Flip on the Red Sox game and there’s Lori Trahan, gabbing with Third District voters in a diner.
Turn on CNN, and you’re likely to see Gov. Charlie Baker shaking someone’s hand, or wearing safety glasses and inspecting a piece of manufacturing equipment.
John Kingston hates corn dogs, and maybe Iowa, so much that he just throws the meat on a stick right in the trash. Fenway franks, apparently, are more to his liking, and he doesn’t appreciate Elizabeth Warren’s rumored designs on the White House much either.
There are two weeks to go before voters decide primary races on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the ballot, and the need for candidates to put their faces in front of as many voters as possible before Sept. 4 is apparent anytime you turn on the television.
As for those candidates who can’t afford to advertise, WGBH and “Greater Boston” host Jim Braude pitched in with a “debate week” that helped enliven a sleepy period on and off Beacon Hill when minds were more focused finding a beach without sharks in the water than how best to secure the southern border. (Kingston found a way to do both with a family trip to his timeshare in San Diego where he “toured” the border.)
All-in-all, the Legislature was quiet, the governor staged a few ceremonial bill signings to highlight opioid addiction and Alzheimer’s treatment legislation and the Gaming Commission watched as MGM Springfield’s ran dry runs of its gambling operations ahead of next week’s grand opening.
Baker officially, officially launched his re-election campaign last weekend at the annual picnic he and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito host in Shrewsbury every summer, essentially asking for four more years to continue what they’ve started.
For all intents and purposes, the Baker team is looking past the Sept. 4 primary and conservative pastor Scott Lively, who is running a long-shot, shoestring campaign against Baker on a socially conservative platform that isn’t likely to get him too far in Massachusetts.
But that didn’t stop Baker from dipping into his sizable war chest this week to go on television with the first ad of the campaign: “Integrity. Leadership. Results. Charlie Baker,” a narrator intones.
Baker paid Jamestown Associates, a D.C. political ad firm, $1.75 million to help brand the GOP ticket, dropping his campaign committee balance to a meager $6.6 million, or 15 times the amount his closest Democrat rival has reported.
Jay Gonzalez’s campaign, which had $431,000 at the end of July, said it will not be going on television with ads before the Democratic gubernatorial primary against Bob Massie, opting to save its bullets in hopes of getting into the general. Gonzalez’s campaign manager Kevin Ready said instead, the campaign will be spending on field organizers and using social media to target voters in parts of the state like the Third and Seventh Congressional districts.
Massie’s campaign, with only $83,000 in bank, probably couldn’t afford TV if it wanted, and also said it was focused on digital advertising.
But the two had 30 minutes in front of a camera on Thursday night with Braude where Massie played up his outsider persona and Gonzalez argued that his experience at the State House, in contrast to Massie, will help him accomplish more than just talk.