The Week That Was -- GOP Senate Candidates
My predictions from December about how this whole Kerry-seat thing would play out have so far been pretty damn good. That includes my guess that Scott Brown would not run.
However, I was wrong about Bill Weld running. It also sounds like Kerry Healey isn't going to do it. Definitely not Charlie Baker. Not Richard Tisei either. And no, I don't think there are any Romneys running.
Turns out I was also correct back in December when I wrote that "The defeatism within the [MassGOP] suggests that top-flight candidates might be hard to recruit."
We seem to be down to three options for the party. One is the indefatigable Doug Bennett, who has declared his candidacy and is out working on gathering the 10,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot.
Yes, that Doug Bennett, who couldn't get elected to Boston city council. Onward and upward! His platform is end all the wars; audit the federal reserve; and increase civil liberty.
Next is state representative and Lawyer To The MassGOP Stars Dan Winslow, who it seems will announce his candidacy tomorrow. Or, maybe he'll announce he's not running, but that would be odd.
Depending on your view of Winslow, he would be running either A) as the sacrificial lamb to give the party a candidate in an unwinnable race nobody else is willing to take on; or B) because he's the biggest attention-hog in Massachusetts politics.
Then there's option three, Gabriel Gomez of Cohasset. Gomez is a former Navy SEAL and a Boston financial-services guy (now with Advent, formerly of Summit) who has very little public political track record other than criticizing Barack Obama for taking credit for killing Osama bin Laden.
I am told the Gomez candidacy is serious, and that no less than Ron Kaufman is giving him intros around DC as he puts the campaign together.
But I am also finding that actual Massachusetts Republican activists have never met the guy, or know anything about him; Gomez does not appear to have made much of any previous effort to get involved in those circles. Which makes it hard to see how he gets off the ground.
So, not looking good for the red team. But maybe there's somebody waiting to launch that I don't know about. I have been on vacation after all.