Special Election for US Senate - Poll

[ron_newman]

The special primary election for Senator Kennedy's seat will take place on Tuesday, December 8. Seems like a good time to post a poll and find out who davis_square residents support. I'll probably post a second one a few days before the election.

Like previous political polls in our community, this one is public, with all votes publicly readable. If you'd like, post a comment saying why you support your favorite candidate (or oppose some other candidate). There are still a lot of undecided voters out here.

[Poll #1484875]

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I would also encourage those who wish to to comment telling the rest of us why we should support their candidate instead of the others. I'm sure there are plenty of undecided and/or swayable voters here.

[ron_newman]

Good idea, I'll edit that into the post now.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

You've convinced me. I vote for your kitten.

[contradictacat.livejournal.com]

I'm curious as to the overwhelming support for Capuano- honestly, I don't know much about him aside from the fact that he's from Somerville.

Personally, I'm a fan of Khazei b/c I have friends who have done City Year and I really like the idea of a Senator who has already done visible good in the world. The fact that nearly all his positions line up with mine doesn't hurt too.

[ron_newman]

Too early to say 'overwhelming support' yet, when we only have 17 votes so far.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

honestly, I don't know much about him aside from the fact that he's from Somerville

*Bing*

He's our representative, and this is a D-S community. umm, yeah, Capuano is going to be disproportionately represented...

[anotherthink.livejournal.com]

I at least am tentatively pro-Capuano (though I'm going to find out more about the others before making a final decision) because as a congressman, he has a voting record in the house that I can look at -- and I've checked him out there on a number of issues and consistently found that he's voted the way I would want.

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

I personally find it troubling that Khazei's yearly salary from non-profit Be the Change is $245,000, roughly 7% of the that organization's operating budget.

[gingicat]

I love the idea of Khazei because of his work with City Year, but I'm very mistrustful of anyone who says that government should be run more like a business. Deval Patrick sounded great and also said that, and I'm noticing a lot of essential social services getting far too deep into the budget cuts rather than investigations into waste in all departments.

I want Capuano to stay where he is.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

He is doing a good job.

Re: I want Capuano to stay where he is.

[ron_newman]

There is that ... electing Capuano means yet more special elections.

It is funny, though...

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

That Capuano did not do too well in all the SN polls over the last few months.

[balsamicdragon.livejournal.com]

I am happy with Capuano as a representative, but I am not pleased with the way that he has run this campaign. I am going with Coakley, who I think would also do a great job. That way we keep Capuano in the House and get a solid Senator as well.

[cos]

On the other hand, I'm *very* unhappy with Coakley's overall career as a "tough" prosecutor who I think has been a bit too supportive of prosecutorial misconduct and practices that I consider unethical and dangerous, and cared somewhat too little for the horrible damage the criminal justice system wreaks on our state, while she's been responsible for it. Whereas Capuano has indeed done a great job in Congress, and based on that I think I can very accurately predict how good a job he'd do in the Senate. How well would Coakley do in the Senate? Much as I'd be happy to see her gone from the AG's office... who knows? And besides, AG is a position that usually attracts people like her, and often worse than her, so by AG standards, she's probably better than what we'll get in her stead.

Coakley started her campaign early.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

To try to lock in as many voters as possible.
In any case, I will NOT vote for Coakley because her unforgivable actions in the Fells Acres case http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/10/the-sra-case-haunting-martha-coakley.html . I just don't trust her judgment at this point.
I will vote for Alan Khazei. I'm impressed by his entrepreneurial style and the many organizations he has created to deal with numerous social issues. He has a very pragmatic and constructive mind.
I don't know much about Pagliuca, other than he has some money and that he seems incredibly inarticulate.

Re: Coakley started her campaign early.

[ron_newman]

That's one of the main reasons I don't support Coakley. Her prosecution of the 'Mooninites' also showed hostility to the artistic community.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

I'll be supporting Martha Coakley. My take on the Stupid-Pitts Stupak-Pitts amendment foofoorah is here (http://docorion.livejournal.com/213083.html)-no where does she say she'll scuttle health care reform for it, but when you think about it, health reform which is as brain-damaged as this attempt is may not deserve to pass. No coverage for abortions is bad enough-also no coverage for routine GYN care, contraception, etc. adds up to Bad Health Care in the guise of "reform". No thank you. No amount of tweaking will ever fix that, much like there has been no way to repeal the Hyde amendment after all these years, odious as many of us find it.

As for Fells Acres-I'm in a weird place. During that time, I lived next-door to one of the children involved. My take is this: *something* funny happened at Fells Acres. Was it all the stuff which was alleged? No, clearly not. But there was more there than "nothing". So I am unprepared to condemn her on that without knowing more than I ever will know about that case. She likely knew things which I did not, and I knew more than most people.

As it happens (full disclosure), I am volunteering quite a bit for Martha Coakley's campaign, including having a fundraising page (http://bit/ly/tomformartha) and doing a lot of phone banking for her in Charlestown. So I am not unbiased, but I am also unpaid. I came to this decision honestly, out of conviction that she was the better candidate. (Mind you, the field does not suck-all the other candidates are pretty good, at least on the Democratic side).

(Edited to fix link stupid, sorry)

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

She says would have voted against the House bill:

Attorney General Martha Coakley said this morning that she would have voted against the landmark health care bill approved by the House over the weekend because it includes a provision restricting federal funding for providers of abortion services. [source (http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/11/coakley_no_on_h.html)

I don't think this is a good place to debate the merits of the bill, or defend or attack anyone for supporting it; I'm just pointing out that this is an area where Coakley and Capuano differ, which might be information to help someone decide for one or the other.

Other...

[turil.livejournal.com]

I'm Green so I don't get to vote in the primary.

But, if the people who are allowed to vote in this primary officially let Capuano run in the main (secondary?) election, I'll vote for Capuano. I won't vote for Coakley, ever.

If it's anyone else you guys allow to run, I'll have to look further into the matter.

Re: Other...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I'm Green so I don't get to vote in the primary.

Well, yes. You don't get to vote in the Democratic primary (or the Republican primary, if they were having one). You would get to vote in the Green-Rainbow primary, if they were having one.

If you were an unaffiliated voter, you could vote in whatever primary you wanted.

[fefie.livejournal.com]

Right now I'm leaning toward Capuano, mainly because of his superb voting record in the House. I get his weekly email report on House matters and unless I've missed something, so far he's voted in the way I would. He's also on the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee and has been helpful in that regard too.

[elements.livejournal.com]

I'm 75% Capuano, but if I felt he was more likely to be able to beat Coakley, I'd be more in favor of Khazei, too.

[gingicat]

Actually, I've changed my mind. Khazei is Iranian-American *and* doesn't blame Israel for all the woes of the Middle East. A man who can look at many sides of an issue with wisdom has my vote.

http://www.alanforsenate.com/pages/117/

[gruene.livejournal.com]

You do realize that most of the Iranians in this country, including Khazei's father, are émigrés, who left Iran because they disagreed with, or were persecuted by, the current government there? Therefore it's not particularly surprising that they would have different views than those expressed by that government. That being said, I also think Khazei's position on the Middle East is reasonable, but it wouldn't be my main reason for voting for him or anyone else.

Looks like the Undecided win!

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

Oh well.

[bobobb.livejournal.com]

I am a big Capuano fan, but I like Coakley better. She is so thoughtful, I can hardly believe it. During the debate, her answer to most of the questions were "Well, I would have to look at the facts. (and then specified from there)" I was like, "Whoa, your a politician that is interested in facts and not posturing??!?!?" She won my vote.

senate candidates

[groptimum.livejournal.com]

there's actually pretty good candidates- by national/historical standards- all around. I think especially Cappy and Coakley really deserve it with all their hard public service work. It'd be great in a way to keep capuano in his house rep position, but I can also see how he'd like to be one of the elite 100 (senators) at this point instead of one of the less elite 500+ (reps.) I don't really get some of the harsher anti-Coakley sentiment on here. Being DA and especially Attorney general is fantastically politically difficult, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't job. From what I've heard over years, Martha has an almost superhuman committment to impartiality and being above "political" considerations in her jobs. She is also known to be tough and "no-nonsense." No matter what you do in such a position, there will be those who slag you, say you were too tough, weren't tough enough, etc. - even if it was impossible at the time to know the whole truth and get all the facts. Democrats and liberals have a tendency to "eat their own"- turn on former or presumptive allies. I'm not saying there are never valid reasons to condemn other Dems/liberals, but I believe Martha is a very sober-minded, plain-spoken, dedicated, smart and honest public servant, really trying to do her best in her position. Also, interestingly, she has become the least personally wealthy of all 4 candidates, even though with her strong law skills, one would imagine she could make very nice money in some old-time downtown corporate law firms.

oh, and I forgot...

[groptimum.livejournal.com]

someone above mentioned Martha Coakley's "aggressive prosecution" of the Mooninites as evidence of "hostility to the artistic" community. That is nonsense. I am 1000% in support of the artistic community- and I'm sure Martha likes the arts, too- but these freaking idiots planted small electronic devices with wires and blinking lights that looked like BOMBS. That's not the opinion of some "art-haters", that was the perception of every CITIZEN that reported them and the entire public safety/first responder community that honestly thought they were bombs! This was 2007, 6 years after a little thing called 9/11- not to mention bombings and terrorist activities in other countries, so what were these brainiacs thinking? Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a TV show. It should follow the basic rules of law when promoting itself as any other TV show or product. You wanna flier or hand out cards? Fine. Dress up as hamburgers and cokes and dance around? Go nuts. But when you stick suspicious weird blinking devices with wires sticking out in strategic points of public property, you're kind of being an IDIOT. That's not "making art" or "being an artist." That's called "disturbing the peace" and possibly "inciting panic." And frankly, personally, I think those 2 kids were punks who learned a lesson. As it turns out, Martha's office's attempts to prosecute the two guys failed, because of difficulty in proving intent to incite panic- which is fine- and both received community service sentences and apologized publicly.