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In Massachusetts, longtime community activist Grace Ross abandoned her campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor last week after collecting only 5,700 of the 10,000 signatures necessary to appear on the September 14 primary ballot. Ross had hoped to capture fifteen percent of the vote at the party’s state convention next month to force a primary with Gov. Deval Patrick.
The 48-year-old Ross had garnered 43,193 votes for governor on the Green-Rainbow ticket four years ago, but decided earlier this year to run as a Democrat in an attempt to move the party to the left while making it more responsive to ordinary citizens.
The enor
mously engaging Worcester activist had launched her campaign in late March during a downpour, forcing the dark-horse candidate and about a half-dozen supporters to take refuge beneath a flimsy, makeshift tent outside the State House when declaring her candidacy. That could have been a foreboding sign. The weather also refused to cooperate on Tuesday as a steady drizzle drenched the departing candidate as she stood under an umbrella with four diehard supporters to say she was abandoning her campaign.
“I think it’s really important for the people of Massachusetts not to give up,” Ross told the Boston Globe. “There is so much anger on the ground.”
Her withdrawal from the race leaves Gov. Patrick without a primary opponent. The incumbent Democratic governor is expected to face three general election opponents: Republican Charles D. Baker, Jr., a former cabinet officer in the Weld and Cellucci administrations; state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, who is running as an independent; and the Green-Rainbow Party’s Jill Stein.
A few corrections could be made, but the most important point is that just days before the signatures deadline Grace Ross was polling at 27% in a Rasmussen 3-way matchup against Republican Charlie Baker and Independent Cahill, with 25% undecided.
The activists – labor, political, issue and neighborhood – treated Grace like a long shot, and didn’t turn out to get her the 15,000 signatures she needed. Those who did found that signatures were easy to get. Some dismissed her effort by comparing her struggles with the success of Deval Patrick’s insurgent campaign four years ago – but Patrick, a corporate multi-millionaire, kicked that campaign off by plunking down $200,000 of his own money! No one who speaks for the working people is going to be able to do that.
Grace Ross was not such a long shot. The working people are totally fed up with the corporatist b.s., and they really are ready for a Democratic challenger who really speaks for them. It’s the activists who were too stressed, burned out and depressed to see that – or to see the danger of leaving no one in the governor’s race who can speak for them. The activists each took this as an individual, personal choice. If they had instead seen themselves as having a responsibility to the people they serve and lead – as the gate-keepers of the process who determine what choices the people get – they might have acted differently.
So it’s the grassroots labor activists’ fault for not gathering the petitions?
I acually found this more entertaining than James Joyce.