With Healey in the lead, spring conventions could be ‘make or break’ for gubernatorial candidates

With party conventions coming up in the spring, Democrat and Republican candidates for governor are already trying to woo supporters. Mike Deehan, GBH State House reporter, joined Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to break down this stage in the campaign. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Jeremy Siegel: So how would you describe this stage of the campaign that candidates are in right now, Mike?

Mike Deehan: Right now it's a lot of the normal things of campaigning, fundraising, getting out there, making ads, preparing, but it's really all about the party caucuses. These are the meetings in towns, city neighborhoods, all over the state, meetings of Democratic and Republican committees in these areas. They're there to elect delegates to the state conventions that are going to be happening, as you said, in the spring.

So candidates are going in front of these meetings and they're either at restaurants or town halls, libraries, things like that, church basement type vibes, very small groups. Sometimes they are going there in person, sometimes they're going over Zoom, which is kind of a new thing in this gubernatorial race. They're trying to woo these committee members to elect their delegates to support them at these conventions. The idea is to get as many supportive delegates elected and send them to Springfield and Worcester as they can to try to win the party's endorsement.

Paris Alston: So with those conventions right around the corner and the primary not until the fall, what's at stake at the conventions?

Deehan: Yeah, essentially, the support at these conventions can be pretty pivotal. The person that comes out on top essentially wins the endorsement of the state party. But more importantly, the person that doesn't come out on top might have a chance to not move on to that party primary. For Democrats, for instance, they have to get 15 percent support to even end up on that ballot or they kind of get booted out of the race entirely. We saw this a lot in in 2014, where quite a few of the Democrats running for governor didn't make it past the convention.

So it's kind of a real problem for candidates like Chris Doughty on the Republican side or Sonia Chang-Díaz on the Democratic side, where polls show that they're just not picking up that much support. Rather, they don't have that much right now, and they need to build that support between now and that convention. Hence, these caucuses, they need to really get going so that we can have a contested primary in either or both of those parties come September. Those conventions are coming around the corner, in May for the GOP and early June for Democrats.

Siegel: Mike, like we said, it's still early days for a race like this, but what are the polls showing and can we really learn anything from March polls for September elections?

Deehan: Well, what we know right now, and you can call it a snapshot in time — like you said, there haven't been that many polls — but it's pretty clear that Attorney General Maura Healey is way ahead on the Democratic side, and that she also probably leads a head-to-head with the leading Republican candidate, Geoff Diehl. But we really haven't seen a robust poll done since mid-January. So things really could have changed. You know, some other polls have come out suggesting that Healey still has quite a lead. So there isn't anything contrary to what we think is the conventional knowledge here. But it really puts Sonia Chang-Díaz, who's a senator from Jamaica Plain, in a position that she needs to do what she can at these caucuses and at the convention in order to survive, to make it 'til September. If the convention is slightly competitive, that means there's a good chance that the Democratic primary in September will also be competitive.

Alston: So let's zoom in on that Democratic race between Healey and Chang-Díaz. What are the messages that each of them are trying to get out to voters?

Deehan: Well, Healey's really pitching to supporters to be part of the team, you know, make big changes by having everyone on board. It's not too too much identity politics. She is a pretty proud progressive, but you don't hear a specifically progressive message too too much from her. She's kind of just saying that she's the people's lawyer. She's been the attorney general for some time. She definitely mentions cases that she's had. But I've been noticing and it's very heavy on biography. She was raised the oldest of five by a single mom. She mentions that she played basketball in college, doesn't mention it was Harvard. This is something that she said to the caucus in Chicopee that I thought really encapsulates what Healey's pitching.

Deehan: So Attorney General Maura Healey [is] really trying to build that big democratic tent.

Siegel: Yes, she almost sounds like she knows she's running as the front runner, like almost the way an incumbent might be talking on the campaign trail. How does Sonia Chang- Díaz compete with that? Can she compete with that?

Deehan: Right now, it's hard. That really is the thrust of her campaign, is to compete against this giant Healey campaign. So, Chang- Díaz is really trying to attract activists that can keep her in the running. Chang-Diaz is kind of approaching this race from the left of Maura Healey, which is a tight lane. There isn't too much lane left of Maura Healey, but Massachusetts politics as they are there are an awful lot of Democratic, really pretty far left activists that might not be satisfied with the attorney general's record on certain things, might want kind of a bolder, progressive. And that's what's Chang-Diaz is offering them right now.

So that's kind of her pitch, trying to get the grassroots or at least the further left of the grassroots to support her when it comes to that convention. So another thing that she's got to do is get 10,000 signatures to be on the ballot. There's a lot of juggling of priorities and different things going on here, but the conventions really are going to be make or break for a campaign like Chang- Díaz.

Alston: And what about the race for lieutenant governor, Mike? There are a bunch of Democrats trying to get that number two spot. What's it looking like in that field?

Deehan: Yeah, there's a ton, and the question is, why are so many running for LG? And I would say it's mostly because it's a steppingstone kind of a job. It can be very high visibility and you can jump start a campaign for the next thing, for governor or for the governorship yourself. From that number two LG slot, plenty of governors have stepped aside, especially in their second term. It's not unheard of for a lieutenant governor of Massachusetts to become acting governor. So there are many of them running, a handful on the Democratic side. There are a few kind of coming out of the woodwork on the Republican side. And we'll see at that convention where a lot of them might not get that 15 percent support and might get booted come June.