18 September 2006

With the primaries looming tomorrow, it's time for the coveted Blogalicious endorsements! We'll start with the Democrats, given that they have more state-wide races:

Secretary of State - I can't say I agree with all of his politics, but I'm giving the nod here to John Bonifaz, an attorney and voting right activist who, perhaps most notably, filed a lawsuit to try to prevent a first-strike attack on Iraq by arguing that the plan would violate the War Powers Clause. He didn't win.

My main criterion here is that I'd like to see Bill Galvin go away to wherever party hacks go once they leave office. Given that the only non-Dem running for secretary of state is 2002 Green Party gubenatorial candidate Jill Stein, I may have to wait until 2010.

Lieutenant Governor - given the odds that the candidate for governor will be someone without experience in elected office, it would make sense to vote in a lieutentant governor candidate that has some. Given the choice between a past chair of the Brookline Board of Selectmen and the mayor of the state's second-largest city, I'm going with the latter. Nod to Tim Murray, the mayor of Worcester, over Deb Goldberg, who didn't even get the endorsement from her hometown newspaper.

Governor - based on the breakdowns in the latest poll, it should be no surprise that I'd be endorsing Chris Gabrieli. His highest numbers in the poll came from voters who were unenrolled in a party, and in my cohort for age, education, and financial status. Not sure what it is about dorky policy wonks that appeal, but I do prefer his approach, which gives you actual policy ideas, to that of Deval Patrick, who is very personable and inspiring, even if he's not giving you too many specifics to run with.

That latest poll has Patrick up big, though Gabrieli's camp says internal polling suggests a tighter race. We'll see if enough people like me brave tomorrow's middling forecast to vote.

And for the Republicans:

US Senate - really, you should just flip a coin and vote for the first name on the ballot if it's heads, and the second name if it's tails. Outside of knowing there are two candidates, and that both are male, I can tell you pretty much nothing about the pair who are vying to be the latest footnote in Teddy Kennedy's Senator for Life gig.

2 comments:

Greg said...

With Illinois getting its primaries out of the way in the spring (read up on Cegelis v. Duckworth and the Stroger saga for some good comedy), I always forget about primary season anywhere else.

Is my favorite Mass. whackjob Len Umina anywhere on the bill?

Mark said...

Sorry, no Umina this time around. I think the Independent High Tech party is good and dead. Though if you Google his name, you get a very amusing story where he managed to spam pretty much all of Usenet by accident. How he lost that election I'll never know.

For want of anything better to post, here's a breakdown of if I've been to the most populous 100 cities in the US, and if so for how...