The election of 2018 is still over 600 days away, but with national politics quickly becoming America's favorite pastime, Massachusetts' top two politicians - Gov. Charlie Baker and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren - are beginning to determine what Bay State voters may want from leaders in the Trump era.
By all accounts, Warren, a darling of the national left as a champion for consumers and progressive values, is going to ramp up her patented brand of rock throwing populism, aimed squarely at Trump, in the hope that it'll carry her to reelection here.
"Donald Trump has been in office two months now and he has delivered one punch after another to middle class families, to working families, to poor families across this country and he has proposed multiple threats to the economy of Massachusetts and the economy throughout New England and throughout this country," Warren told New England business leaders Monday.
Polls taken almost two years out from election day, before any campaign cash has been spent or primary blood spilled, aren't an indication of how voters will feel at the polls. However, four years after defeating Scott Brown to reclaim Ted Kennedy's hallowed Senate seat for Democrats, Warren's popularity with voters at home may be waning.
A MassINC poll for WBUR in January found that 44 percent of voters want to return Warren to the Senate for another six years. Forty-six percent say they're ready for someone new to represent the state.
The coming of spring after this winter's inauguration of President Trump is also thawing Warren's relationship with local media. Warren's public schedule of events at home in Massachusetts has been far fuller in the last month than throughout much of her term. Ramping up her media outreach could signal the beginning of parallel strategies for Warren going into 2018: home state appearances for a nascent reelection campaign while focusing on her messaging on the Trump presidency and the harm she says he'll do to Massachusetts.
The clearest signal that Elizabeth Warren will retain a Trump-focused assault next year may come Friday, when she is scheduled to join Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for a rally in Boston. The messages of Democratic populists like Warren and Sanders, who ran a close but ultimately losing campaign against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary last year, are in sync now more than ever as the Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to restrict travel into the country and cut the size of government.
The effects of spending time with Sanders may be starting to show. In her speech to the New England Council Monday, Warren repeatedly remarked how the Trump and Congressional GOP agenda will only benefit "millionaires and billionaires," a refrain Sanders made famous on the campaign trail last year.
Voters may never hear the name "Donald Trump" escape the lips of Baker, the Republican governor of our decidedly Democratic state, who's looking to mount his own reelection charge. Baker has said he and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito are still deciding whether to seek the corner office again, but the $4.9 million in Baker's campaign account as of March 13 means he'll have plenty of resources when the time comes.
Baker's two years in office have left him in higher voter esteem than Warren, according to the MassINC poll. The governor has the support of 59 percent of voters, with only 29 percent looking to replace him.
Baker's public persona is not nearly as pugilistic as Warren's, and his rhetoric heading into the early stages of a reelection race has been comparably somber. But if Warren is a boxer ready to use Trump's unpopularity here as a her punching bag in 2018, Baker is practicing his bob-and-weave around the president and hoping he won't be hobbled by his party affiliation.
In a minor embrace of Trump's White House, Baker agreed to join a new task force on the opiate epidemic chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Baker touted his participation on the federal panel as a way to promote the framework of Massachusetts' own opiate law to other states.
"I view it as hopefully an opportunity to put on to the national stage some of the solutions that I believe we've been pursuing here in Massachusetts," Baker told reporters Thursday.
While he's on board with Trump and Christie's opiate efforts, Baker also spent some time Thursday voicing opposition to Trump's proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health, which academic and medical-rich Massachusetts benefits from more than most states.
Baker said the NIH "has always been a bipartisan organization" supported by both Republicans and Democrats.
"There's a reason for that, because the work they do produces results and it saves lives and I hope those cuts are reversed," Baker told reporters, mere minutes after his positive remarks about his influence on the White House's opiate task force. Baker has taken stands against Trump before, most recently firing off a letter to the state's all-Democratic Congressional delegation saying the GOP's now-defunct replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act would harm Massachusetts to the tune of around $2 billion.
Baker's campaign will almost certainly be built around his success governing in a bipartisan way with Democratic lawmakers. Successful passage of the opiate legislation, fiscal improvements to the MBTA and his generally smooth administration of state government will give Baker a solid, if boring, foundation to run as a competent bipartisan governor.
