Speaker Election 2009 MA

[Dan the Roman]

It looks like Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi is stepping down due to a corruption probe. This leads to an interesting race for his replacement.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/01/dimasi_to_step.html

 Because Massachusetts is a one party  state, Speaker races tend to be a chance for major shifts in the ideological balance of power in the legislature. In 1996 for instance, conservative Democrat Tom Fineran lacked the votes in the Democratic caucus to win, but enlisted enough Republicans to give him the victory. In 2004, Republicans were inclined to back Ways and Means Chairman John Rogers until Romney forced them abstain. This time around both Rogers(a Conservative) and Robert DeLeo(a moderate) are trying to win over Republicans, while Jay Kaufman(a liberal) is attempting to rally Democrats who dislike the machine politics of both. Kaufman is aligned with Governor Patrick and it will be interesting to see whether he pushes him and risks alienating DeLeo and Rogers, or stays neutral.

Personally, DeLeo seems to have a strong upper hand because he is minimally acceptable to Liberals as an alternative to Rogers, especially so long as Kaufman does not look viable. Plus, if they hold out for Kaufman at the caucus meeting, they risk ending up with a runoff between Rogers and Kaufman that Rogers will win.

Update: DeLeo has it.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/25/robert_a_deleos_supporters/

[Verily]

Any info on DeLeo? All Wikipedia gives me is an article about some washed-up musician.

[Brittain33]

Update: DeLeo has it.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/25/robert_a_deleos_supporters/

A quick look at that list shows that the liberals jumped to DeLeo right away. The specte of Rogers stepping up as Finneran II was enough to prevent any flirtation with Kaufman, it seems.

[rob in cal]

I'd be interested to know more about how Fineran was elected speaker in 1996.  Was it all Republicans plus enought conservative and moderates to put him over the top?  I posted about that idea happening on the federal level and couldn't think of a precedent for it on a state level, maybe this was it.

[Dan the Roman]

Update: DeLeo has it.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/25/robert_a_deleos_supporters/

A quick look at that list shows that the liberals jumped to DeLeo right away. The specte of Rogers stepping up as Finneran II was enough to prevent any flirtation with Kaufman, it seems.

Or DeLeo is playing a  more subtle game. By releasing a list of names he gives an air of inevitability, and if you weren't a hundred percent committed, are you really going to rise up and publicly remove your name from a list, thereby alienating the next speaker?

It has also forced the liberals to commit. They would look like idiots running their own candidate now.

[Dan the Roman]

I'd be interested to know more about how Fineran was elected speaker in 1996.  Was it all Republicans plus enought conservative and moderates to put him over the top?  I posted about that idea happening on the federal level and couldn't think of a precedent for it on a state level, maybe this was it.

Finneran was running against the then-Democratic Majority Leader Richard Voke. He lost at the Democratic caucus, but managed to get pledges from all 35 Republicans as well as 56 out of 121 Democrats. There's a good description here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02EED71339F934A35757C0A960958260

t's a Tough Time for the Democratic Party in Massachusetts

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By SARA RIMER
Published: April 7, 1996

These are trying times for state Democratic legislators in Massachusetts. For starters, the Governor, William F. Weld, is a Republican. But last week things got a whole lot worse.

Charles F. Flaherty, the popular and powerful Democratic Speaker of the overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts House, pleaded guilty to a Federal tax evasion charge involving a 13-year-old tax return, and announced that he would step down at the end of June.

Then, with Mr. Flaherty's top two lieutenants fighting to succeed him, one of them, Thomas M. Finneran, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, did the unspeakable: He announced that he had the support of a coalition that included 34 Republicans.

Joan Menard, a state representative for 18 years, is the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party. "It's like letting the Democrats go to the Republican national convention to choose a Republican candidate for President," she said, referring to Mr. Finneran's surprise move. "It's not done. Everyone was hysterical when we found out. We had no clue."

Kind of sounds like some of the Republicans in TN?



Interestingly the Republicans are now down to 16 seats. Had they still had 35 the outcome this time might have been different. It definitely would have been in 2004, when Rogers would have easily won.