It was a historic night in Massachusetts — Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley beat out 10-term incumbent Congressman Michael Capuano in last night's Democratic primary for the 7th congressional district, drawing national attention. WGBH News Senior Editor Peter Kadzis joined WGBH Morning Edition Host Joe Mathieu to unpack this and some of the other primary results. The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: Good morning, Peter, how are you feeling?
Peter Kadzis: I'm a little rocky, but I hope I make sense.
Mathieu: Like I said, this is Christmas morning for you, and we have a lot to talk about here. Massachusetts is the center of the political universe this morning.
Kadzis: It's the center of the universe, and here's the message: the Obama coalition is back.
Mathieu: How do you mean that?
Kadzis: Well, look at the Pressley victory. It's minorities, it's women, it's young voters, especially young voters. Trump has aroused the idealism of the Massachusetts voter. And I think it's safe to say that Trump will have aroused the idealism of voters across the United States. I don't want to get into predicting what happens in November, but the Obama coalition is back, thanks largely to President Donald Trump.
Mathieu: This is being framed as an upset by a lot of people because we really didn't have a lot of clarity going into the election night here. Pressley was down, though, 13 points about a month or two ago. Then she wins by 18. What does that tell us about the polling mechanism and our ability to see into these races?
Kadzis: Well, first of all, Joe, I think everyone stopped polling because they thought Capuano was going to win. She began to climb in the polls around the time that Ocasio-Cortez won [in New York.] That's a goal post, a sign post.
Mathieu: But at that time, local analysts said, you know what, this isn't New York, Capuano's not Crowley, it's not the same. Do you think it is now?
Kadzis: No, I was one of those ones saying it isn't the same. But what she did is, she gained momentum. Yes, Jamaica Plain is sort of ground zero for Boston progressivism, but you could sense it around the city. I'll tell you, you could read that in the newspapers — the Globe endorsement suggested momentum. Endorsements may not matter. They might matter. I think this one did matter. It gave people who were on the fence permission to vote for her. Those two huge pieces, one in the New York Times, one in The Washington Post clearly helped her. Now, listen, that's not responsible for the 18-point win. I think that when we're all done crunching what happened here, we're going to find that her online strategy was very, very important. Social media — you know, listen, Capuano may have been great at getting billions of dollars for Boston. But he had a lousy online presence.
Mathieu: Let's talk about some of the endorsements that did not work, at least for Michael Capuano. There were a lot of questions about John Lewis picking the incumbent, about the political action committee for the CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus, Deval Patrick, what about all those?
Kadzis: Well, listen, Deval Patrick endorsed Capuano, but he didn't lift a finger to help him. That was a professional courtesy — Capuano endorsed Deval Patrick, he reciprocated. The Black Caucus was also, more than a courtesy, I mean, they're fellow congressmen, they're all in that together. But that was a signal to donors who would typically give money to insurgent African-American candidates, that this guy's safe, don't hurt him.
Mathieu: We're talking with WGBH News Senior Editor Peter Kadzis about some of the results that we're picking through this morning. I want to ask you about the governor's race and what we learned in this primary. On the Republican side, Charlie Baker, of course, walked away with this, and most expected he would, but Scott Lively got a lot of votes, Peter.
Kadzis: Listen, he got, you know, 35 percent of the vote. This is a guy who firmly believes, who wrote a book claiming that the Third Reich was a homosexual conspiracy. That tells you something about the Republican Party in Massachusetts. What it also tells you is not that necessarily every one of those people believes that, but that a third of the Republican Party that voted in the primary is ticked off at Charlie Baker.
Mathieu: So Jay Gonzalez will be the opponent in the general. Does Charlie Baker have anything to worry about?
Kadzis: Well, I'll tell you this — Jay Gonzalez looks a heck of a lot better Wednesday morning than he did Tuesday morning. I've always thought this was going to be a much tighter race than everyone else thought. I think at the moment, Baker is clearly the favorite, but you can't ignore what happened Tuesday night.
Mathieu: Bill Galvin keeps his job as Secretary of the Commonwealth. And boy, that was a chippy fight we saw, an incredible debate here with Josh Zakim. But the incumbent wins. What did he do right?
Kadzis: It might not be what he did right, it might be what Zakim did wrong. Zakim made the classic political mistake of going negative too early, going negative before voters know your positives. Now, this may sound esoteric to our listeners, but it's a piece of inside baseball that matters. You don't go negative until people have a warm and fuzzy feeling about you. Then you can attack the other person.
Mathieu: It had nothing to do with the timing of the primary, which was a concern going into this, coming right off the holiday, et cetera?
Kadzis: No. Maybe if Galvin had won by a point, you could claim that. No. He cleaned Zakim's clock.
Mathieu: Let's talk about the race for Senate. Senator Elizabeth Warren, no big shocker, knows who she will be facing now, Geoff Diehl. You and I have talked a lot about him, He ran the Trump campaign on the state level here in Massachusetts, he's tried and true Trump Republican, what's this race going to look like?
Kadzis: Hard to say. I don't think it's going to look like a local race. I mean, I expect, I think most people expect, a lot of national money to come in here to try to, you know, really sully Elizabeth Warren's name. They're not aiming it at Massachusetts voters, they're really aiming at knocking Elizabeth Warren's national reputation to shreds, and she has a big national reputation. Look, on Tuesday morning I picked up my New York Times, and on the back page was a full-page ad on an Elizabeth Warren appearance at a New York Times event in New York City. Now, nothing wrong with that.
Mathieu: But we're talking about political celebrity here, national celebrity.
Kadzis: Yeah. I mean she is the hottest Democrat in America at the moment, and the national Republican Party is going to pour money in here to hit her over the head with a two by four.
Mathieu: Can you imagine a world in which Donald Trump comes to Massachusetts to stump for Jeff Diehl?
Kadzis: Well I can, because I just think it would be a brilliant, nasty move. Charlie Baker is not a fan of President Trump. What better way to get under his skin than to come to Massachusetts and stump for your guy Geoff?
Mathieu: And dump on the governor while you're at it?
Kadzis: Sure, or you know, make life hard for Charlie Baker. I'm not sure that's going to happen. But I would think it's a very Trumpian thing to do.
