Episode 245: Term Limits of Endearment
This week on The Horse Race, Marty Walsh is shipping back to Boston to run the NHLPA. A new poll of Massachusetts voters from MassINC Polling Group shows some concerning numbers for top Democratic leaders. And a key lawmaker looks to end term limits for the state’s Senate President.
Steve Koczela [00:00:02] The Horse Race is 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 at Benchmark Boston. This week on the Horse Race, Marty Walsh is shipping back to Boston. A new poll from the MassINC Polling Group has some not so favorable numbers for key Democratic leaders. And a key lawmaker looks to end term limits for the state's Senate president. It's Thursday, February 9th.
Jennifer Smith [00:00:52] Welcome back to the Horse Race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Jennifer Smith, here with my co-host, Steve Koczela. And it's a two horse race this week because Lisa Kashinsky is not here, but she is here, I guess, in spirit, because she has left us with some exciting breaking news. Like all Massachusetts news these days, it's about a former executive going into the world of sports, because according to Lisa's report in Politico, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, of course, former mayor of Boston, will leave his cabinet post in the Biden administration to run, of all things, the NHL Players Association. We should, of course, note that this move was first reported by the Daily Face Off. Steve, what do you think? Are you going to get more into hockey than usual?
Steve Koczela [00:01:38] Definitely not, first of all, but I do love the fact that, like the departure of a cabinet secretary was first reported by the Daily Face Off. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, it's a really interesting move. And also interesting in light of the recent Charlie Baker announcement, which is, of course, he's going to take over the NCAA. Also comes, you know, people have pointed to Mitt Romney taking over when he went to the U.S. Olympic Committee. So there is something about Massachusetts political executives going to run major sports organizations.
Jennifer Smith [00:02:09] Yeah, And I mean, whenever there's speculation about it, it's not just that they must really deeply love these sports, but former mayor, current Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is in for an absolutely wild pay bump if the NHLPA previous executive director salary holds, which was, by the way, $3 million.
Steve Koczela [00:02:31] Yeah, that would certainly be a pay increase. And also thinking back that he was mayor, he was state rep, and now he's going to make $3 million. So a very rapid ascent in his pay scale. We'll just say that he would be the first cabinet secretary to leave Joe Biden's administration. You know, that is a very stable two years, certainly after what we saw with former President Donald Trump in that, you know, revolving door of cabinet secretaries and other senior advisers that we saw during his administration. It also came, of course, right after there were sort of very brief, very brief set of rumors that Marty Walsh might be up for Joe Biden's next chief of staff. Of course, that didn't come through. It also leaves the question of what to do with his absolute mountain of campaign cash that he still has. Any news on that, Jen?
Jennifer Smith [00:03:14] Well, that is kind of the question here. Right. He still has $4.6 million in the war chest. And if he's back in Boston, which, you know, back in Boston is a loose term, because he had kept his Dorchester home and mostly stayed in hotels when he was doing D.C. business. But if he's back in Boston, if he's working for the players association, that means he wouldn't have kind of the same political conflicts as he would, of course, as labor secretary. So if he felt like wading into things, he would have a bit more runway to do that in this role than his current one. So all eyes on Lower Mills, I suppose.
Steve Koczela [00:03:51] It is a bit of a bizarre kind of eccentricity of it's Massachusetts politics, but anywhere else too, that allows you to kind of keep your campaign cash just sitting around in a in a horde, you know, like under the mountain in a pile of gold coins like you can here in Massachusetts and just sort of use it whenever and however you feel like it. You know, it's you know, it was given to you and to your campaign, I suppose. But, you know, not certainly with the donors having this idea that they were going to, you know, mint you some sort of kingmaker for life, which is kind of how it's how it's turned out now, where people can hold on to these piles of campaign cash for years and do pretty much whatever they want with them, obviously with some limits. But politically, almost whatever you want with it.
Jennifer Smith [00:04:34] There have been efforts to over the years to try and see if there might be room to adjust that in some way. Getting directly at your point, Steve, that if people donate to you running for one office, it's maybe not even safe to assume they'd like you to run for every single other office you ever run for. For instance, if people said, you know, Hey, we'd really like you as mayor of Boston, it might, you know, be fair to assume that they might not want you to be D.A. of Suffolk County or something like that. So you do end up with this kind of wobbly territory of why is money once given to a candidate there is to use in whatever campaign? So you're right, it is a weird tangle here.
Steve Koczela [00:05:15] That brings us to the question which we've asked tens of millions of times over our several millennia doing this podcast and never once yet successfully answered, which is Jen, what are we doing here?
Jennifer Smith [00:05:24] Steve I am pleased to report that the question is not what are we doing here, but what should Joe Biden do? Later, we're going to be talking about a poll of Massachusetts residents that maybe says don't run for president again so quickly. Joe, we will discuss.
Steve Koczela [00:05:40] Let's do it. Well, Jen, I know this is going to come as a surprise to you, but my hope for today, my aspiration, my dream even, is to talk about polling of Massachusetts. How does that sound?
Jennifer Smith [00:05:57] This is an unexpected shock. Viewers, listeners, you cannot see. I am absolutely floored. Steve. Let's give it a try. Why are we talking about polls today?
Steve Koczela [00:06:08] We are talking about polls today, Jenn. And thank you for indulging my dreams to talk about polling today. We're talking about it because we have released this week a new poll of Massachusetts residents where we asked a series of political questions, a series of policy questions. We have data on Democratic leaders in Massachusetts, Joe Biden, just all kinds of good stuff. Really tons of interesting data to get into.
Jennifer Smith [00:06:31] Yeah, let's start up at the top of this one. I love favorables and you've got a suite of them in here. I would say critically, Bill Belichick is more popular than the president or our new governor.
Steve Koczela [00:06:43] Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, both more popular than either Joe Biden or Maura Healey at this point. So says something about Massachusetts priorities, perhaps. But interestingly, what it also says is that Democratic leaders in Massachusetts just aren't that popular at the moment. And it really hasn't always been this way. You know, we think back to the days of like 2011, 2012, 2013. We've got Barack Obama, Deval Patrick, John Kerry very often up in the fifties and sixties. Elizabeth Warren was often in the mid fifties and so forth back then. Those days are pretty much gone and been replaced by pretty tepid numbers overall. Maura Healey, of course, is new at her job, just elected and didn't really have much opposition in her campaign, so voters didn't really have to tune in and learn who she was or much about her. For Governor Healey, we had 46% who said they view her favorably, 22% said unfavorably. And that was actually pretty much the best number of the political leaders that we asked about. Joe Biden was very even 45% favorable, 42% unfavorable. That is really low for a Democratic president in Massachusetts. Katherine Clark, basically unknown. Three quarters of voters didn't have either favorable or unfavorable view of her. And Elizabeth Warren, you know, not great, 43% favorable, 38% unfavorable. So, you know, a little bit better than some of the others, but really not as good as we've seen her in the past.
Jennifer Smith [00:08:10] And to what extent is this relate to how voters kind of feel about the direction of Massachusetts generally, if you're trying to get your head around what the pivot point would be for this for this shift, is it that people suddenly just think that the country and the state are doing some weird things?
Steve Koczela [00:08:26] Certainly the country, you know, it's been a while since we've seen any, you know overall anywhere say that, you know, most people thought that the country is headed in the right direction, you know, and this one is no exception. With just 30% of voters overall saying that they feel that way in Massachusetts, it's about half say that they think that the state is headed in the right direction. And that's a lot more than say say that it's not or that it's off on the wrong track. So as it's been for a while now, people do feel more positively about how things are going here in Massachusetts. And, you know, that may translate over time to Maura Healey's numbers looking better as more voters get to know her, you know, they start to attribute more of what they like about Massachusetts to things she's doing instead of things that, you know, Charlie Baker, Deval Patrick did. So those numbers could definitely improve. But, you know, overall that the numbers for Democratic leaders just aren't looking good.
Jennifer Smith [00:09:21] And how does that end up panning out when the question comes up of, you know, these people that they have middling opinions on are currently president and U.S. senator, Do they think Joe Biden should run again? Do they think Warren should run again.
Steve Koczela [00:09:35] For Joe Biden? No is the short answer. 23% of voters say that he should run again and critically, not even really Democrats think in very large numbers that he should be running again. Among those who say that they're either a Democrat or they're independent, but they lean Democrat, that number is only just about a third say that they think Joe Biden should run again. So for him, I think there's you know, there's a real challenge and there's going to be, you know, real difficulties and real challenges in a primary if if that were to take place. You know, it's not by any means sort of a shoe in for Elizabeth Warren. Her overall numbers are better than that. And by a narrow margin, voters do say she should run again, 43 to 36 basically should versus shouldn't. But for her, the critical number is Democrats again. And they're two thirds say, yes, Elizabeth Warren should run again. And that matters, of course, because it's Massachusetts. The Democratic Party or the Democratic primary is the whole deal. You know, until the Republican Party can kind of show us that they can nominate candidates that are electable and that voters would think about supporting, you know, it doesn't really matter what Republicans think about whether Elizabeth Warren should run. And if Democrats are on board, then she's the favorite.
Jennifer Smith [00:10:48] Well, I also found the divergence pretty interesting because Warren's favorability numbers map almost exactly on to the question of whether or not she should or shouldn't run again. You know, 43% roughly think she should run again and 41% feel favorably toward her. Same with should not. But then with Biden, he's about as popular as Warren. But half the number of his favorables think he should run again for president. So there is obviously a bit more being captured by the question of a run than just do you like them?
Steve Koczela [00:11:21] Absolutely. And you see that show up with Democrats and Joe Biden. You know, almost 70% of Democrats do hold a favorable view of Joe Biden. But, you know, that's twice as many as think you should run again. So there's a whole lot of people out there that are like, yup, I like him. He's a good guy. Don't want to see him run again. And that does actually kind of mirror what we're seeing nationally as well, where, you know, and it's the same as Trump. I should be clear nationally, if you ask voters, do you want Biden to run again? Nope. You want Trump to run again? Nope. Let's do something new. Let's do something different. And you definitely see that coming through here. We did ask about Trump in this one also. And not surprisingly, the, you know, deeply unfavorable as he's been for pretty much since we started pulling him here.
Jennifer Smith [00:12:02] Well, sticking with the presidential question, whoever runs you asked voters what they want to see out of that person or what they want to see priority area wise. So I would like to say in a shocker to I assume very few people, the number one thing that they wanted to see out of a presidential candidate is that they be honest and trustworthy. That makes me a little bit pleased.
Steve Koczela [00:12:23] At least it does warm my, you know, democracy loving heart a little bit because, you know, honesty and trustworthiness certainly hasn't been a given. I'll just say that in recent years. But, yes, what we did basically is we we took a set of of possible descriptions of a presidential candidate, like someone who agrees with you on the issues, someone who believes in God, someone who has business experience, all kinds of different things that people could prioritize. And then we'd show them basically four at a time and say, which one of these is the most important to you? Which one of these is the least important to you? And then we show a different four and say the same thing. And we, you know, rotate them randomly. And just by repeating that, basically see which things when you show them are rated the most often as being the most important, which ones are just not rated at all. People sort of feel in the middle about them and which ones are actively the least important. And what we found, Jenn, as you said, the most important thing is someone who's honest and trustworthy. Second one is kind of interesting, which is someone who's tough enough to keep America safe. That was the one that came in at number two. Then kind of a tension here, which I think we're all familiar with in politics, where the next two were will stand firm for their beliefs and will compromise to get things done, which, you know, are a bit in contrast to say that. So lots of interesting stuff there. Then further down, further down on the list, we found at the bottom of the list, we found the least important word that the candidates, a person of color and that the candidates a one in those two. There is a little bit of division by party, but it's not enough where it's like this is something that Democrats say they care about, but Republicans don't. You know, it's down at or near the bottom of the list, even for Democrats.
Jennifer Smith [00:14:03] Well, and then, of course, there is the interesting Joe Biden question here, which is they also don't seem to really care if the person is under the age of 65. Maybe you want to up that to whatever the current age of Joe Biden is. Yeah.
Steve Koczela [00:14:20] Yeah, that that's one where I'd love to dig into that one a little more we can on this poll just because of space. But one thing I'd love to ask is something like, you know, whether a particular age is some is, you know, the right age or not the right age are too young or too old and do like 35 to 45, you know, 45 to 55. And just see like, where is that ideal age? Is there one or is it just like specific to the person where people are like maybe an 80 year old could be president, but we don't want Joe Biden to be president anymore. Don't really know that way. But I did find it interesting, given that reelect number for Joe Biden, that it's that that number was so low that the age number was.
Jennifer Smith [00:14:59] So you often end up kind of seeing discussion around the pipeline issue as well for Democratic candidates. You know, how deep is the bench for future stars? And Massachusetts has now the second most powerful person on the Democratic side in the House, which is Katherine Clark. But getting back to your kind of favorables unfavorables scale. Most people don't even know who Katherine Clark is. So if you're looking at the federal bench, if you're saying, well, if it's not Kamala Harris, if it's not Hakeem Jeffries, is it Katherine Clark? Massachusetts doesn't really seem to know who she is.
Steve Koczela [00:15:36] Yeah, certainly she had 15% favorable, 11% unfavorable. So just not great numbers for her overall there, too. You know, if there were something where voters were kind. Their attention was grabbed, perhaps those numbers would go up, but certainly not the numbers you would kind of imagine for somebody who is in one of the most powerful positions of any Democrat in the country at this point. But still, three quarters of voters in her own state don't know who she is or don't have an opinion about her.
Jennifer Smith [00:16:03] And then let's pivot right before I let you go. I say let Steve. I mean, you would talk about the polling for 1,000,000,000 years, but let us let us if we can get a little bit more specific, then kind of generic qualities of a presidential candidate and ask specifically what do they want Maura Healey to do, exactly?
Steve Koczela [00:16:20] Yeah, we asked about key priorities and did it on an open ended basis, or people could kind of say whatever they wanted. And then we coded it into different groups and found a very familiar set of items up there at the top the economy and jobs, housing costs. Not surprising. We talked about that many times. Of course, inflation and the cost of living is also up there. And then the fourth one actually was public safety, which was kind of interesting. We haven't seen that one kind of pop as much as it did in this poll. So you never know with things like this if it's just a one off or if it's, you know, the beginning of a trend, but certainly something that we will be keeping an eye on.
Jennifer Smith [00:16:53] All right, Steve, that's all the time for polls we have for today. I am so sorry. Don't cry for me, Argentina. We're going to move on to shenanigans in the statehouse, shall we?
Steve Koczela [00:17:05] As long as we promise to come back to polls someday.
Jennifer Smith [00:17:09] Promise.
Steve Koczela [00:17:16] According to a new article in Commonwealth magazine, a key lawmaker is looking to end the eight year term limit that's been in place for Senate president for three decades now. Fortunately for you, dear listeners, and for all of us, I have the intrepid reporter who wrote the article here with me now, because she also happens to be my co-host, Jennifer Smith. Jenn, why is this a big deal?
Jennifer Smith [00:17:37] Oh, this is a big deal for all kinds of interesting and thorny reasons. But one of the big ones is it's one of the few symbolic differences between the House and the Senate at hand here. The Senate is smaller and at least after the William Bulger years has had less of a centralized sort of cult of personality energy around its leadership. So Senator Michael Rodriguez, who's the budget chair of the Senate, filed an amendment in, you know, a period of time with only two days to go before they had to vote on their rules package that would eliminate term limits for the Senate president.
Steve Koczela [00:18:13] I think what you're telling me is that we do have term limits, but it's basically something that they can eliminate at any time. Like this is just something they've decided to do and they can easily just press the button and undo it. Is that right?
Jennifer Smith [00:18:23] It is. And in fact, the House really loves doing that. They've changed their term limit rules a lot over the decades, which we can absolutely get into. But the thing to keep in mind here is there is no way to change term limits aside from constitutional amendment. So there were some attempts in the nineties from voters to impose term limits on a few offices, but the Supreme Judicial Court said can't do it has to be done through these official processes. When we talk about term limits in the Senate or in the House. We're talking about how long you can serve specifically in these leadership roles, which you get when your fellow senators or House members vote on them. So it is, in fact, literally thing they choose to opt in on. But this has been in place for 30 years in the Senate. So it's a bigger deal that they're choosing to or considering, though it looks pretty likely to choose to opt out on here.
Steve Koczela [00:19:17] So, of course, we can think of all sorts of cynical rationales, But what are the ones that when you ask but, you know, official spokespeople and the people that will speak earnestly, what are the rationales given at this point?
Jennifer Smith [00:19:28] Well, look, some of these might also be cynical. What you basically heard a lot over the past day or so from sort of Spilka lieutenants and folks who have been in Senate leadership is a few different things. One of them is this question of stability that it's been kind of a weird few years and it would be helpful to have consistent leadership. One reason that's a little bit strange is because Spilka still has three and a half years on her term for Senate president, so she could run for an entirely separate two year term later if she felt like it. So we're not really approaching that deadline. And then there was a really fun I think it was fun anyway. Question that ends up as sort of a snake eating its own tail here, which is folks on the Senate side pointing out that the House doesn't have limits. So why should the Senate have limits? So you do get into a question of throwing out is it fair if the governor doesn't have term limits, if none of the other legislative seats or leadership posts have term limits, why should the Senate president have these limits imposed on them? So they say she's doing a good job and it's not fair that the Senate alone should be somehow penalized by this.
Steve Koczela [00:20:43] Got it. So, like if you have three kids, if you give something to one child and the others don't have it, there's inevitably an issue.
Jennifer Smith [00:20:50] Great Way to put it, Steve.
Steve Koczela [00:20:51] And it's not fair as one of the three or one of the frequent objections. So what are the actual objections to this move that we're hearing, you know, from those who have said that now is not a good time to make the switch?
Jennifer Smith [00:21:04] Well, the people who are objecting to it openly are really kind of good government or watchdog groups who are saying that one of the problems with unlimited powers is that you end up concentrating it. It's really easy to sort of develop an iron fist. It's very easy to have a retaliatory approach if other members of your particular chamber don't decide to get in line with you. And that can be even more of a problem if there is not a requirement to kind of do a power turnover. Eight years is a pretty long time, and so groups like Common Cause, Massachusetts or progressive groups like Progressive Mass say honestly, it should be standard practice to assume that one person, no matter how good they individually might be, shouldn't be able to wield the gavel and all of the abilities to make appointments to committees which are more lucrative and appointments to leadership post which are more lucrative, to have that power just kind of indefinitely.
Steve Koczela [00:22:03] Right. And there is sort of a horse trading element to this. Sorry, I got to throw that in there just with the timing. You know, you mentioned committee assignments. You mentioned leadership assignments. Those things aren't handed out yet. And yet the members that are hoping to, you know, that are aspiring to these posts and who will be financially rewarded for these posts are about to be put on the record as to whether or not they want to support this new thing, which would give the person who's appointing them the power to make those appointments. I have all that straight.
Jennifer Smith [00:22:30] That is that is absolutely right. And it did make kind of, you know, reporting it out yesterday a little bit complicated for all of us who were chasing it down, which is a lot of folks who objected to Bob Deleo's extension of the speaker term limits are suddenly pretty quiet when it comes to the question of how long should Spilka or anyone be Senate president. And exactly to that point, Steve, it's kind of hard to piece out how much of this is because they might now be in a position where they could get decent committee appointments, they might want to continue to have that influence, and you really just don't want to end up in a situation where the head of a smaller body where presumably everyone is equal. It's got a reputation as the more liberal chamber suddenly decides to start being retaliatory in a way that's more associated historically with the House of Representatives.
Steve Koczela [00:23:23] So then what happens next? When will we know how members are feeling about this?
Jennifer Smith [00:23:28] Well, it depends on where you are in the great flat circle of time that we find ourselves on as we're recording this. It's Wednesday. So the Senate is going to be caucusing, talking amongst themselves about this in secret. We love it when they do that. And if you're listening to this, it is Thursday morning. And if it's before 11, you can literally go stroll over to the Massachusetts legislature website and watch them debate this very issue with the rules package on Thursday. So we have no answers now, but we might when you're listening to this.
Steve Koczela [00:23:59] All right. Well, Jenn Smith, chair of the term limits department here at Horse Race University, thank you so much for joining us.
Jennifer Smith [00:24:05] Of course, there will be a pop quiz later. Sorry, everyone.
Steve Koczela [00:24:15] Our last segment tonight is a celebratory one. Light the candles, make a wish because Massachusetts turned 235 years old this week.
Jennifer Smith [00:24:24] Oh, happy birthday, Massachusetts. You don't look a day over 205 youthful, sprightly. Technically, we are a little bit late, so we will probably be getting a call from Massachusetts' mom because the actual birthday was February 6th, 1788. Hat tip to Rep Jim McGovern for letting the Commonwealth know how old the Commonwealth is.
Steve Koczela [00:24:48] Also today, February 8th, when we're recording or yesterday, if you're listening on February 9th when this post is also Governor Maura Healey's birthday. So happy birthday to her as well.
Jennifer Smith [00:24:58] I hope she gets a giant cake in the shape of the Commonwealth and eats the islands first.
Steve Koczela [00:25:04] I mean, if you're governor of Massachusetts, that seems only right, only fair, only proper. But that is all the time we have for today. I'm Steve Koczela, signing off for Jennifer smith. Lisa Kashinsky will be back next week. Our producer is Adam Boyajy. Don't forget to get the Horse Race review wherever you're hearing us now, subscribe to the Massachusetts political playbook. If by some act of God you're not already subscribed and reach out to us at the MassINC Polling Group if you need polls or focus groups. That's all for now, thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.