Happy Ask Me Anything Day! "Fall River Conservative" asks:
In the MA-04 GOP primary... will Steinhof win due to constant back and forth sniping of Bielat and
Childs? I sure hope so, because he seems like the True Conservative out
of the three candidates!
Hmmm....congressional candidate David Steinhof is a "Fall River Conservative" - are you related?
I think the answer is no, but first let me say that you've given me the opening to make this observation about that race -- which of course features Joe Kennedy III on the Dem side.
Take a peek at these snippets from the three GOP candidates in their reactions to yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, and you'll see why I've decided to henceforth refer to this as the Goldilocks and the Three Bears race:
Mama Bear (Elizabeth Childs): "We still need to work together to create a workable, bipartisan health care solution for all Americans."
Baby Bear (Sean Bielat): "I am very disappointed in the Court's ruling."
Papa Bear (David Steinhof): "If you're not terrified, you should be."
As to your question --one big question is who comes out in that primary. You gotta figure that it's a very low-turnout affair, which could mean a heavy concentration of hard-core Tea Party activists. But I think the GOP "supervoters" in that district (especially as redrawn, with less down your way and more in MetroWest) are disproportionately Weld-Republican types - which should help Childs, who has the endorsement of Weld, plus Healey, Swift and others of that stripe.
But if it is more the super-conservatives, then you still need those folks to turn their back on Bielat, who they got behind last time. So far, I'm hard-pressed to see that Steinhof can put together a campaign capable of doing that. But maybe he does some of that, and then at the end takes advantage of the "clean hands candidate" dynamic you're talking about.
Also, let's see what Bielat's fundraising number is for the 2nd quarter, which we'll be learning sometime in the next couple of weeks. I suspect it's not going to be good, but that's just a guess. If it's really bad, embarrassingly bad, then that gives Steinhof an opening.
Of course, in the end Goldilocks gets all the porridge anyway.
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