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FROM LEFT: Deborah Goldberg, Andrea Silbert, and Tim Murray |
Being Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts has its headaches. As LG, you work for a boss who may wish you hadn’t been hired. (Three Democrats are running for the governor’s and LG’s jobs; no gubernatorial candidate has endorsed anyone in the LG’s race.) Unless the governor respects your talents, your big public responsibility is standing quietly by his side like a docile, doting spouse. And if the governor leaves, and you try to take his place, you’ll be blamed for his failures and get minimal credit for his successes.
So why run? In a word, potential. Kerry Healey was nobody before Mitt Romney tapped her as his 2002 running mate; now she’s the sole Republican contender for the state’s top political job. Ex-Republican LG Jane Swift ran the state after Governor Paul Cellucci decamped for Canada; if Romney had prepped for the presidency in Utah or Michigan instead of Massachusetts, Swift might have been elected outright that fall. Cellucci himself was a former LG who had served under Bill Weld in the 1990s. And back in the day, Silent Cal Coolidge logged an LG stint of his own before becoming president. Democratic LGs haven’t usually proceeded to the Corner Office, but they have often moved on to big things: consider Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, or consultant/power broker Tom O’Neill.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that voters should pay close attention to the underside of the ticket when they pick the next governor of Massachusetts. The Republicans already have former Massachusetts State Police colonel Reed Hillman, who (theoretically) will offset Healey’s stiffness and mitigate whatever gender bias she faces during the general-election campaign. Independent Christy Mihos is running with John Sullivan, whose big asset seems to be that he used to be a Democrat. The Democratic pick is still undecided, however, and any of the three candidates — Tim Murray, Andrea Silbert, and Deborah Goldberg — could plausibly win the September 19 primary election. So who are these people, exactly? And which of them would best serve the Democrats come November?
A mayor and the middle class
Let’s start with Tim Murray, who won the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s nominating convention in June. As mayor of Worcester, Murray has heftier governmental experience than either of his rivals. (Goldberg is an ex-chair of selectmen in Brookline, a community blessed with a high property-tax base and a paucity of urban problems; Silbert has never held elected office.) Granted, the Worcester mayoralty comes with an asterisk: a city manager oversees Worcester’s day-to-day operations, and the mayor’s job always goes to one of Worcester’s at-large city councilors. But Murray can truthfully say he’s the top elected official in Massachusetts’s second-largest city.
This helps his candidacy on a few levels. For starters, it sharpens his sales pitch. (For example, Murray can cite Worcester’s example when talking up the connection between commuter-rail service and economic development, a favorite theme of each Democratic LG candidate.) Murray’s mayoral tenure has also yielded some valuable political allies: three dozen mayors from around Massachusetts have endorsed his LG candidacy, which gives him a ready-made statewide framework. Finally, Murray is uniquely capable of hammering Healey’s work as Romney’s liaison to cities and towns — an aspect of Healey’s experience that her handlers hope will be an asset this fall. Here’s how Murray described Healey’s Worcester “listening sessions” in a recent interview with the Phoenix: “She invites a select group of people, and invites the media to come and listen — to watch her listen, and report on her listening. And then, after the hour is up, the TV lights go off, the reporters’ notebooks get put away, and she leaves.”
