Getting Interesting – Senatorial race heats up

There is not much time remaining for Congressman Mike Capuano, Attorney General Martha Coakley, Celtics owner Stephen Pagliuca and City Year Founder Allan Khazei to make their case to the voters of Massachusetts.

The special election senate primary to fill the seat left vacant by Senator Edward Kennedy’s death is three weeks away – and according to recent Suffolk University polling that was done – hardly anyone cares or knows when the election is being held.

Approximately 68 percent of voters contacted by the Suffolk pollers didn’t know when the election was being held.

In this knowledge, there is the understanding that turnout will not be great for this race.

Capuano’s reasoning all along has been that very few people are going to come out so he has made it his campaign job to appeal to the voters who will come out, to identify them and to get them out on election day.

Capuano believes he can win this way – and maybe he can.

Right now, however, Coakley is looking good with a commanding lead of more than 25% over all the others.

How this will hold or whether this lead will hold is a guess at best, a reality at worst for the others.

Pagliuca, who was in East Boston last week, has been closing in on Capuano with his heavy television advertising, which has been stunningly good.

Pagliuca’s advertising on job creation is especially compelling and it will win him votes.

Capuano’s advertising has improved and his Afghanistan ad was very, very good.

Khazei – well – he seems like a big time outsider trying to come inside. We don’t know why he’s running other than to take votes away from Capuano and the others.

Anything can happen in a special election.

However, much about special elections relates to political reality.

The reality is that Capuano has to catch fire right now, big time and at Coakley’s expense, or winning is an illusion born of hope.

For Pagliuca to win, he, too, must challenge Coakley and cut down her lead.

Khazei – he can wait until next year, as they say in baseball.

Capuano will do well in Suffolk County – but that won’t be enough to turn the state in his favor.

We thought it was very interesting that when the candidates released their official campaign finance reports, Pagliuca’s was 95 pages long and pristine. Considering the guy is worth $400 million, this was an achievement.

By comparison, Coakley’s was three pages long and had a $200,000 mistake in it and she’s the Attorney General.

Anything can happen but right now, it looks like Coakley, Capuano, Pagliuca and Khazei in that order.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *