that are most important to this group of voters, such as the fate of the state’s “public schools, savings for tuitions and retirement, and job security.” Weld, however, largely ignored these issues in the 1996 campaign, focusing instead on “welfare, crime, and taxes.” In order to avoid Weld’s 1996 fate, Mooney insisted, Cellucci would have to appeal to suburban managerial-professionals in the same manner that Kerry did.

As I wrote in the previous chapter, Cellucci seemed to do exactly as Mooney insisted he should. Cellucci successfully reached out to suburban managerial-professionals in the final weeks of the gubernatorial campaign by emphasizing the issues of education and health care; and he thereby won handily in many of the suburban towns that are most densely populated with managerial-professionals.85 Illustration 7 reveals the exact town by town breakdown of this victory.

Mooney’s view regarding the importance of these suburban managerial-professionals for statewide political candidates seemed largely supported by the 1998 gubernatorial campaign. But, the background evidence that Mooney provided in his Globe article for the emergence of this group of voters was particularly thin; more evidence would be necessary to confirm that (1) this group of suburban voters were indeed more independent-minded than the rest of the state’s voters and that (2) these managerial-professional suburban voters held “the balance of power in Massachusetts.” I thus undertook my own investigation of this growing independent-mindedness among Massachusetts voters, and I present the results below.

INVESTIGATING INDEPENDENT-MINDEDNESS

In Massachusetts, voters register as Democrats, Republicans, or as unenrolled voters.86 By registering as unenrolled, voters have the option of voting in either the Democratic or the Republican primary. Thus, by choosing to register as unenrolled an individual indicates that he is not tied exclusively to either party, but is instead rather politically independent-minded.

Recently, however, some political scientists have argued that choosing to register as unenrolled does not indicate pure independent-mindedness. In their study entitled The Myth of the Independent Voter, published in 1992, Keith et al. argue that among voters in the United States, unenrolled voters “are more diverse than either Republicans or Democrats. Most of them are not uncommitted, and they are not a bloc. They are largely closet Democrats and Republicans.”87 Instead of one uniform group of independent-minded individuals, Keith et al. claim that unenrolled voters represent two widely diverging groups: partisan and Pure Independents. The authors contend that partisan Independents are actually “leaners” who tend to vote loyally with one party.88 And the authors explain that Pure Independents, by contrast, do not show any particular affinity with either party and tend to be less active voters overall.89

The claims of Keith et al. seem largely supported by the wealth of evidence they provide in their extensive study of American voters. However, it is not critically important for my study of Massachusetts voters (or for those statewide political office seekers in the Bay State who have the most to gain from my study) whether the single, large cohort of American unenrolled voters are truly “Pure Independents” or whether they are “leaners.” Despite the fact that an unenrolled voter might lean towards one party more often than not, a candidate of either party does indeed have a substantial chance of gaining the support of that unenrolled voter when the candidate appeals directly to him for support. This situation is quite different from the situation that candidates face when they attempt to gain the support of voters who have chosen to register with a particular party. A voter who is registered with a particular party will be more likely to offer his support to a candidate of his own party than to a candidate of another party simply because the partisan voter and the candidate of same party share a common bond in having declared their allegiance to a single party. By contrast, I maintain that by choosing to register as unenrolled, voters in Massachusetts reveal that they are less likely to vote based on such party affiliation and more likely to vote based on the opinions and the personalities of the candidates. In other words, an unenrolled voter will inherently be more independent-minded than a voter who has registered with a particular political party. A candidate of either party has a much more substantial chance of gaining the support of a voter who is unenrolled—and by definition, more independent-minded—than gaining the support of a voter who has enrolled with a rival party. Therefore, any candidate has the opportunity to gain substantial support (beyond what he receives from his own traditional party supporters) when he appeals directly to unenrolled voters. Hence, it is extremely significant for candidates and for political leaders in Massachusetts to understand the extent and significance of the new independent-minded ethos—so salient among unenrolled suburban voters—that is quickly becoming the dominant political ethos in the Commonwealth.

In order to measure such independent-mindedness among all Massachusetts voters and among managerial-professionals in particular, I examined Massachusetts voter enrollment data from 1976 through 2000. Because the Massachusetts Elections Division began recording the specifics of voter enrollment for each town in the Commonwealth only in 1976, it is possible to examine the town by town trend only over the past 25 years.90 Nonetheless, the enrollment trend over just the last 25 years, as I will discuss below, importantly reveals that (1) suburban managers are indeed more likely to register as unenrolled voters and are therefore more independent-minded than the rest of the state’s voters and that (2) independent-minded voters (many of whom are managerial-professionals) do, as Brian Mooney maintained, “hold the balance of power in Massachusetts.”

In order to separate managerial-professionals from the rest of employed registered voters in Massachusetts, I first examined occupational data from the U.S. census dating back to 1960, just 9 years after Route 128 was built—as the high technology industry was beginning to thrive in the Bay State. Between 1960 and 1990, the U.S. Bureau of the Census slightly varied its occupational classification names for individuals whom I included in my study as managerial-professionals.91 From the 1960 census, I included data from the two occupational groups: “professional, technical, and kindred workers” and “managers, officials, and proprietors, except farm.” Under these two classifications, the 1960 census included, for example, engineers, technical workers, medical workers, other health workers, teachers, accountants, scientists, professors, clergymen, lawyers, building managers, public officials, as well as many others.92 From the 1970 census, I included data from the two groups: “professional, technical, and kindred workers” and “managers and administrators, except farm.” These two groups included the same occupations listed above.93 From the 1980 and 1990 censuses, I included the group: “managerial and professional specialty occupations,” which again included the same occupations as listed above.94

After sifting through data from almost every town in Massachusetts, I was able to define a particular statistical area in Massachusetts where most managerial-professionals live. To determine where managerial-professionals live, I first tabulated the numbers of employed persons and the numbers of managerial-professionals for each town. I then calculated the percentage of managerial-professionals within those towns and compared those percentages to the percentage of managerial-professionals within the entire state. Because (as Illustration 4 shows) the locus of high technology in Massachusetts lies between and along Routes 128 and 495, my finding that higher percentages of managerial-professionals live in the towns located between and along these two highways than in the rest of the state was not particularly surprising. I thus defined my statistical area to include 89 towns, all located between and along Routes 128 and 495. The towns in my statistical area are all listed in the left-most column of Tables 3-17.

Managerial Professional Statistical Area in Massachusetts

In order to understand the extent of independent-mindedness among voters in this statistical area—that is, within an area that is dominated by managerial-professionals—I first tabulated the total number of registered voters and the number of voters registered as unenrolled within each of the towns in my statistical area. I then calculated the percentages of unenrolled voters out of all registered voters within each of these towns. Finally, I summed the numbers of all registered voters and the numbers of voters registered as unenrolled within my statistical area. With these totals for my statistical area, I calculated the percentage of unenrolled voters out of all registered voters within my statistical area. Also, in order to determine the number of registered voters and the number of voters registered as unenrolled for the rest of the state (i.e., all the towns outside of my statistical area), I subtracted the totals for my statistical area from the totals for all of Massachusetts. I then calculated the percentage of unenrolled voters out of all registered voters for the rest of the state. I performed all of these tabulations and calculations based on data that the Massachusetts Elections Division had collected every two years, from August of 1976 through (most recently) August of 2000. All of these tabulations and calculations are displayed in Tables 3-17. For the years of 1980 and 1990, these voter enrollment calculations are placed alongside the occupational data on managerial-professionals from the U.S. Population Censuses that were completed in those years.

In order to appreciate fully the development of this greater independent-mindedness among voters in Massachusetts, I compiled all of these tabulations and calculations into a summary graph. The summary data, displayed in Table 2, for this graph comes directly from all the data shown in Tables 3-17. This summary table and its companion graph, shown in Illustration 8, reveal a number of interesting insights into the independent-mindedness of voters. As I explained previously, and as the bottom dashed line and the middle solid line on the graph reveal, the percentage of managerial-professionals in Massachusetts rose steadily between 1960 and 1990.95 In Massachusetts in 1960, under one fifth of all employed persons who lived outside of the statistical area were employed as managerial-professionals.96 Within the statistical area, over one quarter of employed persons were employed as managerial-professionals.97 But even this fraction was still quite small. By thirty years later, however, the fraction of people employed as managerial-professionals had increased substantially. In 1990, outside of the statistical area, more than one quarter of employed persons were managerial-professionals.98 Within the statistical area, the fraction of managerial-professionals had increased to almost two fifths.99 It is certainly not surprising that the data reveal an increasing trend in the fraction of people employed as managerial-professionals, and it is also not surprising that the percentage of managerial-professionals remains higher in the statistical area—which is located in close proximity to the majority of the state’s high technology corporations—than the percentage of managerial-professionals in the rest of the state.

What is particularly noteworthy regarding the data, however, is the link between the percentage of people registered as unenrolled voters and the percentage of people employed as managerial-professionals. In 1976, just over one third of all voters outside the statistical area were registered as unenrolled.100 Within the statistical area, slightly over two fifths of voters were registered as unenrolled.101 By 2000, the fractions of voters registered as unenrolled had markedly increased. These most recent enrollment data reveal that just under one half of all voters outside the statistical area are registered as unenrolled voters.102 Within the statistical area, more than one half of all voters are registered as unenrolled.103 Suburban managerial-professionals are thus more politically independent-minded than the rest of the state’s voters. Also, as the top solid line and the upper dashed line indicate, the percentage of unenrolled voters has been increasing in Massachusetts since 1976; and as a result, these independent-minded voters are capable of wielding a larger share of the political power in the Bay State.

There have been slight fluctuations up and down, but—as with the percentage of managerial-professionals—the general trend in voters choosing to register as unenrolled has continued to rise. The slight drops all seem to correspond with presidential election years. One might thus assume that the slight drops within the statistical area in 1984, 1988, and in 2000 in the percentage of voters registered as unenrolled were due to the renewed interest in party affiliation brought out by the more aggressive, presidential election-year campaigning of the Democratic and Republican Parties. However, this slight drop does not show up in the presidential election years of 1992 and 1996, when Bill Clinton was first elected and then re-elected president. Instead, in keeping with the overall trend, the percentage of voters registered as unenrolled increased in those years. This data suggests that during the 1990s, independent-mindedness became more prevalent among Bay State voters. Today, as this data suggests, independent-mindedness is the dominant political ethos statewide.104

It seems rather peculiar, however, that in 2000 the percentage of unenrolled voters decreased very slightly in the statistical area, while it simultaneously increased in the rest of the state. One might speculate that the increase in the rest of the state might be related to the interest that developed in Massachusetts around John McCain’s presidential campaign. At the time of the 2000 presidential primary in Massachusetts, many voters who were not strictly tied to either party wished to express their support for McCain’s commitment to campaign finance reform by changing their party affiliation to unenrolled in order to be able to vote for McCain in the Republican primary. However, because these voters did not wish to affiliate strictly with either party, they were not comfortable with the notion of registering as Republicans. Instead, these voters wished to maintain their independence of the two parties. There was such great interest in expressing support for McCain that every day the Secretary of State’s office was receiving “thousands of phone calls from residents asking whether they [could] vote in the GOP primary.”105 It seems rather implausible that these thousands of voters were motivated to go to the trouble of determining how to alter their voter enrollment because of slow, careful, rational consideration of how they might vote most strategically. Instead, it seems much more likely that these thousands of voters were impelled by a passionate interest in McCain’s ideas that was independent of any partisan sentiment.

Such an overwhelming interest in switching party affiliation thus indicates the developing independent-minded spirit among Massachusetts voters. Voters are clearly no longer tied strictly to specific political parties, but are instead more interested in the views and personalities of particular candidates. And moreover, the state’s policy on registering as unenrolled enables all Massachusetts voters to express this independent-mindedness. Since 1996, unenrolled voters in the Commonwealth have been able to participate in either party’s primary. While the Bay State is not alone in empowering this independent-minded attitude, many states, such as New York, Delaware, and California, do not enable this attitude to develop and instead act to undermine this attitude by enforcing strict rules on who can vote in the primaries.106

Despite small fluctuations during presidential election years, the overall trend is quite clear: the percentage of unenrolled voters out of all registered voters in Massachusetts is increasing. And rather importantly, the percentage of unenrolled voters remains higher within the statistical area than in the rest of the state. Independent-mindedness among voters is increasing in Massachusetts, and this new ethos is most prevalent among managerial-professionals.

ONE EXPLANATION REGARDING THE MEANING OF THE NEWLY DOMINANT INDEPENDENT-MINDED ETHOS IN MASSACHUSETTS

Although this new ethos is becoming increasingly important to candidates for statewide office, it is not easily defined. Massachusetts has been home to many different political philosophies in its long history, but it has always been governed by a single progressive philosophy: i.e., the notion that the state’s governing philosophy must be evolving continuously based on the economic needs of the state and on the demands of the contemporary social milieu.107 This new independent attitude that is quickly taking hold all across the Bay State, but primarily among suburban managerial-professionals, is merely the newest form of the state’s political philosophy.

In an article that was printed in the magazine section of the Boston Globe just two weeks before the 1998 gubernatorial election, one Globe staff writer argued that this new independent-minded ethos could best be characterized as “libertarian liberalism.”108 This notion implies a sense of open-mindedness that is concerned with individual liberty and individual rights, and is also devoted to progress and social equality. This new attitude is neither precisely libertarian—that is, consumed by the need for individual autonomy to confront the threat posed by state power—nor precisely liberal (in the modern political sense)—that is, wholly supportive of strong state intervention in all aspects of the state’s economy and of concerted government action to tackle difficult social problems. Rather, as Robert Turner described it in his article, this attitude is located on the ideological spectrum somewhere between the two notions of libertarianism and liberalism.

Turner suggested that this new attitude developed from “the strain that runs deepest in Massachusetts’s political soul;” it is derived from a stanch commitment to “individual liberty.” Turner explained that it is the same belief that Sam Adams and the other outspoken Massachusetts patriots fought for, that the abolitionists vociferously called for, and that contemporary Massachusetts politicians maintain when they urge fiscal conservatism and when they try to downplay the role that the state government plays in the lives of the state’s citizens.

The state’s first Republican Governor of the 1990s, Governor William Weld, stood out as the state’s first major statewide politician to showcase the libertarian mantle and inaugurate this new attitude. As Turner indicated, Weld sought to reduce the size of the state government’s role in all matters, public and private. He firmly believed that the state should diminish its involvement in individual matters, such as those involving homosexuality and abortion. Socially liberal views like these are certainly not typical of Republicans, but these nationally anomalous views are typical for a state where independent-mindedness has come to dominate. Indeed, Weld was particularly proud of his independent-minded views. In his 1998 novel, Mackerel by Moonlight, Weld highlighted the like-mindedly unconstrained views of the novel’s hero, who “triumphantly” proclaimed: “I think for myself. I . . . call ’em like I see ’em.”109

Senator John Kerry and Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II are two other extremely influential Massachusetts politicians who have shown some distance from the typical views of their party. The two Democrats have both endorsed fiscally conservative measures while representing the state in the U.S. Senate and House, respectively. In 1985, Senator Kerry voted in favor of the Gramm-Rudman amendment which sought to reduce the national deficit. Similarly, Representative Kennedy has long shown his approval for adopting a Constitutional balanced-budget amendment.110

Again, in a fashion that was somewhat at odds with typical Democratic views, Michael Dukakis was first elected governor of Massachusetts in 1974 as a government-reformer. As Turner suggested, Dukakis did not hold mainstream Democratic views at a time when the state’s Democratic Party was intimately connected to the state’s labor unions and was seeking to increase government spending.

During the 1990 gubernatorial campaign, as Turner pointed out, John Silber’s campaign drew a great deal of interest because of Silber’s upstart performance at the Massachusetts Democratic Party convention, where he was able to gain the required 15 percent of delegate support in order to become a candidate in the Democratic primary. Silber, who was then Boston University President, was largely unknown before the Party’s convention. But, following the convention, he attracted substantial voter support as an independent-minded candidate, who stood out from the typical party-regular candidates.

As Turner elucidated, Massachusetts is no longer the “prolific Democratic proving ground” that it once was.111 Very few individuals remain in Washington who still represent the state’s nationally influential generation of proud liberal Democrats. Out of the following impressive list of influential Democrats: President John F. Kennedy, Representative John McCormack (Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1962 to 1970), Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Representative Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1986), and 1992 Democratic presidential candidate Paul Tsongas, only Senator Kennedy remains in Washington today.

Boston’s new status as the world’s “third biggest financial center” has, as Turner explained, changed the Bay State quite dramatically.112 Turner suggested that this new status has shifted the state’s political focus away from the traditionally motivating social issues that have long dominated political discussions in the Commonwealth, and towards issues of fiscal management. Today, the ethnic divisions and class rivalries that once directed the state’s violent political life are considerably less salient. Based on Turner’s article, one might even assume that such ethnic clashing had disappeared entirely from the state’s political realm. But, this assumption is most certainly not correct. Indeed, this new independent-minded attitude has quite definitely undermined the importance of ethnic differences, but it has in no way erased their presence altogether. As Philip Johnston, the chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, explains, “ethnicity remains a very important issue in this state.”113 Johnston suggests that even for independent-minded managerial professionals, ethnicity remains an important issue because even those individuals “have their own family political histories that are important and their own family biases; and while [one] might have a Princeton degree, which would put [one] into that class, it may be that [one’s] father or . . . grandfather came over here from Russia or someplace and didn’t have a dime; and [one] shouldn’t forget that, and so there is this little piece . . . which remembers.”114 Even as individuals have grown more independent-minded, they have not completely forgotten their ethnic backgrounds.

Nonetheless, a new attitude has clearly superseded the old entirely ethnically-driven politics of the Bay State. As I stated previously, Turner characterized this new independent-minded attitude that was emerging among the state’s politicians in the 1980s and 1990s as libertarian liberalism—that is, a philosophy of open-mindedness that is concerned with individual liberty and individual rights, and also devoted to progress and social equality. But, while this characterization does accurately describe new philosophical currents emerging among politicians, it does not precisely accurately describe the new independent-minded attitude among voters. Although the new ethos among voters is marked by open-mindedness and an interest in progress, it is not, however, particularly concerned with individual liberty or individual rights.

In this chapter, I explained, based on occupational and voter enrollment data, that a political ethos of independent-mindedness—which is especially salient among suburban managerial-professionals—now dominates politics in the Bay State. In order to understand why Turner’s characterization of this new dominant ethos is not precisely accurate, I devote the next chapter to a closer examination of the important issues of the 1998 Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign.

  1. Brian C. Mooney, “Bagging independents key to victory in hunt for voters,” Boston Globe (26 September 1998), B3 ⏎
  2. The Boston Globe defined this suburban area slightly differently than I did in my study. As I will explain below, I included 89 towns located between Routes 128 and 495. The Globe, however, extended this suburban region to the state’s southeastern coast and thereby included ten more cities and towns than I did. The Globe thus added a region of extremely high growth, which I did not include in my study. The figures that Brian Mooney presented in his article are therefore slightly different from the ones that I will present below ⏎
  3. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Cellucci defeated Harshbarger by 5 percentage points or more in thirteen of the towns with the highest percentage of managerial-professionals (according to occupational data from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population) ⏎
  4. In some years, Massachusetts citizens have also been able to register with a third party, such as the American Party or the Reform Party ⏎
  5. Bruce E. Keith et al., The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 4. Emphasis in the original ⏎
  6. Ibid., 70 ⏎
  7. Ibid., 59 ⏎
  8. Unfortunately, the state’s shift from Republican to Democratic dominance occurred before this time ⏎
  9. The occupational data from the 2000 U.S. Census will not be released until after June of 2002 and therefore could not be included in this study ⏎
  10. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1960, General Social and Economic Characteristics, Massachusetts, Final Report PC(1)-23C (Washington, D.C., 1961), XXI ⏎
  11. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1970, General Social and Economic Characteristics, Massachusetts, Final Report PC(1)-C23 (Washington, D.C., 1972), App-19 ⏎
  12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1980, General Social and Economic Characteristics, Massachusetts, Final Report PC80-1-C-23 (Washington, D.C., 1983), 77. And U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1990, Social and Economic Characteristics, Massachusetts, Final Report 1990 CP-2-23 (Washington, D.C., 1993), 91 ⏎
  13. Once again, unfortunately, the occupational data from the 1990 census is the most recent data available because the 2000 Census occupational data will not be released until June of 2002 ⏎
  14. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 18.60% ⏎
  15. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 27.59% ⏎
  16. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 28.64% ⏎
  17. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 39.85% ⏎
  18. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 35.91% ⏎
  19. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 40.87% ⏎
  20. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 48.14% ⏎
  21. The exact figure, as shown in Table 2, is 52.11% ⏎
  22. I will develop this notion in greater detail in the following chapters ⏎
  23. Tina Cassidy, “McCain pull igniting voter switches Democrats’ inquiries deluge Mass. registration officials,” Boston Globe (9 February 2000), A1 ⏎
  24. Ibid ⏎
  25. In chapter one, I briefly discussed Massachusetts’ rich political history ⏎
  26. Robert L. Turner, “The state we’re in Massachusetts still gets labeled “liberal,” but the truth is more complicated,” Boston Globe, City ed. (18 October 1998), 16 ⏎
  27. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  28. Ibid ⏎
  29. Ibid ⏎
  30. Ibid ⏎
  31. I conducted this interview with Philip Johnston on 23 January 2002. See Appendix C, Interview 7 for the complete text ⏎
  32. Ibid ⏎

CHAPTER 4
The 1998 Massachusetts Gubernatorial Election

EXAMINING THE 1998 GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN

In the Massachusetts gubernatorial primary of September 15, 1998, Massachusetts voters selected the Republican candidate Acting Governor Paul Cellucci and the Democratic candidate Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to face off against each other in the gubernatorial election. Each candidate defeated his challengers by substantial margins; Paul Cellucci, who won 57.4 percent of Republican primary votes, defeated Joseph Malone, by a margin of 17 percent. Scott Harshbarger, who won 48.4 percent of Democratic primary votes, defeated his two Democratic rivals, Patricia McGovern and Brian Donnelly, by a margin of 18.5 percent and 32.3 percent, respectively.115 But, the acting governor and the attorney general had been campaigning for the general gubernatorial election long before either of them won their respective primaries.

Although he did not officially announce his campaign for governor until the end of April, Scott Harshbarger had been trying to introduce himself to voters across the state long before the spring of 1998. By mid-January, Boston Herald columnist Wayne Woodlief was already referring to Harshbarger as “the Democratic front-runner for governor.”116 Indeed, as attorney general, Harshbarger was an especially visible statewide official and was able to showcase his enthusiastic determination to fight corruption.117 As Scot Lehigh revealed in his August 1998 Globe profile of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Harshbarger was a committed public activist from a young age. Harshbarger was tremendously influenced by his minister-father’s passionate devotion to the cause of social justice and to the civil rights movement and was also influenced by President John F. Kennedy’s appeal for public service. Harshbarger thus began working as a social activist in Harlem shortly after graduating from Harvard in 1964 and after beginning his divinity studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.118 As Harshbarger explained, his year spent working at the Chambers Memorial Baptist Church in East Harlem was a critical year in his life, for that year “crystallized everything [his] parents had taught [him]: caring about others, equal rights, equal justice, that you are supposed to act out your values, that you have obligations to others . . . that you never, ever, ever, allow prejudice or bias to stand in the way.”119 As Lehigh indicated in his article, Harshbarger’s experience at that Harlem church led directly to many of the community-based crime prevention and social programs, designed to promote equal treatment of and opportunities for the Commonwealth’s urban poor, that he sought to introduce when he served as district attorney in the early 1980s and later as attorney general.

Clearly, Harshbarger had earned great respect for his devoted activism, but this activism also earned him a great deal of enmity. As a community activist, devoted to ameliorating the condition of those less fortunate than himself, Harshbarger developed a powerful distaste for corruption. When he served as attorney general, this distaste impelled Harshbarger to investigate and try to prosecute many influential and respected Bay State politicians, such as former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward J. McCormack Jr. McCormack was eventually acquitted of all charges, but the incident gave rise to a great deal of public resentment towards Harshbarger. U.S. Representative Joseph Moakley, a close friend of McCormack, never forgave Harshbarger and blamed him for causing McCormack terrible distress that ultimately “destroyed him.”120 As Lehigh related, Harshbarger’s longtime mentor, former Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti, was also angered by Harshbarger’s investigation of McCormack. After a long period of not speaking to him, Bellotti eventually forgave Harshbarger and even signed on to support his gubernatorial campaign. One former Harshbarger supporter, U.S. Representative Chester Atkins, remarked on Harshbarger: “We are talking about a straight-laced minister’s son. I think a lot of the grease of politics—the thousand little deals, the looking the other way, the cutting of corners—is not something that he is comfortable with or tolerates.”121 Statements like this one indicated Harshbarger’s strong aversion to the sometimes necessary corrupt behavior that the process of politics demands. While such aversion could have been an asset for Harshbarger among independent-minded professionals, who were growing increasingly dissatisfied with “politics as usual,” Harshbarger was never able to counter the perception, developed by his gubernatorial opponents, that his notions of proper public behavior were out of step with the accepted “Massachusetts political norms.”122 This perception, combined with lingering resentment over Harshbarger’s sometimes over-aggressive attempts to stamp out corruption, would remain the hallmarks of Harshbarger’s gubernatorial campaign.

Indeed, just a few days after Harshbarger won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, those in charge of the Massachusetts Democratic Party were already worrying about influential Democrats who were defecting from the Party and throwing their support to the Republican gubernatorial candidate. All signs were beginning to indicate that Harshbarger did not have the unified support of a strong Democratic Party behind him, and Cellucci’s campaign staff was clearly making the situation worse. As Cellucci’s campaign manager, Rob Gray revealed, “Harshbarger started to have trouble with Democratic voters in part because we caused it . . . by actively soliciting Democratic endorsements.”123 By September 18, the Cellucci campaign had already corralled enough Democratic support for the acting governor’s candidacy to hold a media event entitled “Democrats for Cellucci” at Doyle’s Café, one of Boston’s favorite Democratic haunts.124

Harshbarger’s support within the preponderantly Democratic Massachusetts legislature already appeared rather weak, when at a Party unity rally following the primary, House Speaker Thomas Finneran revealed that he would not support Harshbarger until he was sure that he was not a member of the “loony left!”125 Also, much dissatisfaction was evident within the state’s senate. Senate President Thomas Birmingham felt obliged to speak with Democratic senate members and remind them how hurtful it would be to the state’s Democratic Party if they announced their support for Cellucci. Additionally, Boston’s Democratic Mayor, Thomas Menino, laid down the law at Boston’s City Hall, where he prohibited employees of the city from participating in the Cellucci’ campaign’s “Democrats for Cellucci” event.

Despite all the attempts to prevent their defection from the Party, approximately 24 Democratic politicians and Party players announced their support for the acting governor’s candidacy at his campaign’s “Democrats for Cellucci” event.126 Upon receiving this substantial support from within Harshbarger’s Democratic Party, Cellucci commented: “These people are my friends and supporters. I’ve always tried to appeal to a broad constituency.”127 As the days progressed towards the election, Cellucci drew more support from Democratic lawmakers. In early October, Worcester’s three-term state representative, Democrat William McManus, the chair of the influential House Steering, Policy, and Scheduling Committee, endorsed the acting governor. McManus lauded Cellucci, calling him “the best candidate to lead this state for another four years,” and saying he would “keep Massachusetts moving forward” because of his “leadership on the issues of education reform, job creation, public safety, and fiscal discipline.”128

Unfortunately for Harshbarger, Democratic politicians appeared to be defecting from the Democratic ticket in droves. Harshbarger, himself, might have been responsible for many of these defections; the earlier discussion regarding Harshbarger’s perceived over-zealous investigation of political corruption indicated that Harshbarger’s own efforts had engendered a great deal of animosity within his own Party. Clearly, Harshbarger’s efforts while attorney general had driven a number of potential supporters away from Harshbarger’s campaign. But, one wonders what precisely impelled those individuals to defect from the Democratic Party and support the Republican acting governor’s campaign. The following discussion of Paul Cellucci’s background suggests why he was such an appealing political figure to both politicians and managerial-professionals.

As Adrian Walker revealed in his August 1998 Boston Globe profile of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, the acting governor was first elected to serve in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1976; since his first days as the state representative for the fifty-first district of Middlesex county, Cellucci had developed a reputation for being a “low-key consensus builder.”129 By the time he began his 1998 gubernatorial campaign, the acting governor had devoted over twenty years of his adulthood to working on behalf of his district as a state representative and later as a state senator, and on behalf of the entire state as lieutenant governor and then as acting governor. In that time, as Walker explained, Cellucci had become known “for his ability to dive into issues, forge consensus, and reach resolution.” Such adept managerial skills are extremely rare in politics; these skills had thus enabled Cellucci to gain a great deal of respect among his political peers as a consummate legislator. These skills also made Cellucci uniquely well-suited to serving as William Weld’s lieutenant governor, his so-called “co-governor.” The two men, extremely different in style and background, complimented each other quite well. While Weld offered a hands-off approach to governing, Cellucci was, as Walker suggests, “fascinated by the act of governing, and by the minutiae of issues many others find tedious.” Moreover, while Weld was respected for his impressive intellect and wit, Cellucci was admired for the passion that he brought to political debates and for his impressive adeptness at being “a hands-on manager.”130

Also, in his background, Cellucci was viewed as Weld’s opposite. The patrician William Weld, of Oyster Bay, New York, came from a family of great wealth. Paul Cellucci, on the other hand, grew up in a middle-class, ethnically Italian family in Hudson, Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family today. Because of Cellucci’s ethnic background, as Rob Gray explained, the Cellucci campaign sought to reach out to blue-collar, urban voters, who would typically have voted for Democratic candidates: “Cellucci was widely seen as a kind of man of the people, common guy who had the Massachusetts accent that so many people have.” Cellucci was thus able to do “very well in cities like Quincy, Lowell, East Boston,” urban areas that are full of ethnic laborers.131

As Walker indicated in his profile of Cellucci, the acting governor learned his political values while growing up in Hudson, “a central Massachusetts town of abandoned shoe factories and steel mills, recently revived by high-technology businesses.”132 Hudson is located right along Route 495, just north of its intersection with Route 20, and not far from the Massachusetts Turnpike.133 Indeed, after Route 495 and the Massachusetts Turnpike were built, the high-technology industry was able to spread to this central Massachusetts region, just as it had earlier to the inner-suburbs located along Route 128. Hudson, is then the perfect example of a town that was slowly developing the new independent-minded ethos as it was being populated by managerial-professionals. In 1970, under one quarter of employed persons in Hudson were employed as managerial-professionals.134 By 1990, over one third of employed persons in Hudson were employed as managerial-professionals.135 Similarly, in 1976, just over one half of all registered voters in Hudson were registered as unenrolled.136 And by 1998, almost two thirds of all registered voters in Hudson were registered as unenrolled.137 Cellucci’s own ideals were shaped by this high-tech transformation of his town, as his father was and still continues to chair the town’s industrial commission, which aims to attract businesses to Hudson. Cellucci, whose grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and whose father began his own Oldsmobile dealership, where Paul worked while he completed his undergraduate and law degrees at Boston College, clearly represents suburban managerial-professionals both in his background in Hudson and as a public official at the State House.

It was certainly not surprising then, that Cellucci revealed his managerial style in all that he did. As Walker described, although Cellucci opposed the Vietnam War and graduated from Hudson Catholic High School in 1966—just when the U.S. was reaching its peak involvement in the war—Cellucci talked about “that epochal event with little of the passion he [brought] to discussions of tax cuts or education reform.” Cellucci was indeed a policy wonk who was devoted to improving the functioning of Massachusetts government.138

In Cellucci’s mid-January 1998 State of the State address, his first major speech as acting governor, Cellucci revealed his campaign strategy for his gubernatorial run. And it was clear that he had learned a great deal from Governor Weld’s failed 1996 Senate bid. As I mentioned previously, Weld had lost the 1996 election to the incumbent Democrat John Kerry because he dwelled on the traditional conservative Republican issues of crime, taxes, and welfare, while he completely ignored the social issues that are important to many Massachusetts families. As the Herald’s Wayne Woodlief commented, “He clung to a crime-welfare-taxes mantra and got thumped by incumbent John Kerry and his education rap.”139 Additionally, as Rob Gray, who served as the Weld Senate campaign’s communications director, suggested, Weld’s campaign staff did not recognize “the strength of the water cooler argument.” They failed to consider that many voters would concur with the argument that supposes: “I like Weld, I like Kerry; if I Vote for Kerry, I win on both fronts because I keep Kerry in the Senate, and I keep Weld as governor.”140 Relying on the advice of advisors, like Rob Gray, who were intimately familiar with Weld’s campaign, Cellucci was able to avoid the flaws of Weld’s 1996 senatorial campaign. By stressing the importance of improving the state’s public school system through hiring more teachers and through maintaining high standards for passing the state’s new standardized tests, and by speaking of his pride in being a dad, Cellucci revealed in his first State of the State address that he would not repeat Weld’s mistakes.141 Cellucci also spoke of introducing a $1.2 billion reduction in the state income tax, another issue that offered broad-based appeal at a time when the Massachusetts economy was flourishing. In his efforts to reach out to Democrats and more independent-minded voters, Cellucci completely ignored his Republican gubernatorial challenger, state Treasurer Joe Malone, and barely mentioned the issue of crime or his pro-death penalty stance, about which he had previously shown a great deal of emotion. In another effort to distance himself from Weld and Weld’s legacy, Cellucci spoke fondly of his middle-class upbringing in Hudson. Cellucci’s first major address was clearly a hit, receiving high marks from columnists such as Wayne Woodlief, who gave the speech an “A,” and from House Speaker Finneran, who commented: “This [speech was] a reflection of Paul Cellucci’s character, a hometown boy who, through hard work and perseverance and thrift, has prospered.”142

Only a couple of weeks after Cellucci gave this first major speech, he announced that his lieutenant gubernatorial candidate and running mate would be former state Senator Jane Swift.143 Choosing Swift, a 32-year-old woman Republican from the western Massachusetts city of North Adams, again indicated that Cellucci had learned a powerful lesson from his predecessor’s failed U.S. Senate bid. Whereas Weld had concentrated on appealing to voters based solely on traditional conservative issues, Cellucci would mount a broadly appealing campaign, geared to attract both the traditional Republican yeomen constituency of western Massachusetts, and the more independent-minded and Democratic leaning voters of the outer and inner suburbs, as well as the ethnic voters of some of the state’s more urban areas. Cellucci’s Republican challenger, Joe Malone, had already promised to choose a female running mate. But, in allowing Cellucci to choose his running mate first, he clearly lost any advantage with female voters that he might gained through selecting a female running mate. Cellucci, thereby, played the role of spoiler.144

Swift was clearly an attractive choice within the Republican Party. Her strong Party connections, her solid ability to gather delegates to support the Cellucci ticket at the Republican convention, and her excellent debating skills, were important assets for the ticket; these assets would enable Cellucci to remain devoted to the tasks of governing while Swift could concentrate on campaigning for the ticket all across the Bay State. Despite her substantial appeal among her many Republican friends, Swift was not widely respected for having any great intellectual ability. In the words of Republican political consultant Kevin Sowyrda, “She was no William Jennings Bryan in the Senate, but members saw her as sincere and progressive.”145 Like Cellucci, she considered herself “a moderate Republican”—both socially liberal and fiscally conservative—but her views were not particularly firm; in order to show solidarity with Cellucci, she changed her stance on a number of important issues, such as the assault weapons ban (which she formerly opposed) and the death penalty (which she also formerly opposed).146 This lack of commitment to her beliefs would not earn her respect from managers. Also, although she served as a senate aide and then a state senator from 1991 until 1996, when she ran and lost against U.S. Representative Democrat John Olver, she did not develop particularly able managerial skills in the State House. After losing her congressional race, the Weld administration appointed her the director of regional airports for Massport (the Massachusetts Port Authority)—a position in which she did little to revise and improve the state’s regional transportation strategy, which is becoming an increasingly pressing issue in the state. Thus, Swift, although cursorily appealing to woman, could not necessarily be expected to attract many managerial-professional votes.

In May of 1998, when Swift announced that she was 16 weeks pregnant, she began to gain ground among working women voters. Swift’s response to conservative groups who pressured her to bow out of government so that she could stay at home and take care of her first baby earned points with such women. Defending her choice to be a working mom, Swift argued, “I had hoped in Massachusetts we had gotten to the point where women and their families were free to make up their own minds about these issues.” She continued, saying, “I’m confident I can be a great lieutenant governor and a great mother.”147 Swift also explained that she was taught from a young age that the pressure of gender stereotypes should never prevent her from achieving her goals.148

From the beginning of Cellucci’s campaign in his State of the State address, his campaign advisors revealed their intention to target Democrats and unenrolled voters, whom Weld had largely ignored in his U.S. Senate campaign. As the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld indicated in his article on the acting governor’s State of the State address, Cellucci’s advisors “said they felt his maiden speech must appeal to independents and Democrats who may be getting their first real look at him.”149 Cellucci’s campaign staff identified the managerial-professionals living between Routes 128 and 495 as precisely these independent-minded voters. According to Rob Gray: “Even if [these suburban managerial-professionals] are not unenrolled, they are more likely to be more open to voting for Republicans and Democrats on the same ballot.”150 Cellucci’s campaign staffers were wise to target these voters. As Brian Cresta, the former chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, maintains, this group of managerial-professionals “is the one [segment of Massachusetts voters] that does not have any core identification with the political beliefs of either party; both parties thus have to be very, very sure to make sure that they are not over-looking them.”151 The Cellucci campaign targeted these independent-minded voters right from the beginning, especially by stressing the issue of education. Rob Gray explained that their focus “on education . . . was a relatively new thing, especially for Republican candidates, to be aggressive on.”152

And as the campaign progressed, this effort to target the state’s more independent-minded voters intensified. In May, shortly before Swift’s announcement that she was pregnant, Cellucci made a key appearance at a women’s issues forum in Lowell, MA, in a blatant attempt to appeal to the suburban “soccer moms” of Middlesex County—the heart of the overwhelmingly managerial-professional statistical area that I defined in my study. Through his presence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell forum, Cellucci indicated his support for issues that are particularly salient for working moms, such as adequate day care, pay equity for women, and breast cancer research.153 Indeed, long before winning the Republican primary, Cellucci was attempting to appeal to the broad-based constituency that he would need to win the general election. Quite simply, as Democratic political consultant Mary Anne Marsh explained, “You can’t win statewide without carrying Middlesex County” and gaining the support of the county’s “suburban women who are registered as unenrolled.”154

In yet another attempt in that same month to appeal to suburban managerial-professionals’ needs as working parents, Cellucci signed a bill into law which enabled employees at companies of 50 or more employees to use up to three unpaid days out of every year for taking their children to the doctor or visiting their children’s schools. Although Cellucci’s Republican rival Joe Malone was quick to criticize the acting governor for signing the “small necessities” bill into law and thereby enabling government to play a substantive role in the private sector, Cellucci defended his action, explaining, “I think companies of that size can certainly make sure that if someone has to take their child to the doctor, someone else can cover for them.”155 Through such actions, Cellucci displayed his own managerial inclinations. Despite his membership in a Party that supports a diminished role for government in the private sector, Cellucci clearly understood that businesses must have managerial and procedural guidelines for how to treat their employees. Such a stance was particularly appealing to managerial-professionals, who understood the complexities involved in creating benefit packages for employees and were also familiar with the substantial variation that can exist across companies.

In another attempt that ran counter to traditional Republican dogma, Cellucci changed his position on a proposed increase in the minimum wage and declared his support for the increase.156 As Globe columnist Joan Vennochi argued, Cellucci’s reversal appeared to be a small move intended to attract labor union votes. In her column, she explained that although he reversed his opinion on the minimum wage, he did not alter his overall philosophy, for he continued to refuse to endorse any measure that would loosen the demands of the state’s welfare system, which force welfare recipients to work at least 20 hours per week and thereby prevent these recipients from acquiring the necessary education in order to improve their job prospects.157 Cellucci’s move appeared to be a shrewd one, geared to capture the additional votes that he would need to defeat his Democratic challenger in the general election.

Also in May, Cellucci began running a group of 30-second TV commercials focused on his already announced legislative proposals, including a patients’ bill of rights, the hiring of 4000 additional teachers for the state’s public school system, and a $1.2 billion income tax reduction. The Cellucci campaign hoped the ads would cause the public to call their representatives and urge them to accept the acting governor’s proposed legislation, thereby injecting some life into the gubernatorial race and in Cellucci’s campaign in particular. As one Cellucci campaign staffer suggested: “If the Legislature passes part of the agenda, Cellucci gets credit. . . . If they don’t, he still wins because Cellucci is identified as fighting for three very popular issues.”158 Aimed at a number of voting constituencies, the commercials would be shown during Red Sox games, morning talk-shows, and news programs.159 The Cellucci campaign thus hoped to introduce the efforts of their candidate to a wide audience.

Having officially entered the gubernatorial race at the end of April, Attorney General Scott Harshbarger launched his own statewide TV advertising campaign at the same time that the acting governor launched his. Harshbarger’s two ads were created for a decidedly different purpose, however. According to Harshbarger’s media advisor Michael Shea, the TV commercials aimed to familiarize voters with Scott Harshbarger’s “human side.” Shea explained, “People have known a lot about Scott in an issue setting. . . . They don’t know him as a human being.”160 The two commercials, showing Harshbarger dressed comfortably at home in his kitchen, introduced Harshbarger’s family background, his athletic achievements in high school and at Harvard, and his experience working for social justice in Harlem, and explained how Harshbarger became an activist attorney general, who protected the people of the Commonwealth by confronting “polluters, the tobacco companies, those who exploit the elderly.”161

When Harshbarger first announced his candidacy following the state’s Republican convention in April, he proclaimed himself as the candidate who would challenge the Republican Weld/Cellucci era of do-nothing politics. He charged: “The acting governor is squandering the best opportunity in our lifetime to drive this state to a whole new level of long-term hope and opportunity for every man, woman, and child in Massachusetts.”162 The acting governor responded to Harshbarger’s indictment, saying, “The fact of the matter is, Bill Weld and I have brought Massachusetts back. . . . We’ve gone from a state with the highest unemployment rate in America, to a state with the lowest unemployment of the big industrial states: 400,000 people back to work. More people are working in Massachusetts today than at any time in our history. We’ve done the job, we’ve outperformed the national economy.”163 Although Harshbarger’s message, which focused on bettering the quality of life for working families in the state, improving child care options, and providing greater accessibility to quality health care, could appeal to many voters, few voters were actually listening to him. The fact that the economy was thriving in Massachusetts encouraged many voters, who were content with the current status of their lives and were consequently rather disinterested in the state’s political situation, to ignore the election process entirely. With the economy humming along in a state where political activism typically ranks high among common pursuits, many voters were unusually content to sit on the sidelines. Under such conditions, Harshbarger faced an uphill battle in attracting voters to his campaign.

Indeed, when the economy is doing well, the incumbent almost always benefits. History Professor James T. Patterson of Brown University has explained: “Historically, there’s no single thing so important in most national- and state-level campaigns as the state of the economy.”164 Unfortunately for Harshbarger, such interest leads to greater voter participation only when the economy is doing poorly.165 While Cellucci was able to enjoy the benefits of being an incumbent in good times, his challengers were left to admit sadly, as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Donnelly did, that incumbents “always get too much credit when things go good and too much blame when things go bad.”166 The Globe’s Jill Zuckman suggested that “Harshbarger had discovered . . . that it’s not easy being a politician when times are flush, unemployment is low, and the stock market is booming.” Moreover, although he faced serious challenges from formidable candidates with widespread appeal, Harshbarger’s “perhaps more challenging adversary [was] the healthy state of the economy and the voter apathy it create[d].”167 Quite simply, as Republican political consultant Kevin Sowyrda stated: “The biggest problem [facing Harshbarger] is this: No one is paying attention to this election, which means the incumbent wins.”168

Harshbarger faced another significant challenge, aside from the state’s thriving economy. Because Cellucci’s campaign focused on typically Democratic issues, such as education, child care, and health care, Harshbarger found it very difficult to differentiate his own stances on such issues from those of the acting governor. Although Malone had attacked Cellucci in the Republican primary for ignoring the concerns of their Party’s traditional conservative constituency, Cellucci’s concern with such traditionally Democratic issues enabled him to appeal to a larger Massachusetts audience and clearly—despite Malone’s warnings to the contrary—did not cost him the Republican primary. With only one month left before the election, Harshbarger had failed to draw obvious distinctions between his views and those espoused by the acting governor. As the Globe’s Scot Lehigh indicated, Harshbarger was in the unfortunate position of being a “liberal Democrat running against a socially liberal, fiscally moderate Republican.”169 The differences between their opinions were simply not easily discerned. That reality, combined with a booming economy and a lack of interest among voters, left Harshbarger struggling during the final few weeks of the campaign.

At the end of October, following the final debate between the two gubernatorial candidates, the issue differences between the two candidates were still not obvious, and if any differences did in fact exist, they were just “more of degree than magnitude.”170 One day before the election, an AARP advertisement ran in the Boston Globe, which revealed how similar their views indeed were. The advertisement presented three important issues for seniors in Massachusetts and posed three questions based those issues to both candidates. Their responses were printed alongside the questions. On the issue of patients’ rights within managed care plans, both candidates responded that they want more protection and rights for patients who receive their medical care through health maintenance organizations. On the issue of integrating coverage for individuals who are dual recipients of both Medicaid and Medicare coverage, both candidates replied that they would wish to ensure that enrollment in Senior Care Organizations—organizations which would coordinate the integration of coverage—was voluntary, that patients should be able to actively participate in decisions regarding their care, and that quality and access should be given equal weight to cost containment and provider payment. On the issue of long-term care, both candidates offered similar suggestions regarding enabling seniors to remain at home and with their families longer.171 Clearly, on important issues for seniors, the two candidates maintained extremely similar positions that were appealing to managerial-professionals, who were deeply concerned with rationality and efficiency.

On the day of the election, the Boston Globe ran a chart, displaying the gubernatorial candidates’ positions on eleven different important issues for voters. On the issue of health care, both candidates supported providing greater access to health care and protecting the rights of HMO and managed care patients through a patients’ bill of rights. Managers would surely approve of such a bill of rights, for it would enable patients to address their health insurance providers in a rational manner. On the issue of child care, both candidates wished to expand child care options for working families. Such a measure would surely appeal to managerial families headed by two working parents. On the issue of education, both candidates planned to hire 4,000 additional teachers for the state’s public school system. Additionally, Cellucci would employ competency tests for teachers, while Harshbarger would fund antiviolence programs. Both candidates supported testing teachers, and Harshbarger also planned to introduce evaluation and training programs for teachers. Managers, who themselves benefited greatly from education and who hoped their children would do the same, would surely approve of such measures to improve the state’s educational system. On the issue of the environment, both candidates supported the redevelopment of urban industrial properties to provide new open space. On the issue of jobs, the candidates differed slightly: Cellucci would cut taxes and encourage investment in towns, while Harshbarger would invest in adult education and encourage businesses and community colleges to partner together and retrain workers. Both job-creation solutions were appealing to managers, though Harshbarger’s was probably slightly more appealing because he addressed the important relationship (which was well understood among managerial-professionals) between education and employment. On the issue of taxes, both candidates would reduce the state’s income tax. On the issue of crime, both candidates would require harsher penalties for sex offenders. Also, Cellucci would maintain minimum sentences to protect women from domestic violence; Harshbarger would expand community-based crime prevention programs, increase the number of police officers that man the streets, and propose harsher gun laws. On the issue of abortion, both candidates were pro-choice, a widely held stance in the state. On the issue of the death penalty, the two candidates differed: Cellucci favored the death penalty, while Harshbarger opposed the death penalty. On the issue of welfare, both candidates favored requiring some welfare recipients to work at least 20 hours per week. More specifically, Cellucci wished to place a two-year limit on recipients, while Harshbarger would make education and job training count as part of the 20-hour work requirement.172 For the most part, the two candidates offered very similar stances on the issues, which held broad appeal for managerial-professionals.

In an advertisement that ran in the Boston Globe on the day before the election, Harshbarger addressed an open letter to Massachusetts voters in which he declared the issues of education, health care, and a patients’ bill of rights as fundamentally important to him. The letter, entitled “Toward a brighter future,” encouraged voters, saying, “Vote for a brighter future,” but few voters were heeding the call. The letter also listed the many endorsements that the attorney general and his running mate, Warren Tolman, had received from a host of newspapers and organizations, including: the Boston Globe, New Bedford Standard Times, Salem Evening News, Springfield Valley Advocate, Greenfield Recorder, Gloucester Daily Times, Newburyport Daily News, The Boston Phoenix, Clean Water Action, Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Massachusetts Nurses Association, Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association.173 One wonders how many voters showed enough interest to read the letter.

Despite receiving all these endorsements, the Harshbarger campaign was unable to control the issues of the campaign long enough to mount substantial voter enthusiasm in Harshbarger’s candidacy. In the first debate between the two gubernatorial candidates, the attorney general allowed the acting governor to dominate. As the Herald’s Wayne Woodlief explained in his opinion piece following the debate, many Democrats were beginning to wonder if Harshbarger’s candidacy was doomed.174 Cellucci was able to control the issues of the debate, avoiding the issues about which Harshbarger cared the most. Instead of discussing child care, education, and health care—issues that Harshbarger had sought to stress throughout the campaign, and issues that would enable Harshbarger to appeal directly to managerial-professionals—Cellucci emphasized the death penalty, taxes, and the fiscal security that the Weld-Cellucci administration had brought to the state. Cellucci thereby prevented Harshbarger from gaining valuable support among independent-minded managers.

Claiming that the state experienced a “disaster” of increased spending and increased taxation when the state’s most recent Democratic governor, Michael Dukakis, refused to take a “no-new-taxes” pledge, the acting governor repeatedly attacked the attorney general for his failure to take his own “no-new-taxes pledge.” Repeating a message that he had first enunciated when Harshbarger announced his candidacy for governor, Cellucci powerfully charged that electing a Democrat to the governor’s office would destroy the successful previous eight years of divided government in Massachusetts, enable the Democrats to control once again both the state’s legislative and executive branches, and thereby empower the Democrats to “return the state to the fiscal disaster of the late 1980s and early 1990s.”175 Previously, Cellucci had insisted, “I don’t think the people of Massachusetts want to go back . . . to one party with a monopoly on government. The last time we had that, that’s what led Massachusetts to the brink of fiscal and economic catastrophe.”176

For his part, Harshbarger tried to challenge the acting governor’s record. By accusing Cellucci of flip-flopping on a number of his “signature issues,” including the death penalty, testing teachers, and tax increases, Harshbarger argued that Cellucci was not capable of maintaining his own firm opinions. But the attorney general’s efforts had little effect on the outcome of the debate. In controlling the issues of the debate, the acting governor forced the attorney general to explain why, with the state’s thriving economy, the acting governor should be removed from office. Following the debate, Cellucci’s campaign manager Rob Gray asserted, “Scott Harshbarger has a tough task to suggest things are not going well in this state.”177 As Rob Gray’s assertion indicated, the attorney general would face a major obstacle during the rest of his campaign.

Just a few days after that first debate, the Boston Globe published the results of a poll that it had recently conducted together with WBZ-TV. The poll, which surveyed 400 “likely voters,” showed that by early October Cellucci commanded more than a 30-percentage point lead among unenrolled voters.178 This lead among independent-minded voters was extremely significant, as it enabled the acting governor to hold a 6-percentage point lead over his Democratic challenger. Harshbarger’s performance in the first debate had clearly damaged his campaign, as out of those who had seen the first debate, 47 percent replied that viewing the two candidates at the debate encouraged them to vote for Cellucci; just 21 percent replied that viewing the two candidates in the debate had given them more reason to vote for Harshbarger.179

Cellucci’s first debate focus on taxes and fiscal responsibility was clearly a winning message among independent-minded managerial-professionals. Every day, such managers are responsible for maintaining the bottom line; and as a result, they are deeply interested in the candidates’ commitment to fiscal responsibility. Because at the time of the 1998 election, the state’s economy was humming along with that of the nation, many voters were quite content with the Weld-Cellucci administration’s fiscal record. Moreover, as Harvard political economist Roger Porter commented, “Cellucci, wisely, [was] drawing attention to those things which [had] gone well.” Porter went on to predict: “In the end, this [election] is largely going to be a referendum on whether or not you are satisfied with the performance to date, and essentially it has little if anything to do with party [affiliation].”180 The Boston Globe-WBZ-TV poll completed in early October, revealed that 49 percent of unenrolled voters believed that if the economy were to go into a recession, Cellucci would better manage the state’s economy. Only 19 percent of unenrolled voters maintained that Harshbarger would better manage the state’s economy in that situation.181 Cellucci’s message that he and his predecessor had successfully managed the state’s economy was clearly paying dividends for his campaign.

In early October, the gubernatorial election was growing more contentious by the day. In the second debate between the two gubernatorial rivals, which took place on October 14, both candidates came out fighting. Angered by the attorney general’s public charge that the acting governor lacked personal fiscal discipline because of his $700,000 of personal debt, Cellucci attacked back. Harshbarger had claimed that the acting governor’s explanation—that the debt was due to the high price of his daughters’ college tuition and the cost of improvements on his home—just did not add up. At the start of the debate, Cellucci asserted, “I will tell you what doesn’t add up, Scott, your poll numbers. That is why you have relegated yourself to this negative personal attack on my family.”182 The two candidates remained aggressive throughout the debate. Having learned from his weak first debate, the attorney general continually pounded Cellucci’s “‘record of failure’ on education” and argued that the acting governor was misrepresenting the attorney general’s record.183 Harshbarger succeeded in forcing Cellucci to talk about his issues, such as health care, education, and worker retraining. Although Harshbarger had improved considerably over his poor showing in the first debate, the second debate, according to the Globe’s Scot Lehigh, turned out to be “more or less a draw.”184

By the end of October, the situation was looking much worse for the attorney general. On October 29, the Boston Herald released the results of the most recent Boston Herald/WCVB-TV Channel 5 poll of 402 “likely voters.” The poll showed that Cellucci maintained a 9 point lead over Harshbarger, as 47 percent of voters would vote for the acting governor, while only 38 percent would vote for his Democratic challenger. Cellucci’s lead over Harshbarger had increased from the previous week’s Herald poll, which had revealed that 46 percent of voters would vote for the acting governor, while only 41 percent would vote for the attorney general.185 Additionally, the acting governor’s approval rating had been improving while the attorney general’s approval rating had been declining. In the Herald’s October 21 poll, 48 percent of voters viewed Harshbarger favorably, and 30 percent viewed him unfavorably. In the Herald’s poll released on October 29, only 44 percent of voters viewed Harshbarger favorably, and 37 percent viewed him unfavorably, as compared to 57 percent of voters who viewed Cellucci favorably and 27 percent who viewed Cellucci unfavorably.186

Among unenrolled voters, Harshbarger’s situation was even more dire. According to the Herald’s poll released on October 29, 38 percent of unenrolled voters viewed Harshbarger favorably, while a whopping 40 percent viewed him unfavorably. Also according to that poll, Cellucci maintained a 14 point lead among unenrolled voters, as 49 percent of unenrolled voters said they would vote for the acting governor, while only 35 percent said they would vote for the attorney general.187

At the final debate between the gubernatorial rivals on October 26, Harshbarger had attempted to appeal to such unenrolled voters. After the debate, Democratic political consultant Mary Anne Marsh explained that she felt that “Scott Harshbarger did the most effective job talking to unenrolled, undecided voters, because he stuck to the problems they’re worried about: schools, health care, and day care.”188 But, as the Herald’s poll results of October 29 indicated, Harshbarger’s last-ditch effort to appeal to independent-minded managerial-professionals on family-related, quality of life issues had not succeeded. With the election less than one week away, Harshbarger was failing to corral enough support from independent-minded voters.

Unfortunately for Harshbarger, many suggested that the raucous nature of the final gubernatorial debate would hurt him by turning voters away from the polls on election day. One might expect that depressed voter turnout could hurt either candidate. However, a number of political commentators argued that because Acting Governor Cellucci was presiding over a thriving economy, many voters would be unlikely to go to the polls and vote against him unless Harshbarger succeeded in mounting a serious challenge to the acting governor during the televised gubernatorial debates. Republican political consultant Kevin Sowyrda maintained precisely that opinion when he argued (as I mentioned previously) that the biggest problem facing Harshbarger was: “No one is paying attention to this election, which means the incumbent wins.”189 Public relations consultant Micho Spring indicated that the final debate was so awful “that most undecideds probably turned off the TV sets.”190 Democratic consultant and Worcester Mayor Raymond V. Mariano argued, “People are disillusioned when all they hear is, ‘Tell the truth. You can’t handle the truth.’ . . . They get disillusioned with the process and they walk away.”191 Those sound bites were clearly not effective with undecided voters who were looking to the final debate for some substance. Independent media consultant Michael Cudahy explained that the final debate “was the battle of the bickering bureaucrats. The acting governor looked stressed. The attorney general was overly strident.” And moreover, he continued, “the end result is that they are going to further depress turnout,” which, he supposed in a thriving economy would “benefit” the incumbent, Acting Governor Cellucci.192

Many voters were clearly agitated and frustrated by the final debate. The day following the debate, many voters called in their complaints to the office of the state’s League of Women Voters, a non-partisan voter organization. Many callers had wished that the organization, which often assists in organizing debates, had played a role in organizing the final debate.193 Secretary of State Galvin expected that many of those disappointed voters would react to the debate by choosing not to vote. As a result, according to a Globe article following the debate, he “predicted the lowest percentage turnout for a general election since at least 1948.”194 Galvin suggested that approximately 55 percent of registered voters would actually vote in the election. Such a prediction was rather pathetic for a state accustomed to high voter turnout. In the previous statewide election in 1996, 75 percent of registered voters participated in the election. But, in that year, voters were enticed to the polls by the presidential race and an exciting senatorial race between Senator John Kerry and Governor Bill Weld. As Galvin explained, voter interest diminishes every 12 years, when there is no senatorial race paired with the gubernatorial race.195

EXAMINING THE 1998 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION RESULTS

As it turned out, Galvin was right: only 55 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls, which amounted to the state’s lowest turnout in its history. While many voters were simply repelled by the race because of its nasty tone in the final few weeks, other voters, who truly wished to participate, found little, if any, distinction between the views of the two gubernatorial candidates and were thus hard pressed to determine why they should oust the state’s acting governor during a time of economic growth. The race was close, neither candidate having built an exceptionally strong case for his election. But, in the end, Acting Governor Cellucci won 50 percent of the vote and defeated Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who won 47 percent of the vote.196

According to Globe columnist John Ellis, there were four distinct reasons that explain why Scott Harshbarger lost the election to Paul Cellucci: “First, he brought a negative message to a positive electorate. Second, he failed to give voters a clear idea of what he intended to do. Third, he offered no positive context for Cellucci’s retirement. Fourth, his campaign was premised on what ‘should’ be done, not on what ‘might’ be possible.”197 During the campaign and at the time of the election, Massachusetts voters were thrilled with the state’s economy. Indeed, a Voter News Service poll of 1801 voters on election day revealed that 90 percent of voters maintained that the state’s economy was in good or excellent condition. Harshbarger’s message that the status quo should be altered—that the acting governor should be ousted from office—was thus a negative one. Harshbarger’s attitude, as Ellis explained, was also negative, both in the debates and in his television commercials. Additionally, Harshbarger spoke broadly about improving the state’s system of public education, making health care more accessible, and about ensuring the rights of patients in HMOs. But, according to Ellis, he failed to devise and lay out a concrete plan, which he would implement to improve the future of the Bay State. Also, beyond arguing that the state could do more with the resources it had, the Democratic attorney general did not offer tangible reasons for why Cellucci’s record warranted his being ousted from office. Finally, as Ellis concluded, Harshbarger failed to understand: “You won’t win because you should. You win because you might.” In an economically pleased commonwealth, Harshbarger could never have won solely by maintaining that the state was not doing as well as it could be doing. In order to oust his opponent, he had to cite concrete failings in his record. Harshbarger failed to cite such failings, and as a result lost the election.

In his victory, the acting governor fared extremely well among unenrolled voters. According to the Voter News Service poll conducted on election day, 61 percent of unenrolled voters voted for Cellucci, compared with the mere 37 percent of unenrolled voters who selected Harshbarger.198 This fact is rather significant because unenrolled voters constituted the largest portion of voters. Forty-four percent of individuals who voted in the 1998 gubernatorial election were registered as unenrolled. Thirty-nine percent of voters were registered as Democrats. Only 17 percent of voters were registered as Republicans. Cellucci was also able to muster a substantial portion of Democratic votes, as 24 percent of registered Democrats voted for him.

Because such a large portion of voters were unenrolled (and thus more independent-minded), the Voter News Service poll data reveal interesting information regarding the new political ethos gaining dominance among voters in Massachusetts. Twenty-two percent of those polled said that the issue of ethics and morality was the most important issue in determining which gubernatorial candidate they voted for. But, this 22 percent of voters did not overwhelmingly favor one candidate over the other. Forty-nine percent of those who said that the ethics/morality issue was the most important voted for Cellucci, while 47 percent voted for Harshbarger. This issue is therefore fundamentally important to many voters in Massachusetts, among both partisan and more independent-minded voters. The next most important issues were the issue of the economy and jobs and the issue of education. Twenty percent of voters said that the issue of the economy and jobs was the most important issue in determining which gubernatorial candidate they chose, while 19 percent of voters said that education was the most important issue. Cellucci clearly won among voters who said that the economy and jobs were most important. He won 69 percent of their votes, while the attorney general won only 31 percent of their votes. Among voters who said that education was the most important issue, Harshbarger won handily. The attorney general won 75 percent of their votes, while the acting governor won only 24 percent of their votes. The next most important issue among voters was state taxes. Eleven percent of voters said that the issue of state taxes was the most important issue in determining which gubernatorial candidate they chose. Among these voters, Cellucci won overwhelmingly. The acting governor won a whopping 83 percent of their votes, while his Democratic challenger won only 16 percent of their votes. The fifth most important issue among voters was health care. Seven percent of voters said that the issue of health care was the most important issue in determining which gubernatorial candidate they chose. Among these voters, Harshbarger won significantly. The attorney general won 57 percent of their votes, while the Republican acting governor won 40 percent of their votes.

Over half of all individuals who voted for Cellucci were unenrolled voters—voters who are the most independent-minded.199 Because such a large portion of his supporters were more independent-minded than most of the state’s voters, one can find important clues about the developing independent-minded ethos by determining which issues were most important among Cellucci’s supporters. According to the VNS data presented above, the most important issues for Cellucci supporters included the economy and jobs, and to a lesser extent, state taxes and health care. One can assume that such issues are important among those who are more independent-minded. Extrapolating further, one might surmise that these concerns of independent-minded voters are related to the developing independent-minded political ethos, which can be linked to the managerial notions of good government that Edgar Litt described in his 1965 study on the state’s political cultures. As I explained in chapter two, Litt indicated four fundamental notions of good government that were important to managers: rationality, efficiency, organization, and progress. Rather intriguingly, these notions seem to have taken root in the developing independent-minded ethos. One can attribute the issue concerns of independent-minded voters to these four managerial notions. Concern regarding the state’s economy and the number of jobs available seems directly linked to a rational concern regarding the wellbeing and stability of one’s family and business. Similarly, concern regarding the imposition of high state taxes at a time of economic prosperity seems quite related to concern regarding government spending and organizational efficiency. And, finally, concern regarding the health care needs of individuals in the Commonwealth seems connected to a progressive interest in providing assistance to those in need. This new independent-minded ethos seems therefore closely linked to the managerial notions of rationality, efficiency, organization, and progress.

Additionally, education was the third most important issue among voters and should be examined as an important issue among independent-minded voters. Cellucci, however, did not fare so well with voters who said that education was the most important issue for them, as he won just under one quarter of their votes. Although the Cellucci campaign had attempted to target independent-minded voters by discussing education, Cellucci clearly did not win among voters who viewed the education issue as their top priority. Despite Cellucci’s poor showing among these voters, it is still possible that education is an important aspect of the state’s developing independent-minded ethos. The Massachusetts Republican Party leadership certainly thinks that it is an extremely important issue among those independent-minded managerial-professionals; moreover, they maintain that Republicans should not be afraid to reach out to these voters on the issue of education. As Brian Cresta, the former chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, argues, Republican candidates in Massachusetts should “not [be] afraid to talk about education, come up with [their] own ideas, be open on it, be up front on it, and decide yes [the Party] can be an education party; that’s not just a Democratic issue; [the Party has] ceded that ground to [the Democrats] forever; that’s what [the Party has] to do in certain areas. Education . . . is very important to those individuals who are in that business sector voting block, because that is what has [enabled] them [to become] members of that voting block; undergrad, graduate school, high school—whatever their education levels are, that’s what has gotten them there; it is a great equalizer. [Republicans] have to not be afraid on those issues.”200

Regardless of whether the education issue is a fundamental element of this new ethos, the ethos is definitely—as Robert Turner suggested in the Globe article that I discussed at the end of chapter three—an attitude of open-mindedness that is devoted to social progress. Those independent-minded individuals are concerned most with their own personal and their family’s success and wellbeing, which are tied to the wellbeing of the state’s economy. They are also concerned with the state’s fiscal responsibility, which the state must employ in order to avoid knee-jerk increases in state taxes, and with the state’s social responsibility, which is indicated by the government’s attention to the health care needs of the state’s population. This independent-minded attitude does not, however, seem to be one of a libertarian sort—that is, concerned with individual liberty and individual rights—as Turner maintained. In order to understand how this new attitude is currently developing, I devote the next chapter to examining the issues that are presently shaping the state’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign.

  1. Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43: 1998, 82 ⏎
  2. Wayne Woodlief, “Politics Inside Out Gov scores big in first TV speech,” Boston Herald (18 January 1998), 033 ⏎
  3. Scot Lehigh, “Harshbarger—preachy activist,” Boston Globe, City ed. (9 August 1998), A1 ⏎
  4. Kennedy was president while Harshbarger was an undergraduate at Harvard ⏎
  5. Cited in Lehigh, “Harshbarger,” A1 ⏎
  6. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  7. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  8. Ibid ⏎
  9. I conducted this interview with Robert Gray on 29 October 2001. See Appendix C, Interview 2 for the complete text ⏎
  10. Frank Phillips and Adrian Walker, “Democrats at odds over Harshbarger,” Boston Globe, City ed. (18 September 1998), A1 ⏎
  11. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  12. Adrian Walker, “Democratic dissidents back Cellucci,” Boston Globe, City ed. (19 September 1998), A1 ⏎
  13. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  14. Cited in Matt Falconer, “House Democrat endorses Cellucci,” Boston Globe, City ed. (3 October 1998), B3 ⏎
  15. Adrian Walker, “Cellucci—low-key consensus builder,” Boston Globe, City ed. (16 August 1998), A1 ⏎
  16. Ibid ⏎
  17. Appendix C, Interview 2 ⏎
  18. Walker, “Cellucci,” A1 ⏎
  19. See Illustration 4, for Hudson’s location just north of the intersection of these highways ⏎
  20. The exact figure, as shown in Table 4, is 23.83% ⏎
  21. The exact figure, as shown in Table 12, is 34.61% ⏎
  22. The exact figure, as shown in Table 5, is 53.32% ⏎
  23. The exact figure, as shown in Table 16, is 63.64% ⏎
  24. Walker, “Cellucci,” A1 ⏎
  25. Wayne Woodlief, “Politics Inside Out Gov scores big in first TV speech,” Boston Herald (18 January 1998), 033 ⏎
  26. Appendix C, Interview 2 ⏎
  27. Joe Battenfeld, “Analysis: Cellucci shows he’s in command,” Boston Herald (16 January 1998), 004 ⏎
  28. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  29. Although in Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates have recently begun choosing running mates early in the campaign season, the Parties’ gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial candidates do not officially join as members of the same ticket until after both are selected by primary voters as their Party’s single gubernatorial candidate and single lieutenant gubernatorial candidate ⏎
  30. Wayne Woodlief, “Politics Inside Out A quick Cellucci pulls Swift ‘twofer,’” Boston Herald (3 February 1998), 019 ⏎
  31. Cited in Woodlief, “Cellucci pulls ‘twofer,’” 019 ⏎
  32. Carolyn Ryan, “Cellucci taps woman as campaign partner,” Boston Herald (3 February 1998), 014 ⏎
  33. Cited in Carolyn Ryan, “I can be a good mother too, Swift says,” Boston Herald (8 May 1998), 001 ⏎
  34. Ibid ⏎
  35. Battenfeld, “Analysis: Cellucci,” 004 ⏎
  36. Appendix C, Interview 2 ⏎
  37. I conducted this interview with Brian Cresta on 1 November 2001. See Appendix C, Interview 6 for the complete text ⏎
  38. Appendix C, Interview 2 ⏎
  39. Wayne Woodlief, “Politics Inside Out; Cellucci bid for soccer moms risky,” Boston Herald (5 May 1998), 025 ⏎
  40. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  41. Cited in Scot Lehigh, “Malone resumes fire on Cellucci,” Boston Globe, City ed. (7 May 1998), B5 ⏎
  42. Ellen J. Silberman, “In reversal, gov backs minimum wage hike,” Boston Herald (16 May 1998), 016 ⏎
  43. Joan Vennochi, “It’s a shame,” Boston Globe, City ed. (20 May 1998), C1 ⏎
  44. Cited in Frank Phillips and Adrian Walker, “Cellucci and Harshbarger launch TV commercials today,” Boston Globe, City ed. (20 May 1998), B3 ⏎
  45. Ibid ⏎
  46. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  47. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  48. Cited in Adrian Walker, “It’s official: Harshbarger enters the race for governor,” Boston Globe, City ed. (23 April 1998), A1 ⏎
  49. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  50. Cited in Jill Zuckman, “Good times are always better for incumbent,” Boston Globe, City ed. (25 May 1998), B1 ⏎
  51. Ibid ⏎
  52. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  53. Ibid ⏎
  54. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  55. Scot Lehigh, “Cellucci seen seizing initiative from Harshbarger,” Boston Globe, City ed. (6 October 1998), B4 ⏎
  56. Scot Lehigh, “The ramifications of the ballot Your vote goes beyond winners and losers,” Boston Globe, City ed. (27 October 1998), F1 ⏎
  57. American Association of Retired People of Massachusetts, “You Need to Know … Where the Candidates for Governor Stand on Issues that Affect You,” Boston Globe (2 November 1998), A5 ⏎
  58. Boston Globe Staff, “Position papers: Candidates on the issues,” Boston Globe (3 November 1998), B4 ⏎
  59. The Harshbarger Committee and the Tolman Committee, “Toward a brighter future,” Boston Globe (2 November 1998), A9 ⏎
  60. Wayne Woodlief, “Op-Ed; Harshbarger must develop punch,” Boston Herald (7 October 1998), 035 ⏎
  61. Adrian Walker and Frank Phillips, “Governor Candidates come out swinging Cellucci, Harshbarger tangle in first debate,” Boston Globe, City ed. (6 October 1998), A1 ⏎
  62. Cited in Walker, “It’s official,” A1 ⏎
  63. Cited in Walker and Phillips, A1 ⏎
  64. Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips, “Poll shows Cellucci with small lead Swing voters propel him to 6-point edge on Harshbarger,” Boston Globe, City ed. (9 October 1998), A1 ⏎
  65. Ibid ⏎
  66. Cited in Tina Cassidy, “Economic cloud casts shadow on Harshbarger,” Boston Globe, City ed. (11 October 1998), A1 ⏎
  67. Ibid ⏎
  68. Cited in Carolyn Ryan, Joe Battenfeld and Ellen Silberman, “Gov debate turns Harsh—AG, Cellucci tangle on personal finance,” Boston Herald (15 October 1998), 001 ⏎
  69. Ibid ⏎
  70. Scot Lehigh, “Harshbarger finally comes to his own defense,” Boston Globe, City ed. (15 October 1998), B6 ⏎
  71. Joe Battenfeld and Carolyn Ryan, “BOSTON HERALD/CHANNEL 5 POLL; Cellucci widens gov lead,” Boston Herald (29 October 1998), 001 ⏎
  72. Ibid ⏎
  73. Ibid ⏎
  74. Cited in Hilary Sargent, “Analysts divided on who prevailed,” Boston Globe, City ed. (27 October 1998), B4 ⏎
  75. Cited in Zuckman, “Good times,” B1 ⏎
  76. Cited in Jill Zuckman, “Noisy debate disquiets some voters,” Boston Globe, City ed. (28 October 1998), A1 ⏎
  77. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  78. Cited in Sargent, B4 ⏎
  79. Cited in Zuckman, “Noisy debate,” A1 ⏎
  80. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  81. Ibid ⏎
  82. Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43: 1998, 83. These percentages disagree slightly with the percentages displayed in Illustration 7. I have chosen to include the percentages from Public Document No. 43 because they constitute the state’s official election results ⏎
  83. John Ellis, “Four reasons why Harshbarger lost,” Boston Globe, City ed. (5 November 1998), A27 ⏎
  84. Cable News Network, Inc., “Massachusetts Governor Exit Poll,” available from http://www1.cnn.com/ELECTION/1998/states/MA/G/exit.poll.html; accessed on 19 February 2002. All of the following exit poll results included in this paragraph and in the next paragraph were found in the Voter News Service poll data posted at this website ⏎
  85. Based on data from Massachusetts Public Document No. 43: 1998 and on data from the VNS, I calculated that about 54% of people who voted for Cellucci were registered as unenrolled ⏎
  86. Appendix C, Interview 6 ⏎

CHAPTER 5
The 2002 Massachusetts Gubernatorial Campaign

ACTING GOVERNOR JANE SWIFT

Economic conditions in the state changed considerably between the fall of 1998, when Acting Governor Paul Cellucci was elected governor, and the winter of 2002, when the 2002 gubernatorial campaign began in earnest. By the summer of 2001, economic growth was declining, forcing many individuals and companies to fret over lost income. And on September 11 of 2001, the Bay State, together with the entire nation, experienced an awful tragedy, which further depressed the state’s economy and drastically altered the mood in the state and in the nation.

Speaking from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency’s underground bunker in Framingham on the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Acting Governor Jane Swift tried to calm the citizens of the Commonwealth, who had been shocked and frightened to learn that both American Airlines Flight 11 and United Air Lines Flight 175, which were used to attack the World Trade Center in New York, had originated from Boston’s Logan International Airport. She encouraged everyone in Massachusetts to try to return to life as usual, so as not to be “paralyzed” by the tragedy.201 In the days following the attacks, the acting governor maintained a high profile around the state, as she visited with business groups, school children, veterans, and Red Cross volunteers. Praised for “her competence and leadership,” Swift found an outpouring of gratitude wherever she went.202 After Swift visited an elementary school in Milton, the town’s School Superintendent Mary Grassa-O’Neill commented, “She has been an outstanding leader in this week of our national tragedy.”203 An influential state Democrat remarked on Swift: “She’s looking better than ever.”204 The acting governor appeared quite impressive in mid-September, as she spoke aggressively regarding the need for the nation to respond harshly to the attacks; as she explained that the voting in the state’s 9th Congressional District election, which had already begun when the attacks were carried out, should continue throughout the day and should not be rescheduled—for do so would suggest that the American democratic process should defer to the whims of terrorists; as she promised worried businessmen that Boston’s Logan International Airport would resume flights only when the airport could guarantee passenger safety; and as she suggested to veterans of Pearl Harbor that they could guide the nation with their already proven courage.205 Buoyed by popular approval of her leadership following September 11, Jane Swift announced in mid-October that she would run for governor in 2002.

A few weeks after the tragedy of September 11, the Boston Herald conducted a poll of 414 registered voters which revealed that Swift’s approval ratings had improved dramatically in the aftermath of the attacks. Sixty-six percent of respondents approved of the job that the acting governor was doing, while only 20 percent disapproved, and 14 percent were undecided. Those figures indicated a major change in voter respect for the acting governor, whose approval ratings in December of 2000—two years into her term as lieutenant governor—were extremely weak. The Herald’s poll of that December showed that only 20 percent of polled voters approved of then Lieutenant Governor Swift, while 58 percent disapproved, and 22 percent were undecided.206 In the few months following the attacks, Swift was receiving widespread approval.

After an intense period of grieving, however, the citizens of the Bay State were ready to move on to new discussions of other problems; and within a few months, they had completely forgotten about the acting governor’s praiseworthy performance during the days following the attacks. Quickly, the talk turned, once again, to the state’s floundering economy, which had been worsened by the lost tourist revenue following September 11. In November of 2000, when the state’s economy still seemed to be on the upswing, Massachusetts voters had overwhelmingly approved a measure to rollback the state’s income tax rate from 5.6 percent to 5 percent over four years. But, by the winter of 2002, many individuals were growing increasingly sensitive to the notion that the state would not be able to handle the large decrease in state revenue that would result from the planned income tax rollback.

Acting Governor Swift, however, having fought hard for passage of the ballot initiative to rollback the state’s income tax rate, was not willing to freeze the tax rollback in response to mounting economic and political pressure. As a result of her commitment to the tax rollback, and in deference to the state’s mounting deficit, Swift was forced to propose a budget that dramatically slashed state funding for important programs that were well-liked by voters. Swift’s gubernatorial campaign staff expected that this tough fiscal strategy would appeal to the same independent-minded voters who had helped elect Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci. Tim O’Brien, initially the Swift Campaign’s political director, explained that the acting governor’s campaign staff were trying to “show that she is tough, fiscally, that she is the same as Cellucci and Weld on the fiscal end.”207

This strategy, however, was extremely risky, as the Herald’s Wayne Woodlief suggested in an op-ed piece. He explained: “The painful new recession budget that acting Gov. Jane Swift announced . . . is a declaration of war on the Democrats who seek her job and a huge gamble on whether she or they are right about what the voters really want.”208 Woodlief questioned whether voters would admire Swift for being “steadfast” in her commitment to carrying out a voter directed tax cut or disapprove of her for being “stubborn” in her refusal to recognize and respond to the poor economic situation in the state. Indeed, the picture appeared bleak for Swift, as few seemed to be admiring her sense of commitment to the voter-approved tax rollback. Instead, independent economic analysts, such as the head of the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation, Mike Widmer, were cautioning that the acting governor’s “revenue assumptions [were] ‘unsafe and risky,’ that [her] budget borrow[ed] too much from the state’s ‘rainy day’ reserves and that it could wind up from $500 million to $1 billion out of balance.”209 Such fiscal mismanagement would not earn Swift many votes among the state’s fiscally conscious managerial-professional voters.

Because she refused even to entertain the possibility of freezing the tax rollback, Swift was forced to save money elsewhere. And to do so, she began slashing funding for proven and admired state programs, such as its anti-smoking campaign (whose funding would decrease from $63 million to just $19 million) and its drug addiction and prostate cancer detection programs. Those who supported the state’s anti-smoking campaign, many of whom were suburban managerial-professionals, argued that reduced funding for the state’s anti-smoking efforts would destroy programs that had resulted in a noticeable reduction in the number of new smokers, particularly among youth. The Swift administration maintained that such programs were expendable “marginal services,” not elements of necessary “direct care” services. But, as Woodlief charged, “one man’s ‘marginal’ service is another’s necessity.” Moreover, he warned, “when a case can be made that prevention saves lives—and money in future health costs avoided—expect more howls here.”210 The public clearly disagreed with Swift. And by the end of January, Swift was appearing more and more out of touch with the economic realities of the state and with the desires of the state’s managerial-professional suburban voters, who were growing increasingly dissatisfied with a chief executive who was displaying few hallmarks of a good leader and little of the managerial understanding necessary for overseeing the state’s finances and public policies.

According to the results of a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll released on January 27, 2002, a majority of Massachusetts voters wanted the acting governor to freeze the state income tax rollback and increase the state tax on cigarettes. The poll, which solicited 400 state voters, revealed that only 31 percent of voters viewed Swift favorably, while 43 percent viewed her unfavorably.211 A large portion of voters (26 percent) were uncertain of their opinion of Swift and were perhaps reserving judgement on the acting governor until she indicated more obviously that her steady hand following the tragedy of September 11 was merely a short-lived phenomenon. The presence of this large portion of undecided voters could also suggest that many voters were simply not paying any attention to Swift because she seemed out of touch with their concerns. Clearly, as Gerry Chervinsky, the president of the company that completed the polling, indicated, “The governor ha[d] misjudged the voters’ concerns over the economy and its effect on the budget . . . She seem[ed] out of step with the public’s willingness to defer tax cuts in favor of preserving state services.”212 The poll also showed that the important issues of the 1998 gubernatorial race remained important to voters: 19 percent of those surveyed ranked the economy as their most important concern; 17 percent said education and health care were most important; and 15 percent cited taxes as most important.213

Quite notably, the poll suggested that Swift no longer received the support of the bulk of independent-minded voters. Among unenrolled voters, 46 percent believed that the Democrats could more effectively confront the state’s problems, while only 19 percent believed that the Republicans would be better. As Chervinsky explained, “This [result was] significant, because the Republicans [were] losing the independent voters, who [had] been the key to their gubernatorial victories in the past three elections.”214 Indeed, Swift was quickly losing ground with the state’s key voters.

By the beginning of February, many influential members of the state’s business community were also growing increasingly frustrated with Swift’s fiscal policies. The chief executive of the health insurance giant Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, William Van Faasen, explained his disapproval of Swift’s refusal to freeze the income tax rollback and of her proposed cuts in health care funding: “There is too much uncertainty, too much fragility. I am very worried about the instability of the health care industry in Massachusetts and the long-term consequences of that. . . . The tax cut is vary shallow and broad. No one’s life is dramatically changed by postponing it. Many lives are dramatically hurt by not properly funding the health care needs in the short term.”215 Swift’s budget cuts would have a major negative impact on the state, and going ahead with the tax rollback would have little positive affect. The chief economist at Boston’s State Street Corp., Frederick Breimyer, further elaborated that the actions that the state government had already taken to lower the state’s income tax rate had caused considerable damage. He claimed that lowering the state’s income tax rate at precisely the wrong time had produced a “structural change” in state revenue that had complicated the state’s economic situation. He stated: “We have made [the situation] worse . . . What we should do is suspend [the tax cut] until we can afford it. That would be the prudent thing to do.”216 The acting governor, however, was not particularly interested in displaying fiscal prudence. The chief executive of FleetBoston Financial Corp., Chad Gifford, summed up the situation: “The forces line up in favor of delaying the proposed tax cut. When you are looking at shrinking revenue and uncertain cuts, it sure indicates to me we should not be decreasing taxes at this time.”217 Clearly, Swift was not listening to the financial advice of such experienced business leaders, for on February 9, the Boston Globe announced that the acting governor would be making appearances all over the state in order to cultivate support for the income tax rollback.218

As Swift ignored public sentiment on the issue of taxes, they were becoming an increasingly important issue in the gubernatorial campaign. At the end of February, a Boston Globe article presented the budget plans of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates and suggested that all five of them were aiming to appeal to fiscally conscious voters by revealing sharp distinctions between their fiscal policies and those of the acting governor.219 The three Democratic front-runners, state Treasurer Shannon O’Brien, Massachusetts Senate President Thomas Birmingham, and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich all favored freezing the state income tax rollback at 5.3 percent and increasing the state tax on cigarettes by 50 cents per pack. Birmingham, who was particularly conscious of the state’s funding crisis, also indicated that he might be open to increasing the state income tax rate to its former 5.6 percent. The other two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Steve Grossman and former State Senator Warren Tolman, did not favor freezing the income tax rollback, but did favor increasing the cigarette tax.220

Another important issue of the 2002 gubernatorial campaign that was quite fundamentally related to the state’s weakened economic position (and was also an issue that was first introduced to voters as a ballot question) was the notion of “Clean Elections.” In November of 1998, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly showed their support for the “Clean Elections” campaign finance law, which would use taxpayer money to fund the campaigns of candidates who were willing to adhere to strict limits on fundraising and spending throughout their campaigns. Because of their disinterest in allocating money to fund the campaigns of their potential challengers and their preference for providing funds for important social and other pet projects, the state’s legislators had refused to allocate money to fund the voter authorized law. By the winter of 2001-2002, the state’s economic condition was considerably worse than it had been when the voter approved law was first delivered to the state legislature. As a result, state legislators continued to refuse to fund the law. In January of 2002, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) finally ruled in a 5-2 decision that the state’s lawmakers had to choose between funding or repealing the voter-approved ballot referendum of 1998.221

Immediately following the court’s announcement, state legislators who opposed funding the “Clean Elections” law initiated plans to repeal it. The Democratic chairman of the Massachusetts House Election Laws Committee, Representative Joseph Wagner of Chicopee, suggested that with the current poor economic condition of the state and a developing $2 billion fiscal deficit, it was simply inappropriate for the legislature to fund the law.222 He argued: “Given the state’s financial situation, the decision [not to fund the law was] easier and easier . . . Do we take money from our schools? Where do we take money from when we don’t have money?”223 He explained: “It’s clear to me that people want fair and open elections . . . It is not at all clear to me that people want $100 million of their tax money to buy bumper stickers.”224 In deference to the many voters who had initially supported the law, the acting governor, meanwhile, promised to veto any legislative effort to repeal the law and called on legislators to “do the right thing.”225

Ironically, Acting Governor Jane Swift was once again out of step with the state’s voters. Although she maintained that she sought to uphold the will of Bay State voters, who had voted 2-1 in favor of the law, she was in fact ignoring the fact that their view had changed. Indeed, as the Boston Herald’s editorial staff argued a couple of weeks after the SJC released its ruling, “Voters, who approved the law in 1998, [were] not stupid. They [knew] that what might have sounded like a nifty idea then [might] not be affordable now. The estimated $40 million it could cost to provide money to each and every candidate who could qualify for public campaign funds would be better spent on a host of other programs.”226 By the end of February, a Herald poll revealed that the majority of Massachusetts voters would vote “‘against using taxpayer money to fund political campaigns for public office in Massachusetts.’” Fifty-five percent of respondents stated that they would vote against such clean elections funding, 36 percent replied that they would vote in favor of this funding, while 19 percent were undecided.227 In another Herald editorial, the paper’s editorial staff—which generally correctly interprets the mood of the Massachusetts electorate—urged the Massachusetts Senate to repeal the law.228

The next day, the state senate voted 19-18 in favor of funding a stripped-down version of the Clean Elections Law and giving Bay State voters another opportunity to vote on the issue of public financing for political campaigns in a nonbinding ballot referendum in the fall of 2002.229 In airing their opinions in the senate, many fiscally conscious legislators pled that it was simply impossible to fund political campaigns at a time when the state was contending with a large budget deficit. Rather interestingly, 7 out of the 11 senators who represent towns within my statistical area—which I defined earlier to include 89 towns, which are located along and between Routes 128 and 495, and are inhabited predominantly by managerial-professionals—voted no to limiting Clean Elections funding to only two candidates. In other words, these 7 senators voted in support of the Clean Elections Law. If the votes of these senators accurately reflected the views of their constituency, this result would suggest that a slight majority of the state’s more independent-minded voters support the Clean Elections Law.230 However, the fact that the state senators from this managerial-dominated area were divided on this issue indicated that Swift would neither lose nor gain much ground with managerial-professionals by opposing (along with the majority of Massachusetts voters) the funding of this law. Swift could instead, as many legislators were attempting to do, argue that in a time of fiscal uncertainty, such funding was irresponsible. Forcefully articulating this argument would most definitely have won her support among managers, who were concerned with promoting fiscal responsibility in government. Swift, however, did not follow this reasoning.

The next day, the Massachusetts House voted to approve a bill that severely undermined the Clean Elections Law in the form that had been approved by voters.231 In an editorial that appeared in the Herald the day after the House voted, the paper begged the acting governor not to veto the legislature’s attempts to repeal the Clean Elections Law. The editorial maintained: “With every passing day it gets more and more difficult to justify the expenditure of vast sums of taxpayer money . . . on political campaigns when the state is laying off social workers and making cuts in home health care for the elderly.”232 The Herald’s editorial staff thereby revealed its commitment to those managerial notions of rationality and progress in government. Funding must be appropriated in a rational manner that values promoting the social and economic progress of all citizens. According to this reasoning, it was not possible to justify providing funding for clean elections while simultaneously denying funding for necessary social services.

The state’s SJC—whose jurisdiction forced it to promote the implementation of the voter-approved law—did not heed the managerial advice of the Herald. Two weeks later, the court ruled that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Warren Tolman deserved $811,050 in public funding for his campaign under the Clean Elections Law. The court, however, did not require the state Legislature to fund the Law, nor did it explain what funding source would provide Tolman’s money.233 By not requiring this funding, the SJC’s ruling merely served to complicate an already confusing and tense standoff between the state’s Legislature and the state’s chief executive, who was unconcerned with the managerial notions of rationality, organization, progress, and efficiency in government.

While refusing to back away from some major state expenditures, through her steadfast commitment to funding the Clean Elections Law and refusal to freeze the state income tax rollback, Acting Governor Jane Swift also ignored managerial notions of efficiency by wasting a great deal of state money through patronage hiring. At the beginning of February, Swift ignored the halt in state hiring and offered a $61,000 per year salary to a professional golfer named David Gianferante, who happened to be well-liked in Republican political circles. The Metropolitan District Commission’s director of golf operations was surely not a position critical to the wellbeing of the state, especially during a financially strapped period for the state government. Unsurprisingly, many were quick to criticize the acting governor for such a waste of state funds. Unfortunately for the acting governor, the hiring was made public at a particularly sensitive moment for her: just as she was revealing the painful budget slashing of popular state social expenditures, such as smoking prevention programs.234 The Herald’s editorial writers suggested in a sharply critical editorial that “the hiring of Gianferante could lead many voters to conclude that the administration has one set of rules for ordinary citizens and a secret, more favorable set for political cronies.” And moreover, the editorial warned, voters would surely inform the acting governor: “That’s no way to win votes or govern effectively.”235 In a state in which voters had in the previous gubernatorial election declared that the issue of ethics and morality was the most important factor in helping them decide which candidate to vote for, Swift’s blatant political cronyism could become extremely costly politically.

In another questionable hiring-related practice, revealed in the Herald just one week later, the acting governor enabled her former chief of staff, Peter Forman, to receive up to $420,000 from the state in early retirement pension money.236 Forman, as had been previously announced, was leaving his post in the acting governor’s office to begin working on the campaign of Swift’s lieutenant gubernatorial nominee, former Melrose Mayor Patrick Guerriero. Forman alleged that the acting governor had fired him from her staff, as her letter of termination suggested, and had not merely reassigned him to her running mate’s campaign staff, as it had earlier appeared. In order to receive the extra $420,000 in retirement money, Forman’s application for early retirement funding would have to be approved by the state retirement board, which was chaired by one of the acting governor’s Democratic gubernatorial challengers, Treasurer Shannon O’Brien. Rather expectedly, the board denied Forman’s application. The state’s First Deputy Treasurer Michael Travaglini defended the board’s action and explained: “It didn’t appear as though Mr. Forman had lost his job . . . It appeared he was simply reassigned to another position.”237 Travaglini, indicating that Forman’s application might be accepted at the next meeting of the state’s retirement board, added: “If Mr. Forman was indeed fired and that’s made clear to the members of the retirement board then he would be eligible for termination retirement.”238 Again, as with hiring Gianferante, it was clearly rather ethically and fiscally questionable for Swift to help enable her staffer to receive bonus pension money at a time of fiscal uncertainty, when every cent was needed to fund necessary social programs. Swift’s actions would surely deprive her of the support of independent-minded managerial-professionals, who were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the acting governor’s lack of interest in ethical, rational, or efficient management.

In response to the questionable firing of Forman, the editorial writers at the Herald offered the Swift administration another stern warning regarding its ethical failings.239 Surprised by the managerial ineptitude of the administration, the editorial stated: “Right now, of course, we’re hard pressed to figure out which is more offensive—that the talented 43-year-old Forman will be getting a $420,000 kiss from the taxpayers (a kind of public-sector welfare for the able-bodied) or that the acting governor and her team are so politically and ethically tone-deaf as to allow this to happen.” How was it possible, the editorial writers wondered, that the Swift administration did not realize that the extra retirement funding would have be approved by a committee chaired by Democratic gubernatorial challenger Shannon O’Brien, or that O’Brien might be able to use the situation to damage Swift politically? As for the Swift administration spokesman’s question of why Forman should not be able to receive the money that he’s entitled to receive, the Herald’s editorial writers replied: “The answers are as numerous as they are obvious: Because Forman is young enough and smart enough to make a decent living on his own, because it’s just plain wrong, because it’s politically stupid and because it’s an embarrassment to the administration in which he served.”240 The Herald’s readership and those managerially-attentive voters might have been beginning to wonder how it could be possible for the Swift administration to make anymore mistakes, but the political miscues were far from completed.

Just one week later, the Boston Globe reported that another one of the acting governor’s staffers was attempting to obtain extra retirement money.241 The state’s leading union negotiator, James J. Hartnett Jr., was on a 6-month paid leave of absence while being investigated for ethical misconduct relating to his receiving free meals at pricey Boston restaurants, courtesy of a union lobbyist. However, by deciding to retire early in order to obtain $20,000 in extra retirement money, Hartnett cleverly avoided facing discipline for any proven wrongdoing. The incident was yet another example of the Swift administration’s nonchalant attitude with regard to ethical considerations and its lack of concern for tackling the state’s budget woes.

The acting governor and her own administration officials were not the only ones pursuing ethically questionable behavior that would not impress independent-minded managerial-professional voters. The Globe announced that Swift’s running mate, former Melrose Mayor Patrick Guerriero, had redirected Melrose city funds that were intended for “the public health nursing and wellness function of the city” towards personal projects.242 Guerriero used the money primarily for creating city promotional materials that were intended to highlight his own accomplishments.243 Before Swift had selected her running mate, Swift’s initial political director, Tim O’Brien, had speculated that Swift would choose a running mate who had executive or managerial experience, such as “a CEO of some company,” who would lend credence to the campaign’s “fiscal message” and thereby appeal to managerial-professional voters.244 As it turned out, however, Swift did not choose such an individual. Instead, like Swift herself, her running mate was clearly not admired for his professionalism. Ethically dubious and personally aggrandizing efforts, like those of lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Patrick Guerriero, seemed to be hallmarks of the Swift team in the month of February. This reality would not resonate well with independent-minded voters, who are concerned foremost with ethical behavior and the proper management of the state’s finances.

Amidst such exercises in unnecessary and inappropriate spending—aimed at increasing the personal wealth and sense of importance of the administration’s staffers—the administration was slashing important state-funded programs from the state’s budget. Just two days before the Globe announced Hartnett’s attempt to increase his pension at the expense of state taxpayers, the Herald revealed that the acting governor was almost completely obliterating the state’s Bureau of Special Investigations, an agency charged with saving the state millions of dollars in fraudulent welfare claims.245 State legislators were shocked at Swift’s lack of foresight in choosing to cut the number of investigators in the bureau from 68 to merely 5. Democratic state Senator Therese Murray of Plymouth stated that the bureau’s investigators “more than paid for their salaries,” and complained: “I don’t know why [the Swift administration] chose to take away the entire unit. I think it’s foolish to cut accounts and agencies that actually save you money in the long run.”246 Rather unfortunately for the Swift administration, cutting those important jobs would not in fact save any of the $500,000 that the acting governor had projected would be saved. As the president of the Coalition of Public Safety, James Alves, explained, the state would have to pay each of the 63 laid off investigators extra money for unemployment benefits, pension funding, sick days, and vacation buyouts.247 Alves maintained: “They’re going to be paying them more to lay them off than keep them.”248 The Swift administration seemed doomed to undermine almost any effort it attempted in the month of February.

Throughout the month of February, the acting governor received substantial advice regarding whom she should choose to be the interim Suffolk County district attorney.249 The editorial staff of the Boston Globe initiated the advice giving by calling on Swift to “place public safety above political interests.”250 Recognizing the administration’s political and ethical ineptitude during the first half of the month, the editorial writers went on to caution Swift: “The person with the most to offer professionally between now and the November election may not be the person with the most to offer her in terms of political organization and clout.”251 It is almost pathetic that a chief executive would have to receive such advice, but alas, Swift had not displayed much managerial might in the preceding weeks. The advice and criticism continued in the Herald a few days later. In an extremely sharply worded news article, the Herald’s Peter Gelzinis criticized the acting governor: “Given a choice between taking the high road to fill the critical vacancy of Suffolk County DA, or making a craven political appointment to pump a little air into her flagging gubernatorial chances . . . Jane will opt for the hack route.”252 Rumors had already begun circulating that Swift would select Democratic Boston City Councilor Dan Conley of Hyde Park in order to please her political ally Boston Mayor Menino.253 Gelzinis continued, aggressively chiding the acting governor: “Jane could transcend politics and genuinely act like a leader instead of the GOP’s petulant kid sister,” and asking rhetorically: “How’s that for a novel concept?” Gelzinis addressed Swift directly, warning that she had suffered politically for her previous weak moves: “You’ve laid off social workers and hired a $61,000-a-year golf bum; you’ve arranged to ‘fire’ your chief of staff, so he can collect a retirement windfall and go to work for your running mate. And you’ve been hammered each time.” Gelzinis concluded mockingly: “Do something different, for a change. Do something, because it’s the right thing to do. Surprise us, Jane.”254

But Swift would not surprise those who were noting her managerial blunders. In keeping with her managerial naïvete, Swift appointed City Councilor Conley, whom many had criticized, as Suffolk County DA. According to the Herald, a number of the city’s prosecutors, the Boston police, and the former Suffolk County DA had all encouraged Swift aides to choose someone else.255 After the new DA was sworn into his position, a number of black church leaders from neighborhoods within Suffolk County condemned Swift’s choice. The leaders had attempted to meet with the acting governor before she made her selection in order to advise her that a non-Caucasian DA would be more effective within their county. Gilbert Thompson, Bishop of the New Covenant Christian Center in Mattapan and head of inter-church relations for the Black Ministerial Alliance expressed the community’s anger: “We are outraged that [Acting Governor Swift] has snubbed her nose at the entire black community . . . Our kids are disproportionately in jail more than anyone else’s and we need to be considered.”256 The acting governor had clearly failed to consider the concerns of Boston’s black community. The situation worsened for Swift the next day, when the Herald revealed that Conley had received campaign funding from the owner of a Hyde Park bar, which was being investigated by state and federal authorities for criminal actions.257 Dan Pokaski the head of the city licensing commission, explained: “Everyone in the (Hyde Park) neighborhood knew its history—it was really bad . . . It had a long history of beatings, drug dealing and gambling.”258 Swift’s appointment had once again not displayed her political or ethical acumen.

A few days later, Jane Swift, herself, received a federal lawsuit related to her dubious January firing of two Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board members. One of the fired board members, Christy Mihos, asserted in the lawsuit that the acting governor had violated his right to free speech when she fired him for deciding to defer an increase in turnpike tolls.259 The lawsuit capped off a month of unimpressive administrative actions that would not have helped Swift gain the support of independent-minded managerial professionals, who are fundamentally concerned with rationality and professionalism.

Despite the Swift campaign’s intentions—which, as Tim O’Brien had explained, were to show that the acting governor was “establishing [her] leadership and . . . making tough decisions”—the Swift campaign had failed to show that the acting governor was a capable executive.260 Moreover, Swift had failed to alter the perception of corruption and cronyism within Bay State politics. As Philip Johnston, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, maintains, this issue of corruption “is one issue that resonates with the suburban managerial elite.”261 Thus, by failing to remove such cronyism, Jane Swift had alienated precisely those voters whose support she would need to win the election—those independent-minded voters, who are concerned with professionalism and effective management and who are guiding the development of the state’s newly dominant political ethos.

Although her friends claimed that Jane Swift was an excellent manager when crafting the details of complex policy, Swift displayed very few of the professional skills necessary to be a successful state leader in Massachusetts. Politics in the Bay State is a challenging, full contact sport. And it demands professional intelligence and managerial acuity. One might master the details of complicated policies, but if one cannot avoid the often subtle political traps, or evade the ever-ready jabs of one’s opponents, or develop defensive and offensive alliances, or cultivate the correct image, or act with reference to longterm goals, one will not succeed in politics in the Commonwealth. Indeed, as Frank Phillips explained in a February Boston Globe article, “Those close to Swift say she is most comfortable engaging in policy discussions. She has earned respect on Beacon Hill for her command of details and ability to articulate her position. . . . But what has become obvious after nearly 11 months in office is that Swift remains uncomfortable with and averse to the horsetrading, ego-stroking, interpersonal side of politicking.”262 The latter skills are the professional tools, which enable a good politician to succeed. Because Jane Swift lacked those important tools, she would continue to undermine her administration and would never be able to appeal to independent-minded voters as a confident chief executive capable of managing the state’s economic woes. On March 19, 2002, Jane Swift, therefore, wisely dropped out of the gubernatorial race. She was never a viable candidate because she did not embody the qualities of the state’s developing independent-minded ethos—qualities which would have enabled her to appeal to and gain the support of independent-minded managerial professionals.

APPEALING TO MANAGERIAL-PROFESSIONALS

While Swift lacks these necessary professional traits, many of the state’s current gubernatorial candidates do not. On the afternoon of March 19, shortly after Swift had dropped out of the governor’s race, businessman Mitt Romney declared his intention to run as a Republican candidate for governor. Mitt Romney, who served as president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee, had redeemed the previously scandal-plagued Salt Lake Organizing Committee and then recently orchestrated a very successful 2002 Winter Olympics. Such managerial success would surely appeal to the Bay State’s suburban managerial-professional voters. Even before Romney entered the gubernatorial race, his polling numbers were impressive. On March 17, the Herald released the results of its poll of 401 Republican and unenrolled Massachusetts voters. The poll revealed that if Swift and Romney faced each other in the Republican primary, Romney would receive 80 percent of the votes, while Swift, the sitting acting-governor, would receive only 11 percent.263

In view of such wonderful support, Romney was thrilled to enter the gubernatorial race. On the same day that the Herald printed the results of its poll, Romney indicated his intention to target the state’s essential managerial voting bloc. Romney maintained that the $40 million of profit that he helped generate at the olympics suggested that he was an extremely capable manager who could bring much needed business expertise to the state’s governorship. Before he began his tenure at the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee, the committee had created a $379 million budget deficit. By eradicating that deficit and turning a profit, Romney had clearly demonstrated a great deal of managerial skill.264 Appealing directly to the Commonwealth’s managerial-professionals, Romney argued that his expertise would serve him well on Beacon Hill: “Managing an enterprise economically, finding ways to reduce costs and provide to the enterprise the best service at a cost people can afford, is something you do in public service.”265 Articulating his case even more forcefully, Romney claimed that “there are many lessons which one learns through a business career, through something like the Olympics, or through other endeavors that can be applied through public life.”266 Romney sought to indicate the importance of managerial-professional skills for the position of governor and in doing so, he reflected the important elements of the newly dominant ethos among Massachusetts voters: rationality, efficiency, organization, and progress. He explained: “Sometimes in an organization or an endeavor, stopping and saying, ‘OK, where are we really going; what is it we’re really trying to do?’ Sometimes doing that is hugely beneficial. And in [the] case [of the 2002 Winter Olympics], the challenge of a scandal also brought the opportunity to stop and say, ‘What’s important to us?’ And a financial crisis, as well, made us say, ‘What do we want from these Games?’”267 Romney was obviously aiming to differentiate himself from Beacon Hill insiders, who, in response to the state’s recent budget woes, had failed to display their commitment to any of the managerial notions that have become so important to the state’s voters.

Romney evidently hoped to capitalize on Bay State voters’ interest in a political-outsider type of candidate. As one Herald opinion writer had explained in an editorial at the beginning of March, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Robert Reich had previously received a great deal of support from Massachusetts voters (beginning when he declared his candidacy in January) “in large part because he [seemed] outside the system: beholden to no one and willing to speak his mind.”268 But, unfortunately for Romney, such outsider status could also prove a liability. Despite owning a home in Belmont and continuing to vote in Massachusetts, Romney had lived in Park City, Utah, between February of 1999, and March of 2002, while he attended to his olympic duties.269 Some, such as Philip Johnston of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, alleged that because he was such an outsider—both because of his somewhat dubious residency and his great personal wealth—Romney was out of touch with the present issues of the Commonwealth and the needs of the state’s voters.

During his residency in the heavily Mormon state of Utah, Romney had raised some eyebrows back in Massachusetts regarding his fundamental political beliefs. During Romney’s unsuccessful 1994 Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy, Romney had represented himself as an abortion rights supporter.270 But, as a prominent Mormon leader while living in Utah, Romney felt obliged to distance himself from a stance that was rather out of line with the views of the Church of Latter Day Saints. He even wrote a letter to the Salt Lake Tribune in which he explained that he did “not wish to be labeled prochoice.”271 Massachusetts Democrats were eager to attack Romney for such “flip-flops.” Romney seemed to be indicating one set of beliefs in more liberal Massachusetts and a very different set of beliefs in the heavily conservative state of Utah. This lack of commitment to his own personal beliefs would not impress Massachusetts managers, who were hoping for strong leadership from their state’s chief executive.

In a rather weak move politically, in the days just after he entered the gubernatorial race, Romney displayed his support for the Swift administration’s policies. Like Swift had, he pledged that he would not freeze the state’s income tax rollback. He maintained that the state government could move ahead with the planned rollback while also protecting the funding of favored state programs and balancing the state’s budget.272 Through his obvious lack of understanding of the state’s awful fiscal crisis, the new gubernatorial candidate suggested that he had not in fact developed new ideas of his own but instead planned to continue the failed efforts of the state’s previous Republican leadership. Romney was clearly out of touch with the affairs of the Bay State, as he seemed to believe that pledging to continue the policies of the Swift administration would win him the respect of the state’s voters. Romney would certainly not succeed through such weak moves. Philip Johnston warned that the state’s Democratic Party would not shy away from attacking Romney. Johnston declared: “He looks like a white knight now but that won’t last . . . we’ll engage him immediately—we’re going to be very aggressive in informing people about his issues, his flip-flops and his background.”273 Despite his substantial managerial achievement at the 2002 Winter Olympics, Romney would have to campaign hard to prove that he could be a capable manager in the Bay State.

One Democratic gubernatorial candidate, successful businessman and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Steve Grossman, said that he would immediately seek to challenge Romney’s corporate background.274 Grossman, who had substantial corporate experience of his own as the C.E.O. of MassEnvelopePlus, planned to differentiate his own experience as the chief executive of a company that had always maintained mutual respect between the company’s ownership and its employees from Romney’s experience as a venture capitalist at Boston’s Bain Capital. During the 1994 senatorial race, Romney had received a great deal of negative publicity when a group of workers at an Indiana company, which Bain Capital owned, went on strike. Grossman, whose fourth-generation family business has never experienced a strike, hoped to paint Romney as a “heartless businessman,” just as Kennedy had in 1994.275

Grossman did, however, share many similarities with Romney that would frustrate his bid to win the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Like Romney, Grossman maintained that the state’s fiscal crisis could be solved without freezing the state’s planned income tax rollback. In an early March opinion piece in the Boston Globe, Grossman displayed his budget calculations that would enable the state to continue the planned tax cut. He argued that Beacon Hill politicians had failed to produce such a balanced budget plan themselves because they had placed “special interests ahead of the people’s interests.”276 Grossman claimed that it was time for “new leadership to challenge old assumptions, demand higher standards and accountability, and inspire creative solutions,” and resolved that “those who rely on state services should never again be held hostage to political agendas.”277 Such strong talk of removing special interests from the state’s budget making-process would surely appeal to managerial-professionals, who are fundamentally concerned with promoting rationality, efficiency, and progress in government.

It was not clear, though, that Grossman had accurately calculated his proposed budget or that he would actually be able to remove special interests from state government. Grossman billed himself as an outsider, capable fundamentally altering the state’s reliance on special interests. But, as his experience at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) revealed, Grossman was not in fact such a political outsider. At the DNC, as a Globe article indicated, Grossman “helped . . . raise $45 million in unregulated soft money, even as he decried its influence on national politics.”278 Grossman stated his commitment to clean up government. But, given that he had done little to remove the influence of the rich and powerful from Washington, one wondered how much he could accomplish in that regard on Beacon Hill. Despite his private sector managerial expertise, Grossman would thus find it difficult to paint himself as a fundamentally better type of manager than many of his Democratic challengers who had substantially more expertise in public management.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich was a Democratic gubernatorial candidate with proven public sector experience as the Clinton administration labor secretary who helped oversee the nation’s dramatic economic recovery in the 1990s. And, like Grossman, Reich was trying to sell himself as a Beacon Hill outsider. Reich entered the gubernatorial race in January, and immediately attracted a great deal of attention among Democrats because of his outsider status. Yet, Reich’s outsider status, like that of Romney, appeared to be somewhat of a liability. Though extremely experienced on the national level, Reich was perhaps too far out of touch with Bay State issues. His campaign received some unfortunate attention in February when the gubernatorial candidate was unable to name the state’s westernmost county. Reich certainly received substantial attention because of his national status, but he would have a great deal of work to do in order to convince managerial-professional voters that he truly understood the complexities of budget-making in the Bay State.

Current State Treasurer Shannon O’Brien was another Democratic gubernatorial candidate with proven public sector professional experience, but unlike Grossman and Reich, she was not aiming to style herself as a political outsider. Shortly after becoming state treasurer in 1998, O’Brien helped uncover embezzlement that had taken place under the watch of her predecessor, Joe Malone. Also as treasurer, O’Brien chaired the state’s retirement board, which had been charged with denying or offering extra pension funding to a number of Swift administration officials who had alleged they had been fired.279 To further demonstrate her managerial competence and assure that no improper allocation of state funds had escaped her oversight, O’Brien pledged in March of 2002 to investigate many of the recent questionable firings of the Swift administration. Such managerial supervision would certainly earn her the respect of the state’s managerial-professionals.

O’Brien, however, had also received criticism for unprofessional actions, which would surely not appeal to such voters. The Globe’s Scot Lehigh suggested that O’Brien had “a tendency to browbeat, upbraid, [and] bully people.”280 A number of state politicians had accused O’Brien of berating and abusing them for their refusal to offer their support for her gubernatorial campaign. O’Brien, of course, denied the allegations. Such behavior, however, was certainly not unusual in Bay State politics—which has been described as “internecine warfare.” Nonetheless, if the allegations proved true, this behavior would not appeal to the state’s managers, who were deeply concerned with professionalism in public and private management. If the state’s managers decided to look beyond these allegations, though, O’Brien would be an extremely viable gubernatorial candidate because of her proven managerial skills. Thus, towards the end of March, O’Brien’s chances of winning the Democratic primary, appeared rather strong.

State Senate President Thomas Birmingham and former State Senator Warren Tolman were the two other Democratic gubernatorial candidates. Both candidates supported the notion of Clean Elections funding, Birmingham having voted not to restrict this funding, and Tolman running as the only gubernatorial Clean Elections candidate.281 And on the basis of their support for Clean Elections, both candidates would appeal to managerial-professionals as politicians committed to rationality and progress in government. But, by the end of March, it was not yet clear whether they would be able to mount enough support among the state’s more independent-minded, suburban managerial-professional voters to be truly viable candidates.

All of the 2002 gubernatorial candidates were clearly attempting to target and garner support from managerial-professionals. While each of the candidates were basing their appeals on slightly different elements of the managerial conception of good government, it was clear that all aspects of the managerial conception of good government—rationality, efficiency, organization, and progress—were important both to the candidates and to the voters whose support they were trying to gain. Some candidates sought to promote rationality by modeling the public sector on the business methods of the private sector; some candidates aimed to bring efficiency by removing the wasteful spending brought about by big donor special interests; some candidates attempted to create better government organization by relying on established methods of bureaucratic oversight; and some candidates wished to enable progress by improving the conditions of government through Clean Elections. By the 2002 gubernatorial election, the independent-minded ethos of the state’s managerial-professionals had clearly become a critical factor in statewide campaigning.

  1. Cited in Steve Marantz, “Attack on America; Swift urges Bay Staters to ‘return to business,’” Boston Herald (12 September 2001), 022. ⏎
  2. Cited in Frank Phillips and Rick Klein, “Post-attack Logan leadership could boost or hurt Swift,” Boston Globe (13 September 2001), B3. ⏎
  3. Cited in David R. Guarino, “Attack on America; Swift’s decisive actions boost her political stock,” Boston Herald (14 September 2001), 024. ⏎
  4. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  5. Ibid. Also, Yvonne Abraham, “Swift gets back to business WW II trials offer lessons today, she says,” Boston Globe (14 September 2001), B4. ⏎
  6. David Guarino, “War on Terrorism; HERALD POLL; Swift’s approval rating rises,” Boston Herald (2 December 2001), 001. ⏎
  7. I conducted this interview with Tim O’Brien on 30 October 2001. See Appendix C, Interview 4, for the complete text. ⏎
  8. Wayne Woodlief, “Op-Ed; Swift on budget: Steadfast or Stubborn,” Boston Herald (24 January 2002), 025. ⏎
  9. Ibid. ⏎
  10. Ibid. ⏎
  11. Frank Phillips, “Voters back delay in tax rollback, poll finds in survey, Swift trailing 6 Democratic challengers,” Boston Globe (27 January 2002), A1. ⏎
  12. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  13. Ibid. ⏎
  14. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  15. Cited in Steve Bailey, “Memo to Beacon Hill,” Boston Globe (8 February 2002), D1. ⏎
  16. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  17. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  18. Rick Klein, “Swift set to take antitax stance directly to public vows campaign against proposals,” Boston Globe (9 February 2002), B1. ⏎
  19. Rick Klein, “5 Rivals oppose Swift on tax cuts,” Boston Globe (24 February 2002), A1. ⏎
  20. Ibid. ⏎
  21. David R. Guarino and Elisabeth J. Beardsley, “Funding ordered for Clean Elections,” Boston Herald (26 January 2002), 001. ⏎
  22. Chicopee is a town in western Massachusetts, which is not located near the statistical area that I defined between Routes 128 and 495. ⏎
  23. Cited in Rick Klein, “Fund or repeal Clean Elections, justices order SJC ruling revives campaign finance law,” Boston Globe (26 January 2002), B4. ⏎
  24. Cited in Guarino and Beardsley, 001. ⏎
  25. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  26. “Editorial; Get real on election law,” Boston Herald (11 February 2002), 024. ⏎
  27. “Editorial; New look at election law,” Boston Herald (1 March 2002), 024. ⏎
  28. “Editorial; The inevitability of repeal,” Boston Herald (13 February 2002), 028. ⏎
  29. Rick Klein, “Senate votes to curb fund for elections money would go to 2 candidates; Swift veto likely,” Boston Globe (15 February 2002), A1. ⏎
  30. The senators who represent towns within my statistical area who voted no to limiting the Clean Elections Law include: Cynthia Stone-Creem (D-Newton), Susan C. Fargo (D-Lincoln), Cheryl A. Jacques (D-Needham), Pamela Resor (D-Acton), Jo Ann Sprague (R-Walpole), Bruce E. Tarr (R-Gloucester), and Susan C. Tucker (D-Andover). Those who voted yes include: Robert A. Havern III (D-Arlington), Brian A. Joyce (D-Milton), and David P. Magnani (D-Framingham). ⏎
  31. Steve Marantz, “House guts ‘Clean Elections,’” Boston Herald (16 February 2002), 001. ⏎
  32. “Editorial; Swift must rethink veto,” Boston Herald (16 February 2002), 016. ⏎
  33. Rick Klein, “State obliged to pay Clean candidates SJC: Tolman, others entitled to public funds,” Boston Globe (26 February 2002), A1. ⏎
  34. Joe Battenfeld, “Gov ducks blame for patronage golf hire,” Boston Herald (8 February 2002), 003. ⏎
  35. “Editorial; A political misstep,” Boston Herald (10 February 2002), 023. ⏎
  36. Joe Battenfeld, “Swift lines up top aide for $420G golden parachute; ‘Firing’ sets Swift aide up for retirement bonanza,” Boston Herald (15 February 2002), 001. ⏎
  37. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  38. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  39. “Editorial; Was Forman hit by ‘friendly fire’?” Boston Herald (16 February 2002), 016. ⏎
  40. Ibid ⏎
  41. Rick Klein, “Official in ethics probe seeks early retirement,” Boston Globe (21 February 2002), B1. ⏎
  42. Cited in Sean P. Murphy, “As mayor of Melrose, Guerriero diverted money from health fund,” Boston Herald (15 February 2002), B1. ⏎
  43. Ibid. ⏎
  44. Appendix C, Interview 4. ⏎
  45. Jack Sullivan, “Costly cuts; Swift slashes welfare fraud investigators,” Boston Herald (19 February 2002), 001. ⏎
  46. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  47. The Bureau of Special Investigations had previously functioned as part of the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety. ⏎
  48. Cited in Sullivan, 001. ⏎
  49. Suffolk County includes Boston, Revere, Chelsea, and Winthrop—4 urban, eastern-most areas located along Massachusetts Bay. Suffolk County is not within my statistical area. ⏎
  50. “Editorial; Choosing a DA . . . “ Boston Globe (13 February 2002), A22. ⏎
  51. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  52. Peter Gelzinis, “Swift takes hack at appointing new Suffolk DA,” Boston Herald (17 February 2002), 008. ⏎
  53. A number of articles have recently been written which refer to the developing friendly partnership between the Republican acting governor and the Democratic Boston mayor. See, Stephanie Ebert and Sarah Schweitzer, “Praise is mutual for Swift, Menino cross-party affinity offers benefits for both,” Boston Globe (25 February 2002), B1. ⏎
  54. Gelzinis, 008. ⏎
  55. Karen E. Crummy, “Gov poised to appoint Conley as Suffolk DA,” Boston Herald (19 February 2002), 001. ⏎
  56. Cited in Ibid. Mattapan is a neighborhood in Boston. ⏎
  57. Karen E. Crummy and Maggie Mulvihill, “Conley tapped troubled bar for campaign $” Boston Herald (20 February 2002), 001. ⏎
  58. Cited in Ibid. ⏎
  59. Doug Hanchett, “Mihos ratchets up fight vs. Swift; Files fed court rights suit,” Boston Herald (23 February 2002), 002. ⏎
  60. Appendix C, Interview 4. ⏎
  61. Appendix C, Interview 7. ⏎
  62. Frank Phillips, “Political miscues are a problem for Swift political miscues hurt Swift,” Boston Globe (23 February 2002), B1. ⏎
  63. Joe Battenfeld, “It’s Mitt’s party—Mere 12% in GOP stand with Swift if Romney runs for gov,” Boston Herald (17 February 2002), 001. ⏎
  64. Glen Johnson, “Mitt Romney’s tough decision,” Boston Globe (17 March 2002), A1. ⏎
  65. Cited in Ibid. The Massachusetts State House is located on Beacon Hill in Boston. ⏎
  66. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  67. Cited in Ibid ⏎
  68. Thomas M. Keane, Jr., “Op-Ed; voters love checks, balances,” Boston Herald (1 March 2002), 025. ⏎
  69. Steve Marantz, “Swift camp could challenge Romney’s Mass. residency,” Boston Herald (13 March 2002), 002. ⏎
  70. As I mentioned earlier, Romney lost to Kennedy by a margin of almost 17 percentage points. ⏎
  71. Cited in “Editorial; Romney’s reentry,” Boston Globe (19 March 2002), A18. ⏎
  72. David R. Guarino, “Romney vows to balance budget without new tax,” Boston Herald (22 March 2002), 006. ⏎
  73. Cited in David R. Guarino, “Dems plan pre-emptive strike vs. Mitt,” Boston Herald (15 March 2002), 001. ⏎
  74. Rick Klein, “Democrats weigh moves vs. Romney,” Boston Globe (21 March 2002), A1. ⏎
  75. Elisabeth J. Beardsley, “Mitt catches on to strategies for disarming Dem image bash,” Boston Herald (23 March 2002), 004. ⏎
  76. Steven Grossman, “False choice on services vs. tax cut,” Boston Globe (3 March 2002), D7. ⏎
  77. Ibid. ⏎
  78. Yvonne Abraham, “Inside, outside he’s raised millions from the rich and powerful; now Steven Grossman is campaigning as a reformer,” Boston Globe (8 March 2002), B1. ⏎
  79. Joe Battenfeld, “O’Brien says she’ll review retirement benefit votes,” Boston Herald (2 March 2002), 002. ⏎
  80. Scot Lehigh, “Bully factor dogs O’Brien,” Boston Globe (8 March 2002), A19. ⏎
  81. The Clean Elections Law was the voter-approved law that called for using taxpayer money to fund the campaigns of candidates who were willing to adhere to strict limits on fundraising and spending throughout their campaigns. ⏎

CHAPTER 6
Conclusion

As I have argued in this thesis, candidates seeking statewide offices in Massachusetts must target and garner support from suburban managerial-professionals, who are guiding the development of the state’s newly dominant political ethos of independent-mindedness. I began chapter two by explaining that the Democratic Party rose to power in the Commonwealth because of the support of urban ethnic laborers. I then charted the concurrent development of the state’s newest and most independent-minded political culture—suburban managers—with the expansion of the state’s high technology industry. In the next chapter, I explained why registering as unenrolled implies greater independent-mindedness. Then, based on my analysis of occupational and voter enrollment trends, I identified independent-mindedness as the state’s newly dominant political ethos. In my final two chapters, I discussed the issues of the 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial campaigns in order to reveal the manner in which statewide candidates are specifically targeting those managerial-professionals, who are directing the development of this ethos. By targeting these voters in particular, statewide candidates mark the importance of this newly dominant political ethos of independent-mindedness.

Politically independent-minded suburban managerial-professionals are indeed the state’s newest generation of voters, and their political ethos is now defining politics in the Bay State. As former Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Brian Cresta explains, this newer political culture and the transformation of the Commonwealth’s dominant political ethos that this political culture is directing developed from “economic impacts upon the other three [political cultures]: as the ethnic laborer worked up the economic ladder, as the Brahmins’ blue blood [was] thinned, as the rural conservative area became [less] rural.”282 Today, this political culture is, as Cresta maintains, “becoming the most effective component of the political process” in the state. To indicate the importance of this new group, Cresta offers an example:

I had a gentleman, unsolicited, send a $25,000 donation to the Republican Party. I called him up to inform him that I really appreciated it, but I couldn’t take anything more than a $10,000 donation—that was the maximum amount. And I said, ‘Don’t mind me asking, but it is not often that a total stranger unsolicited sends $25,000.’ I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘Well, I grew up in the projects, was able to get an undergrad degree in a public college; then I got a graduate degree. I built my way up in the business community and am in venture capital now. I have done very well, and I think it’s time for me to start giving back.’ He is a perfect example of someone that was probably in that [laborer] class: he was first generation American; his parents were both from Ireland. I’m sure they were laborers or in some position like that . . . and that guy has become [part of] the microcosm that is getting more and more involved in politics today. Politics was always run by the blue collar Democrats and the blue blood Republicans and it’s not that way anymore. A lot more younger people, as they have [become] involved, don’t identify with either one of those groups. You find a lot of people that are doing well in the business community today—whether they are dot-com across the river in Cambridge, . . . or right over there in the financial district—a lot of young people our age are identifying with that [more independent-minded attitude]—[people] who probably came from more of an ethnic labor background.283

The Massachusetts Republican Party, clearly recognizes the importance of gaining support from this new independent-minded generation of managerial-professionals. Cresta argues that the Party must pay more attention to this group “because it is the growing segment of [the state’s] voting population.” In the past, the divisions between the two Parties were clear. Cresta explains: “Historically, when it was just the Brahmins and the Ethnics, it was easy. . . . The Republicans had the Brahmins; the Democrats had the Ethnics.” Today, however, the distinctions are no longer clear and have “been blurring time and time again.” Cresta thus maintains that “if the Republican Party is going to stay viable in [the] state and re-elect a Republican governor, for example, [the Party must] focus specifically on [this newest group].”284

The Massachusetts Democratic Party also understands the importance of appealing to these independent-minded managerial-professionals. Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman Philip Johnston explains that the Democratic Party hopes to target precisely these voters as the Party develops its longterm strategy, which it is doing now. Johnston elaborates:

They are the people who come to mind most readily; . . . those are the people that I want to make sure [the Party’s soon-to-be-released economic plan] resonates with. These are people who are very well versed in the issues; these are the people who care a lot about economic growth in this state, care about education; they care about the futures of their children. They live here in large part because of the fact that this is a state with good public schools and terrific higher education as well, and so they want to live in that kind of environment, that kind of community. . . . they understand the connection between education and economic growth, and so when we release this, we want to appeal to that group.285

With respect to the Party’s gubernatorial candidates, Johnston maintains that the Party must appeal to managers by fielding a candidate “who at least appears to be someone who can run a large enterprise.”286 On the issue of leadership, which managers obviously understand very well, Acting Governor Jane Swift has shown that she is not particularly competent. As Johnston remarks on Swift, the acting governor “is just in over her head. She clearly is a weak leader in that she doesn’t know what she is doing. So, that is the big issue for us, the matter of competence. She’s not had a very competent administration.”287

In order to differentiate themselves from Swift and her record of ineffective management and thereby appeal to and garner the support of independent-minded managerial-professionals, all of the Republican and Democratic candidates in the 2002 gubernatorial race will have to demonstrate exceptional managerial acuity. This special attention that the 2002 gubernatorial candidates will devote to the demands of managers is a harbinger of statewide elections to come. Indeed, because this new ethos of independent-mindedness is becoming increasingly widespread among voters, the Commonwealth’s suburban managerial-professionals will remain the focus of statewide campaigning for long into the future.

  1. Appendix, C, Interview 6. ⏎
  2. Ibid. ⏎
  3. Ibid. ⏎
  4. Appendix C, Interview 7. ⏎
  5. Ibid. ⏎
  6. Ibid. ⏎

APPENDIX A
Illustrations

  1. Single party control of the Massachusetts General Court, 1868-1982. Reprinted, by permission of the publisher, from Wilkie and Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, 58.
  2. Party voting in Massachusetts for presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections between 1948 and 1966. Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Wilkie and Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, 74.
  3. arty voting in Massachusetts for presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections between 1968 and 1988. Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Wilkie and Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, 74.
  4. Distribution of high technology corporations along Massachusetts highways in 1980. Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Wilkie and Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, 52.
  5. Suburbanization of Massachusetts between 1950 and 1980. Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Wilkie and Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, 47.
  6. Population distribution of Massachusetts in 1980. Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Wilkie and Tager, ed., Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, 6.
  7. Town by town breakdown of the vote for Massachusetts governor in 1998. The eastern half of the state. Globe Staff Graphic by David Butler. Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from the Boston Globe (5 November 1998), B1.
  8. Graph showing the percentage of unenrolled voters out of all registered voters and percentage of managerial-professionals out of all employed persons in the statistical area (SA) and in the rest of Massachusetts. This graph was made based on data from the U.S. Census of Population of 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990, as well as based on data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43 of 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000.

APPENDIX B
Tables

Table 1: The four political cultures of Massachusetts

As defined by Edgar Litt. Reprinted, by permission of the publisher, from Litt, The Political Cultures of Massachusetts, 24.

Dominant Characteristics Patrician Elite (Patricians) Managerial Intellectuals (Managers) Urban Workers (Workers) Small Town, Rural, Business, Labor (Yeomen)
Party Affiliation Republican Mixed to Democratic Democratic Republican
Residence Outer suburbs Inner suburbs Core cities Small towns
Power Base Wealth, Skill Skill Numbers Numbers
Social Class Upper Upper-middle Lower-middle, Working Lower-middle, Working
Ethnicity Old-stock Yankee New-stock Jewish, Irish New-stock Italian, Irish Old-stock Yankee
Religion Protestant Mixed Catholic Protestant
Occupation Finance, Business Administrative, Technical Blue-collar Entrepreneurial, Blue-collar
Power Position Contracting Expanding Slightly contracting Substantially contracting
Political Style Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan Parochial Parochial
Attitude Toward Change Conservative Progressive Conservative Reactionary
Political Ideology Elitist Elitist, Equalitarian Populist Bargaining, Town meeting
Issue Orientation Ideological Ideological, Group-benefits Group-benefits, Nature of times Nature of times, Personalities of candidates
Party Loyalty Moderately strong Weak Moderately strong Strong
Attitude Toward Social Welfare Conservative Liberal Liberal Conservative
Attitude Toward Civil Liberties, Rights, Urban Renewal Liberal Liberal Conservative Conservative
Attitude Toward Unions, Corporations Accept both but favor corporations Organization men, accept both Accept both but favor unions Anti-organization men, accept neither
Attitude Toward Party, Governmental reorganization Somewhat favorable Very favorable Very unfavorable Very unfavorable

Table 2: Summary table of voter enrollment and occupational data for Massachusetts

Including my particular statistical area (SA is defined in the text) and the rest of the state. Voter enrollment data was compiled from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43. Occupational data was compiled from the U.S. Population Censuses from 1960, 1970, 1980, and from 1990. N/A indicates that the data was not available for that year.

Year % Unenrolled Voters in SA % Unenrolled Voters in Rest of State % Managerial-Professionals in SA % Managerial-Professionals in Rest of State
1960 N/A N/A 27.59% 18.60%
1970 N/A N/A 33.74% 23.01%
1976 40.87% 35.91% N/A N/A
1978 44.40% 37.29% N/A N/A
1980 44.49% 37.95% 34.40% 23.60%
1982 45.11% 38.68% N/A N/A
1984 42.91% 36.92% N/A N/A
1986 44.57% 38.09% N/A N/A
1988 44.33% 38.19% N/A N/A
1990 48.06% 41.79% 39.85% 28.64%
1992 50.77% 43.82% N/A N/A
1994 51.02% 44.78% N/A N/A
1996 52.52% 44.97% N/A N/A
1998 52.65% 46.85% N/A N/A
2000 52.11% 48.14% N/A N/A

Table 3: 1960 Occupational data from U.S. Census

N/A indicates that the data was not available for that town.

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Employed Persons Number of Managerial-Professionals % Managerial-Professionals out of All Employed Persons
Acton N/A N/A N/A
Amesbury 4298 602 14.01%
Andover 6165 2157 34.99%
Arlington 20602 5786 28.08%
Ashland N/A N/A N/A
Bedford 2900 1089 37.55%
Bellingham N/A N/A N/A
Belmont 12026 4324 35.96%
Beverly 13585 3291 24.23%
Billerica 6115 1034 16.91%
Bolton N/A N/A N/A
Boxborough N/A N/A N/A
Boxford N/A N/A N/A
Braintree 11249 2744 24.39%
Brookline 24932 9593 38.48%
Burlington 4384 1140 26.00%
Canton 4833 1317 27.25%
Carlisle N/A N/A N/A
Chelmsford 5692 1621 28.48%
Concord 4653 1755 37.72%
Danvers 7655 1748 22.83%
Dedham 9351 2127 22.75%
Dover N/A N/A N/A
Essex N/A N/A N/A
Foxborough 3283 762 23.21%
Framingham 17052 4709 27.62%
Franklin 3823 648 16.95%
Georgetown N/A N/A N/A
Gloucester 9114 1714 18.81%
Groveland N/A N/A N/A
Hamilton N/A N/A N/A
Harvard N/A N/A N/A
Haverill 20199 2986 14.78%
Holliston N/A N/A N/A
Hopkinton N/A N/A N/A
Hudson N/A N/A N/A
Ipswich N/A N/A N/A
Lexington 9489 4041 42.59%
Lincoln N/A N/A N/A
Littleton N/A N/A N/A
Lynnfield N/A N/A N/A
Marlborough 7454 1258 16.88%
Maynard N/A N/A N/A
Medfield N/A N/A N/A
Medway N/A N/A N/A
Merrimac N/A N/A N/A
Middleton N/A N/A N/A
Milford 6683 782 11.70%
Millis N/A N/A N/A
Milton 10503 3823 36.40%
Natick 11195 3098 27.67%
Needham 9802 3888 39.67%
Newbury N/A N/A N/A
Newburyport 5865 973 16.59%
Newton 37210 14273 38.36%
Norfolk N/A N/A N/A
North Andover 4512 1094 24.25%
North Reading N/A N/A N/A
Norwood 9671 2238 23.14%
Peabody 12765 2465 19.31%
Randolph 6504 1261 19.39%
Reading 6916 2256 32.62%
Rockport N/A N/A N/A
Rowley N/A N/A N/A
Salisbury N/A N/A N/A
Sharon 3375 1320 39.11%
Sherborn N/A N/A N/A
Southborough N/A N/A N/A
Stoughton 5999 1078 17.97%
Stow N/A N/A N/A
Sudbury N/A N/A N/A
Tewksbury 4905 1010 20.59%
Topsfield N/A N/A N/A
Walpole 5279 1201 22.75%
Waltham 22358 4350 19.46%
Watertown 16473 3856 23.41%
Wayland 3711 1494 40.26%
Wellesley 9228 3980 43.13%
Wenham N/A N/A N/A
West Newbury N/A N/A N/A
Westborough N/A N/A N/A
Westford N/A N/A N/A
Weston N/A N/A N/A
Westwood 3970 1459 36.75%
Wilmington 4249 815 19.18%
Winchester 7292 2902 39.80%
Woburn 11326 2218 19.58%
Wrentham N/A N/A N/A
STATISTICAL AREA 428645 118280 27.59%
STATE 2000312 410537 20.52%
REST OF STATE 1571667 292257 18.60%

Table 4: 1970 Occupational data from U.S. Census

N/A indicates that the data was not available for that town.

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Employed Persons Number of Managerial-Professionals % Managerial-Professionals out of All Employed Persons
Acton 5444 2842 52.20%
Amesbury 4667 1001 21.45%
Andover 9569 4235 44.26%
Arlington 23266 7755 33.33%
Ashland N/A N/A N/A
Bedford 4603 2112 45.88%
Bellingham 5069 1119 22.08%
Belmont 12194 5131 42.08%
Beverly 15627 4432 28.36%
Billerica 11207 2669 23.82%
Bolton N/A N/A N/A
Boxborough N/A N/A N/A
Boxford N/A N/A N/A
Braintree 14308 3988 27.87%
Brookline 29763 13344 44.83%
Burlington 8000 2616 32.70%
Canton 6699 2181 32.56%
Carlisle N/A N/A N/A
Chelmsford 11554 4693 40.62%
Concord 5851 2743 46.88%
Danvers 10380 3163 30.47%
Dedham 10740 2832 26.37%
Dover N/A N/A N/A
Essex N/A N/A N/A
Foxborough 5046 1549 30.70%
Framingham 27250 9551 35.05%
Franklin 6377 1707 26.77%
Georgetown N/A N/A N/A
Gloucester 10955 2355 21.50%
Groveland N/A N/A N/A
Hamilton N/A N/A N/A
Harvard 1441 570 39.56%
Haverill 18465 3637 19.70%
Holliston 4421 1700 38.45%
Hopkinton N/A N/A N/A
Hudson 6315 1505 23.83%
Ipswich 4474 1384 30.93%
Lexington 12535 6396 51.03%
Lincoln N/A N/A N/A
Littleton N/A N/A N/A
Lynnfield N/A N/A N/A
Marlborough 11735 3153 26.87%
Maynard N/A N/A N/A
Medfield N/A N/A N/A
Medway N/A N/A N/A
Merrimac N/A N/A N/A
Middleton N/A N/A N/A
Milford 8219 1809 22.01%
Millis N/A N/A N/A
Milton 11169 4244 38.00%
Natick 13017 4250 32.65%
Needham 11551 5103 44.18%
Newbury N/A N/A N/A
Newburyport 6070 1446 23.82%
Newton 38937 17132 44.00%
Norfolk N/A N/A N/A
North Andover 6858 2250 32.81%
North Reading 4275 1271 29.73%
Norwood 13334 3921 29.41%
Peabody 19833 5415 27.30%
Randolph 10773 2958 27.46%
Reading 9060 3296 36.38%
Rockport N/A N/A N/A
Rowley N/A N/A N/A
Salisbury N/A N/A N/A
Sharon 4861 2025 41.66%
Sherborn N/A N/A N/A
Southborough N/A N/A N/A
Stoughton 9207 2109 22.91%
Stow N/A N/A N/A
Sudbury 4826 2526 52.34%
Tewksbury 7765 1764 22.72%
Topsfield N/A N/A N/A
Walpole 6993 2102 30.06%
Waltham 26816 6185 23.06%
Watertown 17454 5309 30.42%
Wayland 5119 2466 48.17%
Wellesley 10792 5269 48.82%
Wenham N/A N/A N/A
West Newbury N/A N/A N/A
Westborough 4528 1664 36.75%
Westford 3855 1246 32.32%
Weston 4078 2236 54.83%
Westwood 5056 2336 46.20%
Wilmington 6329 1528 24.14%
Winchester 8841 4235 47.90%
Woburn 15492 3671 23.70%
Wrentham N/A N/A N/A
STATISTICAL AREA 593063 200129 33.74%
STATE 2298169 592472 25.78%
REST OF STATE 1705106 392343 23.01%

Table 5: August 1976 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1976, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

N/A indicates that the data for that town was not available.

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 8895 4703 52.87%
Amesbury 7045 3838 54.48%
Andover 13437 4639 34.52%
Arlington 28886 7744 26.81%
Ashland 4369 2424 55.48%
Bedford 6481 3383 52.20%
Bellingham 6115 3118 50.99%
Belmont 20364 8527 41.87%
Beverly 22030 10507 47.69%
Billerica 14744 6181 41.92%
Bolton 1296 818 63.12%
Boxborough 1095 556 50.78%
Boxford 2541 1405 55.29%
Braintree 20601 6112 29.67%
Brookline 20601 6112 29.67%
Burlington 11014 5349 48.57%
Canton 10325 4870 47.17%
Carlisle 1700 775 45.59%
Chelmsford 15837 6951 43.89%
Concord 9830 4057 41.27%
Danvers 12924 6157 47.64%
Dedham 15087 6352 42.10%
Dover 2680 985 36.75%
Essex 1880 988 52.55%
Foxborough 6655 3533 53.09%
Framingham 31655 11995 37.89%
Franklin 8284 4439 53.59%
Georgetown 3057 1680 54.96%
Gloucester N/A N/A N/A
Groveland 2627 1316 50.10%
Hamilton 3762 1870 49.71%
Harvard 1929 1011 52.41%
Haverill 22695 7061 31.11%
Holliston 6303 3214 50.99%
Hopkinton 3380 1720 50.89%
Hudson 7612 4059 53.32%
Ipswich 6429 2887 44.91%
Lexington 18515 6118 33.04%
Lincoln 2799 1145 40.91%
Littleton 3253 1845 56.72%
Lynnfield 6437 2943 45.72%
Marlborough 15071 6928 45.97%
Maynard 5085 2063 40.57%
Medfield 5221 3190 61.10%
Medway 4156 1906 45.86%
Merrimac 2728 1647 60.37%
Middleton 2120 1036 48.87%
Milford 11761 4128 35.10%
Millis 3362 1529 45.48%
Milton 17269 4410 25.54%
Natick 16063 6927 43.12%
Needham 17105 5927 34.65%
Newbury 2567 1183 46.08%
Newburyport 9640 4783 49.62%
Newton 49634 17129 34.51%
Norfolk 2466 1342 54.42%
North Andover 10170 4031 39.64%
North Reading 5872 2571 43.78%
Norwood 16505 5422 32.85%
Peabody 27212 10105 37.13%
Randolph 15558 6073 39.03%
Reading 12629 4828 38.23%
Rockport 4150 2014 48.53%
Rowley 1904 1079 56.67%
Salisbury 3114 1894 60.82%
Sharon 7592 3288 43.31%
Sherborn 2474 1135 45.88%
Southborough 3425 1646 48.06%
Stoughton 12748 5161 40.48%
Stow 2210 1300 58.82%
Sudbury 7607 4036 53.06%
Tewksbury 11679 6783 58.08%
Topsfield 3047 1635 53.66%
Walpole 9690 5154 53.19%
Waltham 25166 10508 41.75%
Watertown 19456 4869 25.03%
Wayland 7198 3660 50.85%
Wellesley 16420 5794 35.29%
Wenham 1971 799 40.54%
West Newbury 1405 525 37.37%
Westborough 6744 2594 38.46%
Westford 6421 3169 49.35%
Weston 6492 2564 39.49%
Westwood 7884 3278 41.58%
Wilmington 8411 3876 46.08%
Winchester 12074 4111 34.05%
Woburn 18279 7610 41.63%
Wrentham 2953 1625 55.03%
STATISTICAL AREA 857877 350652 40.87%
STATE 2912001 1088228 37.37%
REST OF STATE 2054124 737576 35.91%

Table 6: August 1978 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1978, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

N/A indicates that the data for that town was not available.

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 9603 5500 57.27%
Amesbury 6595 3578 54.25%
Andover 14804 6126 41.38%
Arlington 28739 8831 30.73%
Ashland 4598 2912 63.33%
Bedford 7626 3648 47.84%
Bellingham 6958 3633 52.21%
Belmont 17188 8462 49.23%
Beverly 21370 10922 51.11%
Billerica 15369 6646 43.24%
Bolton 1355 882 65.09%
Boxborough 1078 610 56.59%
Boxford 2918 1877 64.32%
Braintree 19804 6229 31.45%
Brookline 30648 11980 39.09%
Burlington 11352 5338 47.02%
Canton 10865 5385 49.56%
Carlisle 1757 885 50.37%
Chelmsford 16412 7808 47.57%
Concord 9449 3977 42.09%
Danvers 13441 6810 50.67%
Dedham 15116 6851 45.32%
Dover 2941 1298 44.13%
Essex 1737 924 53.20%
Foxborough 6623 3211 48.48%
Framingham 31498 12918 41.01%
Franklin 8411 4651 55.30%
Georgetown 3126 1757 56.21%
Gloucester 15030 8802 58.56%
Groveland 2600 1332 51.23%
Hamilton 3631 1923 52.96%
Harvard 2179 1280 58.74%
Haverill 22709 7946 34.99%
Holliston 6995 4361 62.34%
Hopkinton 3574 1744 48.80%
Hudson 7469 4065 54.42%
Ipswich 6558 3201 48.81%
Lexington 18615 6785 36.45%
Lincoln 2963 1400 47.25%
Littleton 3666 2311 63.04%
Lynnfield 7155 3422 47.83%
Marlborough 14745 6530 44.29%
Maynard 5032 2334 46.38%
Medfield 5267 3229 61.31%
Medway 4226 2049 48.49%
Merrimac 2801 1789 63.87%
Middleton 2213 1192 53.86%
Milford 11972 4777 39.90%
Millis 3442 1700 49.39%
Milton 16917 4841 28.62%
Natick 15679 7033 44.86%
Needham 17702 6849 38.69%
Newbury 2489 1294 51.99%
Newburyport 10142 5400 53.24%
Newton 48645 19281 39.64%
Norfolk 2544 1491 58.61%
North Andover 10031 4542 45.28%
North Reading 6007 2726 45.38%
Norwood 16254 5796 35.66%
Peabody 24938 9232 37.02%
Randolph 15866 6588 41.52%
Reading 12845 5567 43.34%
Rockport 4201 2161 51.44%
Rowley 1867 1077 57.69%
Salisbury 3117 1962 62.95%
Sharon 8344 4031 48.31%
Sherborn 2335 1175 50.32%
Southborough 3161 1495 47.30%
Stoughton 14076 6171 43.84%
Stow 2690 1711 63.61%
Sudbury 7758 4345 56.01%
Tewksbury 11031 6208 56.28%
Topsfield 3279 1829 55.78%
Walpole 9348 4913 52.56%
Waltham 25241 10736 42.53%
Watertown 18510 5159 27.87%
Wayland 7216 3940 54.60%
Wellesley 16177 6507 40.22%
Wenham 2072 1010 48.75%
West Newbury 1498 718 47.93%
Westborough 6753 2958 43.80%
Westford 6886 3385 49.16%
Weston 6624 3059 46.18%
Westwood 7794 3406 43.70%
Wilmington 9086 4200 46.22%
Winchester 12097 4345 35.92%
Woburn 19564 9479 48.45%
Wrentham 3197 1917 59.96%
STATISTICAL AREA 888204 394358 44.40%
STATE 2919504 1151856 39.45%
REST OF STATE 2031300 757498 37.29%

Table 7: April 1980 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1980, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43 and 1980 occupational data from U.S. Census

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters Number of Employed Persons Number of Managerial-Professionals % Managerial-Professionals out of All Employed Persons
Acton 10168 5790 56.94% 9030 4135 45.79%
Amesbury 6926 3675 53.06% 6333 1175 18.55%
Andover 16398 6715 40.95% 12481 5372 43.04%
Arlington 30264 8883 29.35% 25260 8768 34.71%
Ashland 4777 3081 64.50% N/A N/A N/A
Bedford 7187 3975 55.31% 6300 2492 39.56%
Bellingham 7130 3474 48.72% 6587 1123 17.05%
Belmont 17027 8945 52.53% 12972 5827 44.92%
Beverly 21215 10322 48.65% N/A N/A N/A
Billerica 15111 6291 41.63% 17508 3802 21.72%
Bolton 1445 930 64.36% N/A N/A N/A
Boxborough 1307 813 62.20% N/A N/A N/A
Boxford 2999 2057 68.59% N/A N/A N/A
Braintree 20934 6127 29.27% 17609 4567 25.94%
Brookline 31759 13052 41.10% 29919 15553 51.98%
Burlington 12092 5779 47.79% 12420 3690 29.71%
Canton 11120 5781 51.99% 8953 2755 30.77%
Carlisle 1958 998 50.97% N/A N/A N/A
Chelmsford 17127 8406 49.08% 13358 5089 38.10%
Concord 10189 4389 43.08% 8051 3903 48.48%
Danvers 14023 6915 49.31% 12142 3436 28.30%
Dedham 15327 7078 46.18% 12631 3408 26.98%
Dover 3064 1364 44.52% N/A N/A N/A
Essex 1805 978 54.18% N/A N/A N/A
Foxborough 7088 3497 49.34% 6932 1916 27.64%
Framingham 33322 14762 44.30% 35107 11247 32.04%
Franklin 8931 4785 53.58% 8195 1905 23.25%
Georgetown 3247 1692 52.11% N/A N/A N/A
Gloucester 15253 9092 59.61% N/A N/A N/A
Groveland 2732 1392 50.95% N/A N/A N/A
Hamilton 3881 2045 52.69% N/A N/A N/A
Harvard 2442 1454 59.54% 2825 1184 41.91%
Haverill 23350 7794 33.38% 20617 3916 18.99%
Holliston 7019 3752 53.45% 6398 2216 34.64%
Hopkinton 3561 1657 46.53% N/A N/A N/A
Hudson 7762 4295 55.33% 8610 1871 21.73%
Ipswich 6884 3159 45.89% 5433 1566 28.82%
Lexington 19470 7092 36.43% 15251 7676 50.33%
Lincoln 3207 1697 52.92% N/A N/A N/A
Littleton 3893 2529 64.96% N/A N/A N/A
Lynnfield 7287 3337 45.79% 5366 2269 42.28%
Marlborough 16088 7089 44.06% N/A N/A N/A
Maynard 5306 2553 48.12% N/A N/A N/A
Medfield 5654 2958 52.32% 4748 1882 39.64%
Medway 4364 2299 52.68% N/A N/A N/A
Merrimac 2612 1649 63.13% N/A N/A N/A
Middleton 2324 1309 56.33% N/A N/A N/A
Milford 12170 3814 31.34% 11168 2558 22.90%
Millis 3703 1820 49.15% N/A N/A N/A
Milton N/A N/A N/A 11664 4257 36.50%
Natick 16956 7888 46.52% 15511 4838 31.19%
Needham N/A N/A N/A 13812 6209 44.95%
Newbury 2616 1437 54.93% N/A N/A N/A
Newburyport 8824 5081 57.58% N/A N/A N/A
Newton 50707 20119 39.68% 43173 20200 46.79%
Norfolk N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
North Andover 11131 5407 48.58% 9428 3170 33.62%
North Reading 6433 2948 45.83% 5846 1594 27.27%
Norwood 18655 7377 39.54% 15481 4353 28.12%
Peabody 26642 9228 34.64% N/A N/A N/A
Randolph 16479 6552 39.76% 14167 3080 21.74%
Reading 12464 5187 41.62% 11584 3905 33.71%
Rockport 4259 2206 51.80% N/A N/A N/A
Rowley 1977 1195 60.45% N/A N/A N/A
Salisbury 3296 1763 53.49% N/A N/A N/A
Sharon 8384 4184 49.90% 6754 2846 42.14%
Sherborn 2394 1152 48.12% N/A N/A N/A
Southborough 3496 1671 47.80% N/A N/A N/A
Stoughton 13657 6227 45.60% 12937 2924 22.60%
Stow 2762 1780 64.45% N/A N/A N/A
Sudbury 8002 4545 56.80% 6679 3567 53.41%
Tewksbury 12675 6365 50.22% 11628 2375 20.42%
Topsfield 3387 1727 50.99% N/A N/A N/A
Walpole 10260 5195 50.63% 9037 2477 27.41%
Waltham 27727 11978 43.20% 30222 7746 25.63%
Watertown 19246 5378 27.94% 18567 5725 30.83%
Wayland 7260 4310 59.37% 6207 3056 49.23%
Wellesley 16427 6402 38.97% 12794 6227 48.67%
Wenham 2073 960 46.31% N/A N/A N/A
West Newbury 1630 824 50.55% N/A N/A N/A
Westborough 7357 3614 49.12% 7101 2628 37.01%
Westford 7410 3068 41.40% 6384 2180 34.15%
Weston 7094 3360 47.36% 5330 3060 57.41%
Westwood 7819 3521 45.03% 6474 2657 41.04%
Wilmington 9174 4242 46.24% 8245 1708 20.72%
Winchester 12762 4425 34.67% 9968 4509 45.23%
Woburn 20709 8567 41.37% N/A N/A N/A
Wrentham 3465 2055 59.31% N/A N/A N/A
STATISTICAL AREA 888511 395278 44.49% 641197 220592 34.40%
STATE 3026097 1206535 39.87% 2674275 700384 26.19%
REST OF STATE 2137586 811257 37.95% 2033078 479792 23.60%

Table 8: September 1982 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1982, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 10002 6296 62.95%
Amesbury 6600 3508 53.15%
Andover 15849 6773 42.73%
Arlington 28567 7911 27.69%
Ashland 5068 3477 68.61%
Bedford 6394 3336 52.17%
Bellingham 6856 3152 45.97%
Belmont 16665 8221 49.33%
Beverly 21203 10825 51.05%
Billerica 15891 6593 41.49%
Bolton 1480 890 60.14%
Boxborough 1479 938 63.42%
Boxford 3204 1801 56.21%
Braintree 20088 5771 28.73%
Brookline 30738 13412 43.63%
Burlington 12334 5748 46.60%
Canton 11606 6630 57.13%
Carlisle 1990 1145 57.54%
Chelmsford 16899 8559 50.65%
Concord 9341 4200 44.96%
Danvers 13673 7135 52.18%
Dedham 15313 7534 49.20%
Dover 2984 1430 47.92%
Essex 1813 973 53.67%
Foxborough 7185 3717 51.73%
Framingham 30241 14300 47.29%
Franklin 8850 4777 53.98%
Georgetown 3220 1689 52.45%
Gloucester 15534 9291 59.81%
Groveland 2687 1283 47.75%
Hamilton 3844 2197 57.15%
Harvard 2607 1586 60.84%
Haverill 22815 7768 34.05%
Holliston 7755 4214 54.34%
Hopkinton 4013 1839 45.83%
Hudson 7746 4495 58.03%
Ipswich 5712 2895 50.68%
Lexington 18858 6389 33.88%
Lincoln 3229 1752 54.26%
Littleton 3620 2384 65.86%
Lynnfield 7040 3225 45.81%
Marlborough 15413 6712 43.55%
Maynard 5299 2591 48.90%
Medfield 5694 3357 58.96%
Medway 4651 2377 51.11%
Merrimac 2542 1709 67.23%
Middleton 2554 1455 56.97%
Milford 11934 3819 32.00%
Millis 3946 2013 51.01%
Milton 17138 5244 30.60%
Natick 16402 7828 47.73%
Needham 17699 7652 43.23%
Newbury 2863 1698 59.31%
Newburyport 8801 4548 51.68%
Newton 48186 19571 40.62%
Norfolk 2871 1698 59.14%
North Andover 11253 4931 43.82%
North Reading 6191 3139 50.70%
Norwood 16776 6171 36.78%
Peabody 25562 9434 36.91%
Randolph 16421 6547 39.87%
Reading 13410 5361 39.98%
Rockport 4312 2236 51.86%
Rowley 2056 1238 60.21%
Salisbury 3301 1844 55.86%
Sharon 8048 4359 54.16%
Sherborn 2479 1255 50.63%
Southborough 3487 1793 51.42%
Stoughton 13936 6768 48.56%
Stow 2661 1821 68.43%
Sudbury 8217 4603 56.02%
Tewksbury 12546 7074 56.38%
Topsfield 3333 1897 56.92%
Walpole 10686 5618 52.57%
Waltham 25869 11041 42.68%
Watertown 18258 4588 25.13%
Wayland 7742 4774 61.66%
Wellesley 15215 6414 42.16%
Wenham 2062 936 45.39%
West Newbury 1682 860 51.13%
Westborough 7696 3294 42.80%
Westford 7815 3480 44.53%
Weston 6780 3344 49.32%
Westwood 8334 3791 45.49%
Wilmington 9248 4494 48.59%
Winchester 12414 4640 37.38%
Woburn 19804 7461 37.67%
Wrentham 3593 2173 60.48%
STATISTICAL AREA 908173 409710 45.11%
STATE 2918682 1187446 40.68%
REST OF STATE 2010509 777736 38.68%

Table 9. August 1984 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1984, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 9793 6306 64.39%
Amesbury 6907 3146 45.55%
Andover 15766 6189 39.26%
Arlington 27958 6082 21.75%
Ashland 5321 3109 58.43%
Bedford 6697 3670 54.80%
Bellingham 6922 2841 41.04%
Belmont 16637 7996 48.06%
Beverly 21087 11088 52.58%
Billerica 16465 6731 40.88%
Bolton 1657 996 60.11%
Boxborough 1480 871 58.85%
Boxford 3164 1858 58.72%
Braintree 20195 4771 23.62%
Brookline 31453 14063 44.71%
Burlington 12571 5622 44.72%
Canton 11311 6716 59.38%
Carlisle 2276 1229 54.00%
Chelmsford 17056 8403 49.27%
Concord 9596 4121 42.94%
Danvers 13601 6871 50.52%
Dedham 15236 7324 48.07%
Dover 3086 1483 48.06%
Essex 1811 912 50.36%
Foxborough 7392 3858 52.19%
Framingham 30665 13748 44.83%
Franklin 9173 4909 53.52%
Georgetown 3293 1592 48.34%
Gloucester 16151 9071 56.16%
Groveland 2700 1201 44.48%
Hamilton 4071 2365 58.09%
Harvard 2723 1563 57.40%
Haverill 23322 7665 32.87%
Holliston 7942 4635 58.36%
Hopkinton 3907 1913 48.96%
Hudson 7834 4464 56.98%
Ipswich 6861 2696 39.29%
Lexington 18838 5253 27.89%
Lincoln 3319 1595 48.06%
Littleton 3950 2281 57.75%
Lynnfield 6994 3178 45.44%
Marlborough 16030 5731 35.75%
Maynard 5341 2534 47.44%
Medfield 5671 3124 55.09%
Medway 4694 2299 48.98%
Merrimac 2810 2015 71.71%
Middleton 2787 1637 58.74%
Milford 11906 3497 29.37%
Millis 4015 1943 48.39%
Milton 16959 4346 25.63%
Natick 17164 6950 40.49%
Needham 17784 7480 42.06%
Newbury 3017 1875 62.15%
Newburyport 9172 4530 49.39%
Newton 47861 17041 35.61%
Norfolk 3255 1787 54.90%
North Andover 11683 5016 42.93%
North Reading 6583 2944 44.72%
Norwood 16850 6457 38.32%
Peabody 26580 9437 35.50%
Randolph 16187 5788 35.76%
Reading 13183 5466 41.46%
Rockport 4518 2214 49.00%
Rowley 2168 1277 58.90%
Salisbury 3448 1661 48.17%
Sharon 8396 4163 49.58%
Sherborn 2701 1360 50.35%
Southborough 3674 1772 48.23%
Stoughton 13902 7034 50.60%
Stow 2901 1998 68.87%
Sudbury 8579 4705 54.84%
Tewksbury 12426 7114 57.25%
Topsfield 3364 1777 52.82%
Walpole 11064 5762 52.08%
Waltham 25859 10410 40.26%
Watertown 19930 5210 26.14%
Wayland 7800 4588 58.82%
Wellesley 14946 6132 41.03%
Wenham 2006 898 44.77%
West Newbury 1811 839 46.33%
Westborough 7710 3285 42.61%
Westford 8017 3338 41.64%
Weston 6918 3276 47.35%
Westwood 8248 3544 42.97%
Wilmington 9629 4554 47.29%
Winchester 12714 4671 36.74%
Woburn 20257 6205 30.63%
Wrentham 3787 2210 58.36%
STATISTICAL AREA 923486 396279 42.91%
STATE 3029010 1173626 38.75%
REST OF STATE 2105524 777347 36.92%

Table 10. September 1986 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1986, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 9385 6020 64.14%
Amesbury 6566 3115 47.44%
Andover 15492 6411 41.38%
Arlington 26282 6197 23.58%
Ashland 5309 2963 55.81%
Bedford 6564 3615 55.07%
Bellingham 6541 2610 39.90%
Belmont 16019 8171 51.01%
Beverly 20394 10563 51.79%
Billerica 17596 7361 41.83%
Bolton 1733 1053 60.76%
Boxborough 1657 933 56.31%
Boxford 3162 2001 63.28%
Braintree 19224 4685 24.37%
Brookline 32169 15023 46.70%
Burlington 12532 5725 45.68%
Canton 10940 6340 57.95%
Carlisle 2348 1297 55.24%
Chelmsford 16498 8304 50.33%
Concord 9306 4140 44.49%
Danvers 13312 6881 51.69%
Dedham 14305 7191 50.27%
Dover 2994 1413 47.19%
Essex 1762 903 51.25%
Foxborough 7389 4001 54.15%
Framingham 28268 13040 46.13%
Franklin 9555 5300 55.47%
Georgetown 3387 1597 47.15%
Gloucester 15832 8749 55.26%
Groveland 2649 1224 46.21%
Hamilton 3840 2297 59.82%
Harvard 2741 1548 56.48%
Haverill 22330 7828 35.06%
Holliston 7670 4605 60.04%
Hopkinton 4238 2153 50.80%
Hudson 8080 4677 57.88%
Ipswich 6845 3030 44.27%
Lexington 17933 5259 29.33%
Lincoln 3138 1578 50.29%
Littleton 3646 2090 57.32%
Lynnfield 6933 3098 44.68%
Marlborough 15085 5522 36.61%
Maynard 5166 2512 48.63%
Medfield 5888 3325 56.47%
Medway 4720 2415 51.17%
Merrimac 3095 2243 72.47%
Middleton 3681 2649 71.96%
Milford 12521 4006 31.99%
Millis 3658 1858 50.79%
Milton 15884 4441 27.96%
Natick 16783 7206 42.94%
Needham 17481 7883 45.09%
Newbury 3138 1981 63.13%
Newburyport 9909 5309 53.58%
Newton 45204 17311 38.30%
Norfolk 3460 1936 55.95%
North Andover 11431 5094 44.56%
North Reading 7059 3279 46.45%
Norwood 15536 5970 38.43%
Peabody 24914 9507 38.16%
Randolph 15949 6077 38.10%
Reading 12805 5318 41.53%
Rockport 4282 2168 50.63%
Rowley 2152 1244 57.81%
Salisbury 3528 1740 49.32%
Sharon 8469 4359 51.47%
Sherborn 2674 1372 51.31%
Southborough 3756 1873 49.87%
Stoughton 13486 6985 51.79%
Stow 2823 2001 70.88%
Sudbury 8474 4698 55.44%
Tewksbury 11674 6193 53.05%
Topsfield 3254 1794 55.13%
Walpole 10780 5775 53.57%
Waltham 25927 10995 42.41%
Watertown 19237 5170 26.88%
Wayland 7563 4665 61.68%
Wellesley 14594 6237 42.74%
Wenham 1950 868 44.51%
West Newbury 1867 900 48.21%
Westborough 7427 4046 54.48%
Westford 8265 3598 43.53%
Weston 6670 3444 51.63%
Westwood 8033 3569 44.43%
Wilmington 9451 4557 48.22%
Winchester 12425 4828 38.86%
Woburn 20259 6183 30.52%
Wrentham 3828 2233 58.33%
STATISTICAL AREA 902779 402326 44.57%
STATE 2933364 1175811 40.08%
REST OF STATE 2030585 773485 38.09%

Table 11. August 1988 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1988, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 9608 6225 64.79%
Amesbury 6674 3071 46.01%
Andover 16131 6760 41.91%
Arlington 27174 5558 20.45%
Ashland 5914 3216 54.38%
Bedford 7185 3969 55.24%
Bellingham 7201 3227 44.81%
Belmont 15689 8143 51.90%
Beverly 21818 11302 51.80%
Billerica 16466 6944 42.17%
Bolton 1759 1052 59.81%
Boxborough 1492 813 6.57%
Boxford 3499 2125 60.73%
Braintree 19255 4650 24.15%
Brookline 34725 16303 46.95%
Burlington 12382 5401 43.62%
Canton 11003 5493 49.92%
Carlisle 2480 1435 57.86%
Chelmsford 17369 8656 49.84%
Concord 9523 4114 43.20%
Danvers 13567 7291 53.74%
Dedham 14447 7164 49.59%
Dover 3113 1532 49.21%
Essex 1863 940 50.46%
Foxborough 7776 4186 53.83%
Framingham 28599 14685 51.35%
Franklin 10366 5795 55.90%
Georgetown 3402 1603 47.12%
Gloucester 15531 8502 54.74%
Groveland 2846 1353 47.54%
Hamilton 3974 2284 57.47%
Harvard 2807 1447 51.55%
Haverill 23074 8775 38.03%
Holliston 7415 4025 54.28%
Hopkinton 4680 2355 50.32%
Hudson 8418 4812 57.16%
Ipswich 7018 3299 47.01%
Lexington 17992 5142 28.58%
Lincoln 3332 1690 50.72%
Littleton 3867 2179 56.35%
Lynnfield 6914 3014 43.59%
Marlborough 16066 6013 37.43%
Maynard 5412 2652 49.00%
Medfield 5962 3288 55.15%
Medway 5288 2686 50.79%
Merrimac 2847 2043 71.76%
Middleton 2782 1669 59.99%
Milford 12105 4078 33.69%
Millis 4017 1947 48.47%
Milton 16035 4542 28.33%
Natick 18100 7798 43.08%
Needham 17655 7848 44.45%
Newbury 2942 1867 63.46%
Newburyport 9923 5521 55.64%
Newton 45472 16812 36.97%
Norfolk 3800 1982 52.16%
North Andover 11543 5366 46.49%
North Reading 7083 3525 49.77%
Norwood 15519 6111 39.38%
Peabody 24957 10499 42.07%
Randolph 15821 5862 37.05%
Reading 13004 5323 40.93%
Rockport 4433 2396 54.05%
Rowley 2243 1281 57.11%
Salisbury 3815 2020 52.95%
Sharon 9161 4698 51.28%
Sherborn 2662 1278 48.01%
Southborough 3861 1864 48.28%
Stoughton 13490 7113 52.73%
Stow 3136 2213 70.57%
Sudbury 8943 4756 53.18%
Tewksbury 12347 6373 51.62%
Topsfield 3340 1680 50.30%
Walpole 11256 5956 52.91%
Waltham 26093 10569 40.51%
Watertown 17600 3992 22.68%
Wayland 7525 4239 56.33%
Wellesley 14504 5948 41.01%
Wenham 2017 864 42.84%
West Newbury 1962 919 46.84%
Westborough 7490 3093 41.30%
Westford 8632 3750 43.44%
Weston 6519 3139 48.15%
Westwood 8657 3756 43.39%
Wilmington 9651 4676 48.45%
Winchester 12709 5124 40.32%
Woburn 19624 5886 29.99%
Wrentham 4178 2541 60.82%
STATISTICAL AREA 920529 408086 44.33%
STATE 2972171 1191572 40.09%
REST OF STATE 2051642 783486 38.19%

Table 12. August 1990 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1990, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43 and 1990 occupational data from U.S. Census

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters Number of Employed Persons Number of Managerial-Professionals % Managerial-Professionals out of All Employed Persons
Acton 10366 6728 64.90% 10202 5460 53.52%
Amesbury 7246 3716 51.28% 7414 2056 27.73%
Andover 17099 7890 46.14% 15004 8056 53.69%
Arlington 28680 8201 28.59% 25402 11289 44.44%
Ashland 6543 3785 57.85% 7198 2866 39.82%
Bedford 7250 4191 57.81% 6680 2873 43.01%
Bellingham 7763 3912 50.39% 8231 2098 25.49%
Belmont 16105 8636 53.62% 13163 6989 53.10%
Beverly 21557 11710 54.32% 20256 6542 32.30%
Billerica 18151 8513 46.90% 20429 5554 27.19%
Bolton 1899 1128 59.40% 1701 943 55.44%
Boxborough 1734 1040 59.98% 1997 1082 54.18%
Boxford 3812 2381 62.46% 3423 1798 52.53%
Braintree 19631 5604 28.55% 17178 5321 30.98%
Brookline 38793 18858 48.61% 31035 17706 57.05%
Burlington 12901 6210 48.14% 13823 5163 37.35%
Canton 11717 6225 53.13% 10000 3725 37.25%
Carlisle 2728 1620 59.38% 2407 1541 64.02%
Chelmsford 18337 9226 50.31% 18394 7611 41.38%
Concord 9762 4472 45.81% 8229 4557 55.38%
Danvers 14127 8247 58.38% 13161 4239 32.21%
Dedham 14427 7781 53.93% 12313 3823 31.05%
Dover 3213 1584 49.30% 2454 1440 58.68%
Essex 2068 1155 55.85% 1765 555 31.44%
Foxborough 8346 4747 56.88% 7989 2808 35.15%
Framingham 31274 17128 54.77% 36664 14008 38.21%
Franklin 11673 6698 57.38% 11720 3987 34.02%
Georgetown 3642 1832 50.30% 3469 1212 34.94%
Gloucester 16146 9232 57.18% 14470 3879 26.81%
Groveland 3603 1567 43.49% 2865 935 32.64%
Hamilton 4334 2585 59.64% 3545 1548 43.67%
Harvard 3087 1660 53.77% 3598 2006 55.75%
Haverill 24727 10547 42.65% 25492 7386 28.97%
Holliston 8801 4635 52.66% 7166 3222 44.96%
Hopkinton 5195 2803 53.96% 4950 2118 42.79%
Hudson 9209 5568 60.46% 9721 3364 34.61%
Ipswich 7467 3791 50.77% 6298 2563 40.70%
Lexington 18609 6113 32.85% 15229 8606 56.51%
Lincoln 3266 1735 53.12% 3237 1805 55.76%
Littleton 4066 2492 61.29% 3832 1581 41.26%
Lynnfield 7405 3666 49.51% 5776 2617 45.31%
Marlborough 17725 7503 42.33% 18070 6246 34.57%
Maynard 5958 3180 53.37% 5729 1951 34.05%
Medfield 6288 3513 55.87% 5628 2482 44.10%
Medway 5356 2859 53.38% 5212 2050 39.33%
Merrimac 3077 2298 74.68% 2772 827 29.83%
Middleton 2944 1893 64.30% 2703 834 30.85%
Milford 13221 4975 37.63% 12969 3604 27.79%
Millis 4280 2218 51.82% 4301 1548 35.99%
Milton 16657 5626 33.78% 12774 6030 47.21%
Natick 18215 8561 47.00% 17751 7362 41.47%
Needham 18222 8828 48.45% 14117 7059 50.00%
Newbury 3760 2417 64.28% 2962 1052 35.52%
Newburyport 9725 5572 57.30% 8896 3442 38.69%
Newton 46343 18811 40.59% 46439 24297 52.32%
Norfolk 4368 2499 57.21% 3961 1583 39.96%
North Andover 13367 6828 51.08% 11671 4915 42.11%
North Reading 7455 4119 55.25% 6619 2451 37.03%
Norwood 16108 6656 41.32% 15571 5104 32.78%
Peabody 26262 12288 46.79% 24949 6911 27.70%
Randolph 16226 6851 42.22% 15936 4320 27.11%
Reading 13962 6481 46.42% 12281 4983 40.57%
Rockport 4683 2528 53.98% 3782 1539 40.69%
Rowley 2531 1542 60.92% 2474 755 30.52%
Salisbury 4044 2269 56.11% 3485 596 17.10%
Sharon 9717 5365 55.21% 8358 3994 47.79%
Sherborn 2740 1351 49.31% 2073 1146 55.28%
Southborough 4087 2105 51.50% 3630 1709 47.08%
Stoughton 14301 7380 51.60% 14354 3930 27.38%
Stow 3313 2352 70.99% 3021 1520 50.31%
Sudbury 9336 5240 56.13% 7936 4524 57.01%
Tewksbury 14634 8133 55.58% 14929 4385 29.37%
Topsfield 3526 1854 52.58% 2845 1446 50.83%
Walpole 12222 6852 56.06% 10771 3814 35.41%
Waltham 27449 11911 43.39% 32353 9826 30.37%
Watertown 18113 5365 29.62% 19712 8790 44.59%
Wayland 7821 4575 58.50% 6343 3293 51.92%
Wellesley 15279 7054 46.17% 13374 7007 52.39%
Wenham 2246 1081 48.13% 2236 807 36.09%
West Newbury 2061 969 47.02% 1937 768 39.65%
Westborough 7776 3536 45.47% 7828 3229 41.25%
Westford 9471 4678 49.39% 8974 4010 44.68%
Weston 6522 3388 51.95% 5106 2975 58.26%
Westwood 8588 4153 48.36% 6440 3100 48.14%
Wilmington 10552 5598 53.05% 9633 2673 27.75%
Winchester 13041 5609 43.01% 10627 5559 52.31%
Woburn 20908 7743 37.03% 20485 6390 31.19%
Wrentham 4711 2864 60.79% 4420 1345 30.43%
STATISTICAL AREA 975950 469083 48.06% 916317 365113 39.85%
STATE 3088848 1351965 43.77% 3027950 969983 32.03%
REST OF STATE 2112898 882882 41.79% 2111633 604870 28.64%

Table 13. February 1992 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1992, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 10184 6988 68.62%
Amesbury 7224 3800 52.60%
Andover 17716 8787 49.60%
Arlington 26833 8665 32.29%
Ashland 6743 4116 61.04%
Bedford 7064 4232 59.91%
Bellingham 7614 3898 51.20%
Belmont 15596 8769 56.23%
Beverly 22011 12441 56.52%
Billerica 18794 8827 46.97%
Bolton 2098 1346 64.16%
Boxborough 1761 1123 63.77%
Boxford 4001 2452 61.28%
Braintree 19891 6266 31.50%
Brookline 31486 14139 44.91%
Burlington 13300 7043 52.95%
Canton 12007 6003 50.00%
Carlisle 2782 1746 62.76%
Chelmsford 19075 10593 55.53%
Concord 10283 4962 48.25%
Danvers 14404 8329 57.82%
Dedham 14166 7651 54.01%
Dover 3153 1653 52.43%
Essex 2094 1156 55.21%
Foxborough 8482 4927 58.09%
Framingham 31349 17173 54.78%
Franklin 12326 7532 61.11%
Georgetown 3757 1891 50.33%
Gloucester 16675 10053 60.29%
Groveland 3269 1637 50.08%
Hamilton 4290 2702 62.98%
Harvard 3193 1772 55.50%
Haverill 25448 11835 46.51%
Holliston 8599 4842 56.31%
Hopkinton 5557 3037 54.65%
Hudson 9689 6114 63.10%
Ipswich 7433 4221 56.79%
Lexington 19017 8015 42.15%
Lincoln 3228 1732 53.66%
Littleton 4391 2769 63.06%
Lynnfield 7574 4209 55.57%
Marlborough 17463 8465 48.47%
Maynard 6382 3573 55.99%
Medfield 6521 4019 61.63%
Medway 5665 3440 60.72%
Merrimac 2908 1854 63.76%
Middleton 2973 1888 63.50%
Milford 12676 5117 40.37%
Millis 4327 2571 59.42%
Milton 16767 6093 36.34%
Natick 19125 9250 48.37%
Needham 17927 8886 49.57%
Newbury 3755 2493 66.39%
Newburyport 10520 5874 55.84%
Newton 48138 21056 43.74%
Norfolk 4595 2892 62.94%
North Andover 13862 7924 57.16%
North Reading 7185 3840 53.44%
Norwood 15802 7363 46.60%
Peabody 27047 14250 52.69%
Randolph 16307 7385 45.29%
Reading 14233 7074 49.70%
Rockport 4613 2654 57.53%
Rowley 2569 1711 66.60%
Salisbury 4254 2597 61.05%
Sharon 9904 5536 55.90%
Sherborn 2641 1309 49.56%
Southborough 4269 2284 53.50%
Stoughton 14623 7777 53.18%
Stow 3454 2515 72.81%
Sudbury 9172 5069 55.27%
Tewksbury 14386 7548 52.47%
Topsfield 3568 2048 57.40%
Walpole 12460 7218 57.93%
Waltham 27522 13162 47.82%
Watertown 17949 5914 32.95%
Wayland 7556 4462 59.05%
Wellesley 15598 7504 48.11%
Wenham 2078 994 47.83%
West Newbury 2187 1165 53.27%
Westborough 7810 3746 47.96%
Westford 10007 5339 53.35%
Weston 6577 3475 52.84%
Westwood 9484 5430 57.25%
Wilmington 10957 6022 54.96%
Winchester 13632 6317 46.34%
Woburn 22076 9571 43.35%
Wrentham 4881 2884 59.09%
STATISTICAL AREA 982962 499004 50.77%
STATE 3130402 1440029 46.00%
REST OF STATE 2147440 941025 43.82%

Table 14. August 1994 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1994, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 10540 7219 68.49%
Amesbury 7551 3857 51.08%
Andover 18008 8876 49.29%
Arlington 25849 8386 32.44%
Ashland 7138 4278 59.93%
Bedford 7021 4376 62.33%
Bellingham 7705 3860 50.10%
Belmont 15525 9031 58.17%
Beverly 23045 13580 58.93%
Billerica 19257 9436 49.00%
Bolton 2091 1339 64.04%
Boxborough 2072 1278 61.68%
Boxford 4092 2614 63.88%
Braintree 19274 6924 35.92%
Brookline 29626 13950 47.09%
Burlington 13380 7090 52.99%
Canton 12808 6225 48.60%
Carlisle 2764 1669 60.38%
Chelmsford 18118 10455 57.71%
Concord 9738 4660 47.85%
Danvers 14024 8343 59.49%
Dedham 13773 7073 51.35%
Dover 3258 1739 53.38%
Essex 2210 1205 54.52%
Foxborough 8677 4936 56.89%
Framingham 31092 15829 50.91%
Franklin 12938 8154 63.02%
Georgetown 3862 1913 49.53%
Gloucester 16582 10147 61.19%
Groveland 3290 1721 52.31%
Hamilton 4227 2656 62.83%
Harvard 3217 1848 57.44%
Haverill 24596 11557 46.99%
Holliston 8593 4688 54.56%
Hopkinton 5577 3038 54.47%
Hudson 9435 5958 63.15%
Ipswich 7697 4676 60.75%
Lexington 18614 7386 39.68%
Lincoln 3243 1705 52.57%
Littleton 4192 2658 63.41%
Lynnfield 7333 4015 54.75%
Marlborough 16284 8068 49.55%
Maynard 5795 3231 55.75%
Medfield 6213 4025 64.78%
Medway 6050 3862 63.83%
Merrimac 3009 1832 60.88%
Middleton 3055 1951 63.86%
Milford 12228 5385 44.04%
Millis 4332 2694 62.19%
Milton 15553 5705 36.68%
Natick 18531 9383 50.63%
Needham 17759 8649 48.70%
Newbury 4034 2727 67.60%
Newburyport 10633 5638 53.02%
Newton 45059 18959 42.08%
Norfolk 4631 2898 62.58%
North Andover 13357 7960 59.59%
North Reading 7488 4029 53.81%
Norwood 15689 7268 46.33%
Peabody 26878 13767 51.22%
Randolph 14492 6494 44.81%
Reading 13381 6364 47.56%
Rockport 4752 2771 58.31%
Rowley 2704 1878 69.45%
Salisbury 4087 2407 58.89%
Sharon 9708 5231 53.88%
Sherborn 2668 1387 51.99%
Southborough 4285 2260 52.74%
Stoughton 14637 7708 52.66%
Stow 3360 2295 68.30%
Sudbury 9679 5343 55.20%
Tewksbury 13714 6887 50.22%
Topsfield 3521 2120 60.21%
Walpole 12371 6847 55.35%
Waltham 26691 12996 48.69%
Watertown 19299 6916 35.84%
Wayland 7629 4467 58.55%
Wellesley 15002 7103 47.35%
Wenham 2097 922 43.97%
West Newbury 2259 1169 51.75%
Westborough 8098 3954 48.83%
Westford 10396 5400 51.94%
Weston 6525 3415 52.34%
Westwood 8559 4299 50.23%
Wilmington 11391 6399 56.18%
Winchester 13100 6022 45.97%
Woburn 20424 9579 46.90%
Wrentham 4929 3015 61.17%
STATISTICAL AREA 968368 494027 51.02%
STATE 3047011 1424840 46.76%
REST OF STATE 2078643 930813 44.78%

Table 15. February 1996 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1996, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 10731 6959 64.85%
Amesbury 7608 3907 51.35%
Andover 18810 9321 49.55%
Arlington 25124 8572 34.12%
Ashland 7706 4661 60.49%
Bedford 7334 4594 62.64%
Bellingham 7812 4031 51.60%
Belmont 16023 9396 58.64%
Beverly 23468 13621 58.04%
Billerica 19808 9937 50.17%
Bolton 2293 1465 63.89%
Boxborough 2238 1365 60.99%
Boxford 4334 2679 61.81%
Braintree 20722 8075 38.97%
Brookline 30284 14178 46.82%
Burlington 13450 7223 53.70%
Canton 13124 6265 57.78%
Carlisle 2842 1642 58.07%
Chelmsford 19041 11058 49.13%
Concord 10490 5154 49.13%
Danvers 14415 8609 59.72%
Dedham 14214 7291 51.29%
Dover 3323 1727 51.97%
Essex 2282 1226 53.72%
Foxborough 8792 4988 56.73%
Framingham 32751 17209 52.54%
Franklin 13814 8689 62.90%
Georgetown 4107 2086 50.79%
Gloucester 18637 11290 60.58%
Groveland 3232 1778 55.01%
Hamilton 4421 2696 60.98%
Harvard 3423 1989 58.11%
Haverill 25870 12647 48.89%
Holliston 8403 4732 56.31%
Hopkinton 6391 3532 55.27%
Hudson 9493 6008 63.29%
Ipswich 8001 4908 61.34%
Lexington 19308 7562 39.17%
Lincoln 3292 1689 51.31%
Littleton 4166 2689 64.55%
Lynnfield 7327 4006 54.67%
Marlborough 16721 8372 50.07%
Maynard 6077 3433 56.49%
Medfield 6782 4435 65.39%
Medway 6288 3968 63.10%
Merrimac 3155 1841 58.35%
Middleton 3486 2196 62.99%
Milford 12184 5560 45.63%
Millis 4366 2702 61.89%
Milton 15656 5897 37.67%
Natick 19877 10338 52.01%
Needham 17678 8451 47.81%
Newbury 4113 2790 67.83%
Newburyport 11826 6346 53.66%
Newton 46666 18416 39.46%
Norfolk 4917 2979 60.59%
North Andover 15179 9252 60.95%
North Reading 7808 4169 53.39%
Norwood 15534 7168 46.14%
Peabody 27641 14601 52.82%
Randolph 15425 7050 45.71%
Reading 13920 6697 48.11%
Rockport 4641 2826 60.89%
Rowley 2767 1906 68.88%
Salisbury 4079 2349 57.59%
Sharon 10080 5418 53.75%
Sherborn 2954 1510 51.12%
Southborough 4714 2487 52.76%
Stoughton 14827 8047 54.27%
Stow 3393 2271 66.93%
Sudbury 9886 5432 54.95%
Tewksbury 15279 7803 51.07%
Topsfield 3642 2132 58.54%
Walpole 13149 7249 55.13%
Waltham 28101 14223 50.61%
Watertown 19746 7563 38.30%
Wayland 7936 4532 57.11%
Wellesley 15540 7283 46.87%
Wenham 2152 990 46.00%
West Newbury 2383 11880 498.53%
Westborough 8810 4416 50.12%
Westford 11426 6531 57.16%
Weston 6881 3593 52.22%
Westwood 8613 4317 50.12%
Wilmington 12121 6957 57.40%
Winchester 12872 5852 45.46%
Woburn 21899 10201 46.58%
Wrentham 5567 3322 59.67%
STATISTICAL AREA 1007661 529205 52.52%
STATE 3166047 1499863 47.37%
REST OF STATE 2158386 970658 44.97%

Table 16. August 1998 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 1998, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 11352 7185 63.29%
Amesbury 9645 5083 52.70%
Andover 20919 10668 51.00%
Arlington 27668 10560 38.17%
Ashland 8568 5134 59.92%
Bedford 8151 4975 61.04%
Bellingham 8554 4625 54.07%
Belmont 16977 9351 55.08%
Beverly 23780 14023 58.97%
Billerica 21453 11200 52.21%
Bolton 2576 1587 61.61%
Boxborough 2587 1577 60.96%
Boxford 5167 3046 58.95%
Braintree 21918 9655 44.05%
Brookline 35596 16194 45.49%
Burlington 15198 8337 54.86%
Canton 14833 7537 50.81%
Carlisle 2984 1754 58.78%
Chelmsford 20684 12192 58.94%
Concord 10945 5602 51.18%
Danvers 15665 9538 60.89%
Dedham 14901 7587 50.92%
Dover 3670 1917 52.23%
Essex 2519 1416 56.21%
Foxborough 10320 5999 58.13%
Framingham 37528 19869 52.94%
Franklin 16181 10001 61.81%
Georgetown 4482 2433 54.28%
Gloucester 19207 11786 61.36%
Groveland 3538 2040 57.66%
Hamilton 4840 2909 60.10%
Harvard 3581 2118 59.15%
Haverill 27653 14244 51.51%
Holliston 8927 4983 55.82%
Hopkinton 7377 4031 54.64%
Hudson 10716 6820 63.64%
Ipswich 7227 4444 61.49%
Lexington 20768 8812 42.43%
Lincoln 3875 2055 53.03%
Littleton 4891 3133 64.06%
Lynnfield 8041 4411 54.86%
Marlborough 18497 9406 50.85%
Maynard 6897 4010 58.14%
Medfield 7926 4908 61.92%
Medway 7434 4638 62.39%
Merrimac 3548 2159 60.85%
Middleton 3976 2522 63.43%
Milford 13338 6237 46.76%
Millis 4888 2845 58.20%
Milton 16873 7179 42.55%
Natick 19180 10065 52.48%
Needham 19623 9833 50.11%
Newbury 4431 2918 65.85%
Newburyport 11882 6514 54.82%
Newton 53925 23346 43.29%
Norfolk 5140 3171 61.69%
North Andover 16427 9723 59.19%
North Reading 8986 4941 54.99%
Norwood 17972 8729 48.57%
Peabody 31101 16829 54.11%
Randolph 17339 8041 46.38%
Reading 15109 7499 49.63%
Rockport 5008 3110 62.10%
Rowley 3115 2109 67.70%
Salisbury 4640 2743 59.12%
Sharon 11526 6412 55.63%
Sherborn 3166 1647 52.02%
Southborough 5398 2862 53.02%
Stoughton 17756 9829 55.36%
Stow 3575 2354 65.85%
Sudbury 11018 6099 55.35%
Tewksbury 16611 8918 53.69%
Topsfield 3738 2182 58.37%
Walpole 15004 8504 56.68%
Waltham 31964 16489 51.59%
Watertown 22388 9401 41.99%
Wayland 8810 5059 57.42%
Wellesley 17662 8453 47.86%
Wenham 2425 1202 49.57%
West Newbury 2702 1396 51.67%
Westborough 10148 5310 52.33%
Westford 11779 6932 58.85%
Weston 7477 3894 52.08%
Westwood 8851 4551 51.42%
Wilmington 13720 8091 58.97%
Winchester 13992 6582 47.04%
Woburn 23508 11217 47.72%
Wrentham 6193 3805 61.44%
STATISTICAL AREA 1112128 585495 52.65%
STATE 3314253 1617300 48.80%
REST OF STATE 2202125 1031805 46.85%

Table 17: August 2000 Voter enrollment data from Massachusetts Elections Statistics, 2000, Massachusetts Public Document No. 43

Towns in Statistical Area Number of Registered Voters Number of Unenrolled Voters % Unenrolled Voters
Acton 12414 7676 61.83%
Amesbury 9263 4904 52.94%
Andover 21544 11382 52.83%
Arlington 29540 11527 39.02%
Ashland 9809 5667 57.77%
Bedford 8758 4905 56.01%
Bellingham 9335 5055 54.15%
Belmont 17790 9422 52.96%
Beverly 25374 14866 58.59%
Billerica 23371 12434 53.20%
Bolton 2870 1651 57.53%
Boxborough 2942 1813 61.62%
Boxford 5558 3200 57.57%
Braintree 23684 10489 44.29%
Brookline 41690 18371 44.07%
Burlington 15922 8808 55.32%
Canton 15764 7761 49.23%
Carlisle 3390 1956 57.70%
Chelmsford 22262 13117 58.92%
Concord 11958 5682 47.52%
Danvers 17307 10631 61.43%
Dedham 16178 8200 50.69%
Dover 3939 1965 49.89%
Essex 2624 1449 55.22%
Foxborough 11387 6613 58.07%
Framingham 42222 22426 53.11%
Franklin 17780 10515 59.14%
Georgetown 4815 2615 54.31%
Gloucester 19755 11818 59.82%
Groveland 4088 2464 60.27%
Hamilton 5586 3244 58.07%
Harvard 3805 2211 58.11%
Haverill 32139 16688 51.92%
Holliston 9790 5382 54.97%
Hopkinton 8243 4396 53.33%
Hudson 12134 7663 63.15%
Ipswich 7762 4753 61.23%
Lexington 21642 9427 43.56%
Lincoln 4367 2282 52.26%
Littleton 5464 3292 60.25%
Lynnfield 8739 4748 54.33%
Marlborough 20253 10343 51.07%
Maynard 7155 4109 57.43%
Medfield 7894 4795 60.74%
Medway 7983 5028 62.98%
Merrimac 4046 2268 56.06%
Middleton 4407 2772 62.90%
Milford 15290 7765 50.78%
Millis 5223 2970 56.86%
Milton 18153 7755 42.72%
Natick 21231 10871 51.20%
Needham 20729 10324 49.80%
Newbury 4824 2982 61.82%
Newburyport 13279 7210 54.30%
Newton 59272 25398 42.85%
Norfolk 5800 3441 59.33%
North Andover 18196 10158 55.83%
North Reading 9811 5216 53.16%
Norwood 19558 9697 49.58%
Peabody 32461 17474 53.83%
Randolph 18760 8562 45.64%
Reading 16337 7622 46.65%
Rockport 5545 3551 64.04%
Rowley 3592 2395 66.68%
Salisbury 5200 3052 58.69%
Sharon 12178 6669 54.76%
Sherborn 3108 1632 52.51%
Southborough 5948 3093 52.00%
Stoughton 18829 10211 54.23%
Stow 4116 2491 60.52%
Sudbury 11663 6340 54.36%
Tewksbury 18546 9687 52.23%
Topsfield 4159 2356 56.65%
Walpole 15315 8603 56.17%
Waltham 34221 17649 51.57%
Watertown 22685 9669 42.62%
Wayland 9679 5319 54.95%
Wellesley 19256 9161 47.57%
Wenham 2692 1295 48.11%
West Newbury 2968 1438 48.45%
Westborough 11523 6021 52.25%
Westford 13235 8084 61.08%
Weston 7877 4022 51.06%
Westwood 9642 4783 49.61%
Wilmington 14864 8446 56.82%
Winchester 14849 7229 48.68%
Woburn 25737 12003 46.64%
Wrentham 6863 4057 59.11%
STATISTICAL AREA 1207956 629484 52.11%
STATE 4008796 1977773 49.34%
REST OF STATE 2800840 1348289 48.14%

APPENDIX C
Interviews

  1. Paul vonRyll Gryska, M.D., 1996 Republican Candidate in Massachusetts’ 9th Congressional District (29 October 2001, Newton, Massachusetts)
  2. Robert Gray, Campaign Manager of Paul Cellucci’s 1998 Gubernatorial Campaign (29 October 2001, Boston, Massachusetts)
  3. Sarah Cannon Holden, a 2002 Democratic Lieutenant Gubernatorial Candidate (30 October 2001, Concord, Massachusetts)
  4. Tim O’Brien, Political Director for Jane Swift’s 2002 Gubernatorial Campaign (30 October 2001, Boston, Massachusetts)
  5. Charles Rudnick, Campaign Manager for Warren Tolman’s 2002 Gubernatorial Campaign and Karen Grant Blackburn, Press Secretary for Warren Tolman’s 2002 Gubernatorial Campaign (31 October 2001, Watertown, Massachusetts)
  6. Brian Cresta, Former Chairman of Massachusetts Republican Party (1 November 2001, Boston, Massachusetts)
  7. Philip Johnston, Chairman of Massachusetts Democratic Party (23 January 2002, Boston, Massachusetts)