from Ballot Access News
Massachusetts Treasurer Registers as an Independent
Posted at BAN July 8th, 2009
In Massachusetts, State Treasurer is an elected partisan position. On July 8, the Massachusetts Treasurer, Tim Cahill, changed his registration from “Democrat” to “Independent”. He is more fiscally conservative than most Democrats in state government. He says he is “leaning heavily toward running” for Governor in 2010 as an Independent.
Thane,
This reflects the oddity of Massachusetts politics, in which the two parties are the Massachusetts liberal Democrats and the Massachusetts machine Democrats. The latter are rather socially conservative, and had a former speaker of the house who forced the budget to balance with his gavel. However, the balance between them has been shifting, and one can readily believe that the Democratic primary will perhaps be crowded, so Cahill, a Massachusetts machine Democrat may well have concluded that he could run as an independent as his best shot at winning.
Having said that Massachusetts may yet become the first party in which the Ron Paul folks, conspiracy theorists, et tedious cetera, some of whom are very nice people, manage to take over a state Republican Party.
“Given the organizational disadvantage of being independent, this action really shows how the Democrat party is doing quite poorly (even worse than the Republican party).”
Well, no. The Democrats own MA. Naturally, they are engaging in an orgy of corruption, the latest Dem to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar being House Speaker Sal DiMasi. There is room to run against the corrupt Democrats, and this treasurer seems to be jockeying for the pole position (of course, the Dems were fine for him until he saw better career prospects elsewhere). He probably won’t run as a Republican, since that will get you nowhere in MA.
That could be the fact that he won’t be running for reelection as treasurer since he’s running for governor.
Couple things. One, I’m not sure why Cahill didn’t just run against Deval in the Dem primaries, because he would have had a pretty good shot, whereas now he’ll split the Democratic vote, just like Mihos split the Repub vote in 2006.
Two, I was under the impression that Cahill also stepped down as treasurer. There was something in the Globe this morning about their being a scramble for his position or something.
No it doesn’t, it just shows that this treasurer person is a lunatic who doesn’t know what’s good for him.
Given the organizational disadvantage of being independent, this action really shows how the Democrat party is doing quite poorly (even worse than the Republican party).
It would be more interesting if he had switched to a third party, but still an independent is good enough.
You know what happens when ships sink…
I feel like this is happening a lot recently…huzzah!