Recap and analysis of the week in state government
Elections, it’s been said, have consequences. Even ones in Maine.
Voters in Boston made history this week, choosing Michelle Wu to become the first woman and person of color to be elected to lead the city after 199 years of electing mayors.
Wu romped to victory over fellow City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, winning 64 percent of the vote on the back of a progressive platform that included free MBTA, rent control and an aggressive approach to climate change.
The mayor-elect now has just weeks before she takes the oath of office and inherits a suite of challenges that includes addressing the addiction and homelessness crisis at Mass. and Cass, improving the schools, coming up with a new waterfront development plan and simply bringing the capital city back to life from COVID-19.
To do any of that, Wu will need a team and it didn’t take long for the questions to come about who the new mayor will lean on to try to implement her agenda, some of which could find its way to Beacon Hill.
Vacationland voters didn’t make Wu’s job any easier. Or the job of Gov. Charlie Baker.
As utilities considered legal action to save the project and the Baker administration weighed its options, the governor refused to throw in the towel. “No, I don’t see it as dead,” Baker said.
Whether it’s in the city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts or across New England, reducing carbon emissions and transitioning to clean energy is a team sport, and 60 percent of Maine voters, it seems, don’t want to play with their neighbors to the south.
Baker and others have staked their clean energy agenda, in part, on importing hydroelectricity from Canada, but that effort suffered a blow on Tuesday when Maine voters backed a ballot question opposing the construction of transmission lines through the Upper Kennebec Region.
The governor’s comments were made at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he was visiting to discuss more positive news. The green light came this week from the Centers for Disease Control for Pfizer’s kid-sized dose of COVID-19 vaccine to be given to the more than 500,000 children in Massachusetts aged 5 through 11.
Baker said more than 500 locations will start to book appointments, as doses already began arriving last week in anticipation of final federal approval.
“We’ve come a long way,” Baker said, reflecting on the fact that a year ago no one could get vaccinated and now 92 percent of adults and 80 percent of children aged 12 and older have gotten at least one dose.
That wouldn’t be a bad campaign slogan for the governor, but Baker was still not ready or willing to say if his name will be back on the ballot in 2022.
As the state’s political world eagerly awaits a third-term decision from the governor, the off-year election was a mixed bag for Baker, even though he spent very little political capital.
The governor didn’t get involved in Boston’s mayoral race, but it could easily be argued that Wu’s agenda for Boston clashes with that of the moderate Republican. He also saw a mayoral ally in Gloucester’s Sefatia Romeo Theken go down to challenger Greg Verga, and Republican Rep. Jim Kelcourse’s bid to topple incumbent Amesbury Mayor Kassandra Gove came up short, despite the governor’s support.
Other candidates backed by the Massachusetts Majority super PAC had better results, like Framingham’s Mayor-elect Charlie Sisitsky, who defeated Mayor Yvonne Spicer. Baker has raised money for the super PAC and said he supports its mission, but has no control over its activities or the candidates it supports.
It’s unclear precisely how many House lawmakers can be counted in that 92 percent of vaccinated adults, but Speaker Ron Mariano’s office said this week that at least seven won’t be cleared to work from the State House because they have not complied with a vaccine mandate.
The House’s vaccine mandate kicked in on Nov. 1, and the speaker’s office said there was 96 percent compliance among legislators and 98 percent compliance with staff. The seven non-conformists are either unvaccinated or unwilling to play by the rules set by House Democratic leaders. Either way, they won’t be allowed back into the building unless they change their mind.
And speaking of changing one’s mind, Rep. Andy Vargas announced Friday that he would seek reelection rather than continue his campaign for state Senate after Baker signed off on new Senate districts that split his home city of Haverhill in two, and made it a very different race.
But he’s not the only person facing a decision next year influenced by redistricting.
Democrat Jamie Belsito and Republican Bob Snow emerged from Tuesday’s primaries to replace former North Shore state representative Brad Hill, but depending on who wins the general election they could be one year and done.
Belsito, of Topsfield, will find herself in incumbent Rep. Sally Keran’s district in 2022, while Snow’s town of Rowley shifts into Republican Rep. Lenny Mirra’s district.
And that’s the least confusing thing about the House and Senate maps, according to Secretary of State William Galvin, who issued a blistering critique of the redistricting plan that he urged Baker, to no avail, not to sign.
With many communities not waiting to see legislative districts before they drew local precinct lines and the Legislature not waiting for locals, Galvin said there could be hundreds of subprecincts, creating mass confusion at the polls for the next decade.
The problem, he said, could be made worse by the congressional redistricting plan, which was released this week and sparked a debate over who should represent the South Coast.
While the job of mapmakers was made easier this cycle by the fact that Massachusetts kept all nine House Congressional seats, legislative leaders sparked a controversy by proposing to unite Fall River, just not with New Bedford.
As proposed, Fall River would no longer be split, but the whole city would be drawn into U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss’s 4th District, while New Bedford would remain in U.S. Rep. William Keating’s 9th District.
Keating, New Bedford Sen. Mark Montigny and former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy were among those leading the push to unite the two cities in Keating’s district, arguing that their shared diversity and economic interests in fishing and offshore wind make them a logical pairing.
The sentiment, however, was not universal, and Beacon Hill Democrats will be under pressure over the next week to make a call that inevitably will leave someone unhappy.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat who represents Fall River, was among those pushing for South Coast unification as he also pitched his colleagues on a $3.67 billion plan to spend American Rescue Plan Act and state surplus funds.
While Senate leaders have proposed to put money in many of the same buckets as the House did, the bill Rodrigues drafted would increase spending on local public health infrastructure by $100 million to $250.9 million, and would make a greater investment of $400 million in mental and behavioral health supports.
Rodrigues was in Florida on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning at meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures when he presented the ARPA bill to Senate Democrats over Zoom calls, laying the groundwork for a debate on the bill next week.
Rodrigues said the goal is to put a final bill on Baker’s desk by Nov. 17, when the Legislature plans to recess from formal sessions for the year. “Little differences around the edges,” he said.
