- Popular Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker will not run for re-election in 2022.
- The two Republican candidates vying to replace him — Jeff Deere and Chris Doughty — trailed Democratic nominee Maura Healy by a wide margin in early polls.
- Neither was dissuaded, however, and both spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation about why they were the best fit for the state and how they plan to maintain Republican control over the Massachusetts governor’s office.
Despite a popular outgoing Republican governor, Massachusetts Republicans face an uphill battle to replace him with another conservative, but both candidates believe they are up to the task.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s 69 percent approval puts him in two-thirds of the country’s most popular governors, according to morning consultation, but he announced in December that he would not run for a third term and would instead focus on steering the Massachusetts economy out of the pandemic, NPR report then.Although two potential Republican replacements — a former state representative and a candidate for the U.S. Senate Jeff Deere and political newcomers and businessmen Chris Doughty – At the most recent Suffolk University, the Democratic candidate and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy trailed by about 30 points pollingboth told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they are not afraid of a challenge and that it is crucial that Republicans finally take control of the state legislature in November.
“Massachusetts’ state legislature is one of the most liberal in the nation, as is its judiciary, and Maura Healey is going to be one of the most liberal governors in the country,” Doughty told DCNF. “Without a conservative inspection of the governor’s office, this would be San Francisco on steroids. ”
“She’s a big government ideologue who wants to take away the liberties that our country was built on,” Deere told DCNF.
Healey, who has sued the Trump administration nearly 100 times as attorney general and is accused of focusing on the national culture wars rather than serving as a public servant for Massachusetts residents, according to WGBH, Boston’s local NPR channel.
Every time Healey gets involved in these “politically motivated lawsuits,” Republican lawyer Dan Shoals said, it means “one more drug dealer going free, or one more public official engaged in corrupt practices or one more Defrauded Senior Officials”, WBUR, another Boston-area NPR affiliate, report.
us Attorney Andrew Lelling and the left-leaning Boston Globe editorial board also criticized Healey for failing to adequately prosecute government corruption in the overwhelmingly Democratic state government and never bringing charges against the state’s elected officials, WGBH reported.
The Healey campaign did not respond to DCNF’s request for comment.
While both Doughty and Diehl agreed that Healey’s gubernatorship would spell disaster for Massachusetts, they disagreed with the man doing so.
Dyer, who is allied with Donald Trump, appears to be the front-runner for now, polling A poll conducted in late June put him at 52 percent among Republicans, compared with 16 percent for Doughty, though those numbers were from six weeks ago, and Doughty said he has The campaign has picked up pace.
Diehl has far more political experience than Doughty. He won state representation in 2010 and, though unsuccessfully, challenged Elizabeth Warren for the U.S. Senate in 2018. He said the experience helped him “build a very strong team across the state, and while I didn’t beat Warren, I actually got more votes than the Democratic gubernatorial candidates that cycle.”
I am running for governor to witness the growth and prosperity of the people of Massachusetts. It’s time to make our state a place for future generations to live. Join us and stand with us: https://t.co/tUDyO17WTw pic.twitter.com/4Ul8yDAlNh
— Diehl for MA (@DiehlForMA) April 4, 2022
Deere grew up in Pennsylvania before moving to his wife’s hometown of Whitman, Massachusetts, where they owned a small performing arts company. Diehl’s supporters argue that it is those credentials in private business and government that make him the perfect candidate for governor.
“Jeff’s unique use of private and public sector experience in this game has allowed him to understand how the pieces of the puzzle fit together,” Dier’s campaign manager Amanda Orlando told DCNF.
Deere’s status as a small business owner also gave him a unique advantage over how COVID-19 restrictions could affect business owners, and ultimately prompted him to declare his candidacy last summer, even before Baker made it clear he would not seek re-election.
“The pandemic has exposed his administration too much to follow the Democrats’ playbook; we had to wait for an arbitrary reopening and kids wouldn’t go back to school,” Deere told DCNF, adding, “On day one, we would Hire any government worker who loses their job due to a vaccine requirement, and then the next day, we fire anyone who thinks it’s a good idea.”
Challenging Baker – Trump’s Republican nemesis – helped Diehl win over the former president, and Diehl’s campaign is made up of former Trump bell ringers, most notably Corey, who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign Corey Lewandowski.
Diehl told DCNF that this week the Diehl campaign will invite another staunch Trump ally, Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, to a fundraiser.
But Doughty believes these Trump connections make Diehl an option in New England. “He’s running an Alabama campaign in Massachusetts,” Doughty told DCNF. While there are signs of Trump’s popularity among Republicans in Massachusetts, Republicans make up only a small fraction of registered voters in the state, and the former president is 2-1 in 2020, according to WBUR data. The advantage lost to Massachusetts.
The Wrentham-based businessman and political newcomer believes his pragmatism and business acumen make him the right man for Massachusetts, where Diehl is involved in the hot culture wars.
“I’ll run the state like I’m running my business. I’ll be very careful about money — we overtax and overspend in Massachusetts, which makes us uncompetitive,” he told DCNF, repeatedly calling him a “fiscal conservative” Pie” outperforms Diehls.
“Deer voted for more state legislature spending than even our Democratic governor [Deval Patrick] Support when we have him,” Doughty told DCNF.
We need a governor who makes taxpayers, good jobs and affordability a priority. @maura_healey Not that candidate. States cannot enter economic prosperity through litigation. We need leadership on economic issues. https://t.co/fMQxh4ACRM #magov #mapoli #massgop pic.twitter.com/wv1bZxQ8JS
— Chris Doughty (@chrisforma) August 2, 2022
Doughty also pledged to compromise with the Democrats and hold a “unified worldview,” according to WBUR is compared to other moderate Republicans who have had success in Massachusetts in the past, such as Baker and Mitt Romney.
“I’m not here to speak ill of other people or other parties,” Doughty told WBUR.
But without Baker’s name endorsement, many experts questioned Doughty’s ability to succeed in the Republican primary in Massachusetts, where most Republican voters are aligned with the pro-Trump faction in the party, according to WBUR.
Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime Republican adviser, told WBUR that in Massachusetts today, “it may be easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to get moderates through the Republican primary.” (Related: ‘Retaliation’: GOP candidate launches unconventional line of attack to topple Democrats)
While each faces its own challenges — Doughty in the primary immediately, Deere in the general election — both see national political trends and a “red wave” that could work in their favor. According to a Suffolk University poll of 600 Massachusetts residents between July 20 and 23, President Joe Biden’s approval rating has steadily declined to around 41 percent in Massachusetts, while 48 percent do not. Yes, with a margin of error of 4.5%.
Diehl noted “Youngkin’s situation, even in blue states or purple states, you’re starting to see the middle ground — including 57 percent of Massachusetts unregistered voters — looking at the country and saying, ‘You know what? Do it for us.
For his part, Doughty told DCNF, “Jeff and I are far from the mullahs, but what’s happened in Massachusetts in the past is that the Republicans caught up three to four weeks before the election — that’s when we started to get attention. and voters who pay attention.”
It remains to be seen whether the GOP can pose a real challenge to Healey in November, but the next step is the party’s primary on Sept. 6.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is freely available to any eligible news publisher with a large audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
