Episode 196: New year, same COVID

1/6/2022-- After ringing in the first Horse Race episode 2022, Steve, Jenn, and Lisa discuss poll results just out from The MassINC Polling Group. The statewide poll on Massachusetts residents found just around a quarter of them feel as though the situation around the COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts is better than it was this time last year. The poll also found that unvaccinated people feel the safest doing activities like going to a movie and dining indoors, while people who are the most protected (the vaccinated) feel the least safe doing the same activities.

Steve also shares the favorables of each candidate in the race for Massachusetts Governor, showing Attorney General Maura Healey with the highest rate of name recognition, although Healey has yet to officially announce whether she's running.

Later, CommonWealth reporter Shira Schoenberg shares the details of her recent article detailing Massachusetts schools' struggles with staffing amidst a devastating COVID surge as schools came back in session this week. Remote schooling is not an option, as the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education ordered last year, so schools are left to either scramble to fill in the staffing gaps or close school down and make up the days in the spring.

This episode of The Horse Race was brought to you by Benchmark Strategies. Benchmark is setting a new standard as Boston's fastest-growing public affairs consulting firm. To know more, connect with Benchmark on Twitter @BenchmarkBoston.

Full transcript below:

Steve Koczela: [00:00:01] Today in the horse race, we have new poll results about the Massachusetts gubernatorial election, as well as reactions to the omicron variant and COVID policies. Then we'll be looking at trying to keep schools open as cases spike. It's Thursday, January 6th. [00:00:40][39.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:00:50] Welcome back to the horse race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Jennifer Smith here with Steve Koczela and Lisa Kashinsky. And before we get to other things today, we need to acknowledge the anniversary of the Capitol riots a year ago today, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol building to try and stop the counting of electoral votes. [00:01:10][20.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:11] Representative Jim McGovern was on the floor that day and he'll be recounting his experience, lessons learned and other thoughts a year out in today's Massachusetts playbook. But we have a lot of Massachusetts politics to get to. So let's start a little bit closer to home today on the pod. [00:01:26][14.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:26] That's right. Lee said. Today, we're talking about Attorney General Maura Healey's impressive fundraising, despite no actual announcement yet of her running for governor. Much to the frustration of many with amassing polling group also have some new gubernatorial candidate polling to share, as well as insights into how Massachusetts residents feel about COVID interventions. Later on, we'll talk to Shira Schoenberg of Commonwealth Magazine about school staffing shortages as students return to class. [00:01:50][23.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:50] Plenty to get in there, shall we? Giddy up. 2022 is just six days in, and a lot of people are probably running for a lot of things. I know that sounds broad, so let's start at the top. Lisa are captain of changes in command. Please tell me who is actively running for governor and lieutenant governor and who was being weird about it. [00:02:16][25.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:02:16] So there are three people who are actively running for governor, and that is Republican Jeff Diehl and the two Democrats now because Ben Downing exited the race over the holiday. So the two Democrats who are actually in the race right now are state senator Sonia Chang-Diaz and Harvard professor and nonprofit leader Danielle Allen. We're still waiting on Maura Healey. And while we wait on whether she's going to take the plunge, the lieutenant governor's race is taking off and we have a new candidate this week in State Senator Eric Lesser. He joins his fellow Western Massachusetts state senator Adam Hinds. State Representative Tami Gouveia and businessman Bre Bero. And there are a whole host of other people who might jump in the race most prominently. Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll. [00:03:03][46.5]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:03] All right. Let's start at the top of the ticket because in addition to just who's in, we've also had some other news this week, which of course, is the absolutely astronomical fundraising that Maura Healey reported this quarter. Lisa, you've been following along with all of that. Where are we? [00:03:17][13.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:03:17] Yes, so Healey brought in four hundred and three thousand three hundred and fifty one dollars. And to put that into perspective, that's nearly five times as much as Danielle Allen raised last month and nearly four times as much as Sonia Chang-Diaz raised in December. And she also has by multitudes a lot more cash on hand. Healey has about three point sixty seven million in her war chest. By comparison, Danielle Allen has about 40,0000 and Sonia Chang-Diaz has about two hundred forty eight thousand. So right now, Healy's pretty far ahead in the money race without actually being in the race. [00:03:49][32.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:50] And when it comes to actually being in the race, there's been a lot of frustration. Some memes beginning to emerge about the seeming reluctance that her campaign has to actually be officially in the race. Do we have any idea yet when we can expect an end to the waiting game? [00:04:04][14.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:05] I would have guessed that maybe sometime in the next couple of weeks. But, you know, things are moving on her schedule right now. She's obviously going to enter this race as the front runner, and she can take her time to decide when she wants to take the plunge if she does. [00:04:18][13.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:19] I just want to have an official horse race position that Healy, you know, has very impressive fundraising numbers, and we will deal with this further if and when she actually announces she's running for governor because otherwise we're just putting out press releases on how much money she has, which is all of it. But I mean, aside from governor, as a question, can can I just ask why exactly the lieutenant governor race is so crowded here? Why does anyone want to be lieutenant governor? [00:04:42][23.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:43] Look, it's a high profile gig or a higher profile gig for someone who's not a statewide officeholder right now, and it doesn't come with a lot of responsibility. I mean, really, the only constitutional responsibility they have is to run the Governors Council meetings, right? So, you know, you get some glory with it and it, in theory, sets you up for higher office. But the track record on that is pretty mixed, but it's definitely it can be a launching pad if used correctly. And you know, with it looking like Maura Healey is going to get in the race, that seems like the obvious choice for a deep Democratic bench in the state to try and make a mark and move up a little bit. [00:05:20][36.5]

Steve Koczela: [00:05:20] There have been some past lieutenant governors that have gone on to higher office. Of course, Paul Celucci elected governor John Kerry as lieutenant governor when Governor Dukakis was was in office. Tip O'Neill So of course, it can be a launching pad, but it's not always. We'll just put it that way. So definitely one to watch with some skepticism there. It is one, though I have to return to this Paul number because it's one of my favorite ones we've ever done, which is back in 2014. We asked in mid-October when the election was but weeks away to the best of your knowledge, what office are Democrat Steve Kerrigan and Republican Karyn Polito running for? And thirty five percent knew the answer. The rest had no idea what office those candidates were running for, which of course, was lieutenant governor. [00:06:04][44.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:05] I'm going to tunnel directly into the Earth. That is so depressing. Can we talk about some more recent polling, though, Steve? Would you mind terribly? [00:06:12][7.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:06:13] I mean, I do love 2014 polling, but we do also have some more recent polling, which looks at the candidates that that are running for governor this year. So we found Maura Healey, not surprisingly with the highest name recognition. Basically, we asked, Do you have a favorable view of this candidate unfavorable? Have you heard of them but undecided about how you feel or never heard of them? So Maura Healey had about half who had either a favorable or an unfavorable view of her. So that doesn't sound like very much, but that actually was the highest of any of the candidates. So Maura Healey, thirty three percent favorable, 17 percent unfavorable. The rest of the candidates were much, much lower than that. So looking at looking, for instance, at Danielle Allen, 70 percent said they'd never heard of her. Sonia Chang-Diaz, 54 percent, Ben Downing, whose candidacy obviously came to an end last week, 67 percent said they'd never heard of him. So all the other Democratic candidates really are struggling with name recognition at this point. It's pretty much the same story on the Republican side where we looked at Geoff Diehl. He is slightly better known, but still has about half of voters who say they've never heard of him. And another quarter who say they don't have a view of him yet. So all in all, I'd say the takeaway is there's still a ton of room to get your name out there to introduce yourself to voters, even for Maura Healey, who holds statewide office now. There's still half of voters who have not formed a view of her at this point. [00:07:39][86.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:07:40] Yeah, it's really interesting because we've been talking about these races for a long time, but it's still actually early on in this. And yet, as you said, there's a lot of room for these candidates to change people's minds or just get themselves out there and really connect with voters. But also in this recent poll, Steve, you would ask Massachusetts residents their opinions on COVID in the interventions that have been proposed and implemented. Walk us through how people think the state is faring right now. [00:08:05][25.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:08:06] Well, overall, the numbers don't look good. You know, the first question we asked was compared to this time last year. Do people think things are better or worse? Only one quarter think that they're better. So just not, not not much evidence of improvement there. And we asked, basically, how safe do you feel doing various things and found there's not much improvement there, either? Back when we were doing Mass Reboot, of course, we asked how safe people would feel dining indoors, going to a theater, that sort of thing, and found that across the board, the numbers are down in terms of how safe people feel now compared to how safe they felt back in sort of the May and June July time frame. And we are doing that polling so people do not feel safe. They don't really think things have gotten better. And you know, the sort of central irony is that the people who do feel safe are the people who really actually are not safe. People who have not gotten their vaccinations are the ones who are the most likely to say they feel safe, eating indoors, going to a theater, going to an indoor sporting event and so forth, where the vaccinated who actually are safer are less likely to feel that way. So there's kind of this tension going on in terms of how people actually feel their safety is versus how it actually is. [00:09:16][70.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:09:17] And it's interesting because that also holds true when you account for boosted individuals as well, where the more layers of protection you have, the less likely it is that you feel like a certain activity writ large is a safe thing. I, I noticed kind of in looking through these numbers that that it makes a lot of sense if you're basically saying dining indoors is not a safe thing to do. However, I am still vaccinated. However, I am still boosted by it that there is often we've seen kind of a tie between people saying, Well, I don't really need to be vaccinated because I think these things aren't that dangerous to begin with. So there's this kind of awkward push and pull between those factors. [00:10:00][42.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:10:01] And it also puts people who have gotten boosted and have gotten vaccinated in the position of doing that stuff less because they feel that it's less safe in many instances, because there are people who are unvaccinated in that same room, so they'll be less likely to go out and, you know, go eat in a restaurant or go to a theater or go to a sporting event. Whereas the people who actually are a danger both to themselves and others are more likely to feel safe and more likely, therefore to do those activities. [00:10:29][28.6]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:10:31] So this was a statewide poll. But was it clear whether a vaccine mandate would impact how comfortable people are with indoor activities? [00:10:37][6.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:10:38] Yes, definitely. We asked both whether people would support various kinds of mandates and then how safe you would feel doing those activities if such a mandate were in place and basically found that in most cases, yes, a pretty strong majority would support the mandate. What support mandates to do things like, you know, just follow statewide indoor mask mandate, two thirds supported that. 67 percent supported proof of vaccination for a train or air travel. The lowest one actually was stores and restaurants requiring proof of vaccinations from customers. But in each case, also, I'd say that there was an increase in how safe people would feel doing each one of those things and various other indoor activities if such a vaccine mandate were in place. So, for instance, dining indoors in a restaurant, if there were a vaccine mandate in place, then you have about 69 percent saying that they would feel very or somewhat safe doing that, dining indoors in a restaurant compared to 59 percent right now, when there is no such vaccination mandate in place. And you see that kind of 10 point increase in how how likely people would be to feel safe across a whole range of different activities. [00:11:48][70.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:11:50] And these questions really underlined the point that you made earlier, Steve about it seems like the concern of the vaccinated is being in. Proximity with those who are unvaccinated, because of course, if you have a breakthrough case, you can still give it to someone else, though it's much, much, much less likely because the safety levels of those who were unvaccinated didn't really move at all. When when the question was, would you feel this way with a vaccine mandate? But the real jump came from those who were vaccinated or boosted, who said suddenly they would feel much safer, almost as are in some cases more safe doing these activities if there was a vaccine mandate. [00:12:26][36.5]

Steve Koczela: [00:12:27] Yes. So just taking one, for instance, dining indoors at a restaurant among those who are boosted, we see a 13 point jump in in the likelihood that they would feel safe doing that compared to just a two point shift for people who are not vaccinated. And we see that same kind of gap for going to a movie, concert or theater performance where it's the people who are boosted and vaccinated who will see the biggest shift in how safe they feel. So I think the upshot of all this is that it's really putting the burden on the vaccinated, on the people who are vaccinated. Not having these mandates is keeping them from doing things and enabling people who are not vaccinated to keep doing them because the vaccine mandates really don't make a difference to how safe they they feel doing them. [00:13:09][42.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:13:10] So these numbers are really interesting and we're going to delve, I think, a little bit more over the next few weeks into what it's looked like on the ground level for some of the sectors that we spend a lot of time looking at during the summer with mass reboot. See how you know, the arts sector, how restaurants, how all of these places are doing now that we have another surge but a better shot overall at effective vaccines. So keep an eye out for that. We will be coming on back. It's like no time has moved. [00:13:38][28.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:13:42] The holidays are over, and during normal times that would mean a reluctant return to school for students who would very much like their winter breaks to go on just a little longer. Thank you very much. But the very contagious Omicron variant is complicating that process. There are fights over safety between teachers unions and politicians. Parents and administrators and many students did not return to school this week as case counts surge. So let's dove into what's going on with our good friend, Commonwealth reporter Shira Schoenberg. Hey, Shira, welcome back. [00:14:10][28.2]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:14:10] Thanks so much for having me back. [00:14:12][1.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:14:13] So you wrote an article for CommonWealth in the last couple of days about teachers catching COVID as cases are surging and schools not being able to accommodate the number of absences that they're now experiencing. How bad has it gotten? [00:14:23][10.6]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:14:24] It is absolutely horrible out there. I mean, we've really seen COVID surging through the general population, and teachers are no different when I reported the story on Monday. I wasn't yet able to get concrete numbers for a lot of the districts. Brockton, for example, is one that did give me numbers and said fifty eight staff members were absent. On Wednesday, the Boston Globe ran a similar story. They found that in Boston, there were a thousand school staff absent, including sixty one teachers. They said Worcester had two hundred and fifty teachers and staff out. Lawrence had 294. Not all of these are virus related, but certainly a lot of them are. Which leads to some real questions about how the heck can you operate a school if you're down, you know, 200 plus teachers? [00:15:12][47.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:15:13] And the thing that was striking me is we could kind of see this coming. As we started heading into the holiday season, there was already discussion about an anticipated kind of post-holiday surge. The question of how you could get testing kits out to schools and whether or not teachers would have enough time to get a positive or negative result back. So what was the actual process for even figuring out if teachers or other staff might have COVID before students came back? [00:15:44][30.3]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:15:44] So this was also enormously problematic. The Baker administration initially announced last week that they were going to distribute enough tests for every educator to get two tests. Then there were delays in shipping, and they cut that number approximately in half to about 220 7000 tests that were distributed. But that meant, first of all, districts had to literally open boxes and hand one test out to each educator. They were trying to do it over the weekend, which was when the tests finally got there, when a lot of educators were still on vacation. So you had some districts that actually delayed school for a couple of hours on Monday and a handful of cases actually canceled school in order to test teachers, staff. And I think in some cases, students as well other schools opened. But there was definitely a bit of a scramble to figure out at the last minute how many teachers were actually calling out sick. And then I actually just saw this crazy case out of Cambridge, where the school district closed on Monday and Tuesday in order to give all students a chance to be tested. But then they got the results that found that over 100 of the pools that they had sent for testing were positive, but they hadn't gotten the original results back, so they went ahead, opened schools on Wednesday knowing that there was a huge amount of COVID in the district, but having no idea which students and staff were actually infected. [00:17:13][88.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:17:15] And for those who are unfamiliar, of course, pool testing is where multiple students will be tested on the same tests, and then the idea is that they will be retested. But if you just get the positive backs only from the pool test, then you don't know which students are actually positive, just that there are a lot of them. So that sounds like a scary situation out of Cambridge. So one thing that we, of course haven't heard about is school districts going remote, and there are some pretty technical reasons for that. Shira, why aren't school districts choosing that given all the cases that are going on? [00:17:44][29.9]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:17:45] So that is actually not a decision made by the schools. That's a decision made by the state governor. Baker's administration has been very clear that we're done with remote learning in Massachusetts that after the experience last year, when a lot of kids really had a hard time with remote learning, the state has just put in this essentially blanket prohibition, saying you need 180 days of in-person school this year and remote school is not going to count towards that. So essentially, the districts are not sanctioned by the state to go remote, even for a limited period of time. So if a school chooses to cancel, they're going to have to make up those days later in the year. [00:18:26][40.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:18:27] And it is relevant, I think, to note that there is a difference here between, for instance, a K-12 school and higher ed institutions. You know, for instance, many colleges and universities in Massachusetts, at least five fully said that through, you know, January, they were going to be remote only again anticipating that surge, there's a bit more flexibility if there is a case outbreak to go remote. But what is the actual kind of response in these districts when you're told it might not be safe for your students to be in school because of COVID, but also we can't go remote, so we're calling it a snow day. [00:19:05][38.5]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:19:06] Yeah, I think there's a lot of concern. I mean, the teachers unions have come out very strongly against Governor Baker's position, and they've been really pushing for the state to give more flexibility to allow for remote education. I think within the districts, the students, the parents, the reactions are really mixed and really across the board. I mean, just like we've seen throughout the pandemic, yes, some families that really want their kids to be back in school. You also have some families that are very worried about the safety concerns and are either choosing to pull their kids out or sending their kids very reluctantly. [00:19:41][34.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:19:42] I'm curious about something that's part of this. The role requiring masks in schools is set to lapse on January 15th right now. Has that come up at all in any of these discussions? Have we gotten any indication from the state yet on whether they're going to extend that? [00:19:58][16.0]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:19:58] I mean, my personal guess with no evidence to back this up is that they are going to extend it given the situation. I think it's going to be very hard to justify with doing the mask mandate when we're right in the middle of this Omicron surge. We have not gotten any kind of formal confirmation from Commissioner Riley, the state's application commissioner, or from the Baker administration on whether they're going to extend the mask mandate and for how long it will be extended. But I would guess that we're going to see some kind of extension, at least to get us through this kind of most intense period of the surge. [00:20:32][33.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:20:33] Do we have any figures yet in terms of the number of districts that are just canceling classes? I mean, given that remote is not an option, that's the that's all that remains. If their cases are too high to actually gather inside the school building, what are the numbers looking like on that? [00:20:47][13.6]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:20:48] I haven't seen any kind of comprehensive data here. I don't know what the state is gathering that on Monday, there were news reports from individual districts indicating something like a dozen districts had either delayed or canceled classes. Anecdotally, just this morning, I saw, you know, one local paper. I believe it was Weymouth canceled classes for a day because they didn't have the staff. So right now, the information is really trickling out district by district, and I think the numbers are pretty small. Again, I've seen probably a dozen districts at some point over the course of the week, but we also don't know if that's going to expand as more districts are testing and as more cases come up over the next few days and weeks. [00:21:33][44.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:21:34] One thing you touched on a little bit ago was kind of the the reason that there's the reluctance to shift over to remote learning, for instance, is, you know, the impact on learning loss that we saw over extended periods of time of of remote learning. But how exactly is the state explaining, for instance, that there might be some kind of profound remote learning issue if there were, say, three days of classes that were remote as opposed to saying, we're switching over for an entire semester? [00:22:06][31.6]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:22:07] I think that's something that really hasn't been developed in the way it should be. I mean, the teachers unions are really saying, we're not asking for another remote semester. We're asking for a week or a few days. And the Baker administration really hasn't responded to that. The governor has just kind of kept reiterating what he said all along is that we saw last year how devastating remote learning was to students in terms of educational, social emotional development. We've all seen the mental health crisis going on among children right now, a lot of that exacerbated by not being in school. I think there's also unquestionably an impact to the economy when you have parents and caregivers having to leave work in order to care for children who aren't in school. So the governor's really talked about all of those issues. But I do think there's certainly an argument to be made that there is a difference between last year's decision to go remote for months on end and what could be a decision to go remote for a few days to handle staffing shortages. [00:23:11][63.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:23:12] And it is notable here, I think that as we talk about what staying open and what's being closed, that Gov. Baker is not just kind of sitting on the sidelines and waiting for for the Department of Education to work itself out, he's actively saying that he'd like everyone to be in schools in person right now. Of course, one of the things that I've been following is the response to to higher education, and Northeastern University is requiring its students to be double vaxxed and boosted, but be there in person, unlike Harvard Smith. MIT and Emerson for the month of January, and Governor Baker tweeted out that this move by Northeastern specifically was a good idea and it was perfectly safe. [00:23:51][39.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:23:52] Yeah, the governor also tweeted something similar earlier this week when he went to a school in Gardiner that was holding a vaccine clinic. And he tweeted, "We know school is safe and we know the vaccines work. Dangerous misinformation suggesting otherwise has no place in Massachusetts," and he was also at a school in Salem on Monday morning, touting the return to in-person learning. So yeah, this is something he's really active in. [00:24:16][24.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:24:17] Not to ask you to read the tea leaves too much, Shira. But I think the question when it comes to remote learning or any changes to state policy is is there any sense that Gov. Baker would be flexible to changing these rules? It seems to me that this kind of public response leans toward No. [00:24:33][16.8]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:24:34] It seems like there's he has no interest in changing the policy in any kind of blanket way. The one thing that I could potentially see happening is we saw before winter break the dept. of education did give some a very small number of schools a waiver, let them go remote for a couple of days because of actual outbreaks in the school. So I wonder if it's possible if the state will do something similar and could potentially offer waivers if a school shows that there is really no way they can open safely, you know, for example, they have an in-school outbreak or they just don't have staff. But so far we have not seen the state do that, so it's an open question whether they will. [00:25:16][41.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:25:17] All right. Shira Schoenberg, reporter for CommonWealth Magazine Thank you so much for joining us and walking us through this. [00:25:22][4.5]

Shira Schoenberg: [00:25:22] Thanks so much for having me. It's a lot of fun. [00:25:24][1.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:25:27] All right. Well, that brings us to our final segment, which this week is a very late breaking something to watch. Lisa, you've been staring off into space and there is a bit of breaking news. What's going on? [00:25:36][8.9]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:25:36] You have the Legislature's COVID 19 Oversight Committee has just sent an invitation to try and get Gov. Charlie Baker to come in and testify about how the state is handling this Omicron surge. Three members of his administration had been asked to testify in December, including Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders. They couldn't attend at the time, and they never rescheduled, as far as I've been told. So now they're trying to hollan the governor, if he accepts that will be slated for Monday. So I will be keeping my eye on that and I'm sure a lot of other people will be too. But for now, that's next week, and this is all the time we have for this week. I'm Lisa Kashinsky here with Steve Koczela and Jennifer Smith. Don't forget to subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Massachusetts Politico playbook, which will be in your inbox every weekday morning, and ping the massing polling group for polls. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next week. [00:25:36][0.0]