On her first full day as the chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, Amy Carnevale is promising to make fiscal issues a top priority moving forward — a stark contrast to the social and cultural fights that marked the tenure of her predecessor, Jim Lyons.
“The citizens of the commonwealth are focused on fiscal issues, pocketbook issues — inflation and affordability in living in Massachusetts,” said Carnevale, a former state committeewoman and government affairs advisor at the firm K&L Gates. “So those are the type of issues that I’ll be talking about as party chair.”
Lyons, a former state legislator who served as party chair from 2019 to 2023 before losing a close election to Carnevale Tuesday night, is an unabashed social conservative. As chair, he emphasized his opposition to abortion and passionately supported former President Donald Trump, who lost Massachusetts badly in both 2016 and 2020. Under Lyons' leadership, the party also enthusiastically backed candidates like Rayla Campbell, who railed against drag queen story hours and sex education in public schools during her 2022 run for secretary of state.
Like Lyons, Carnevale supported Trump, although she publicly condemned the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. Unlike Lyons, she also embraced former Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who sparred publicly with Trump and was often vilified by the Mass. GOP’s right wing.
On Wednesday, Carnevale said she hopes to help the Trump and Baker camps inside the Mass. GOP find common ground.
“I will be looking to bridge the divide between some in our party who tend to focus a little bit more on some of the cultural issues — or, for lack of a better word, tend to be kind of the 'Trump Republicans' — as well as those more moderate Republicans,” Carnevale said. “The fact that [Baker] has moved into the private sector, I think, provides the opportunity for a fresh start in how we think about the party.”
The narrow margin by which Carnevale won the chair’s post — she received 37 votes to Lyons’ 34 — suggests the party may also need to overcome a split between Carnevale and Lyons supporters. But Carnevale downplayed that possibility.
“I’ll certainly have my work cut out for me,” she said. “But … after the meeting last night. a number of members of the state committee who supported Chairman Lyons came up to me and offered their help and their support moving forward. I was encouraged by that, and I’m going to take that as a sign of good will.”
Wendy Wakeman, a GOP strategist who managed the last successful Republican congressional campaign in Massachusetts, suggested that, in one specific area, Carnevale would do well to follow Lyons’ lead.
“Her first step needs to be going out and meeting the activists, meeting the people who are boots on the ground,” Wakeman said.
“Amy’s terrific. She’s been involved in party politics for a long time, but she’s really not a known quantity statewide,” Wakeman added. “Jim did a terrific job meeting with activists in their areas, and every six weeks or so would do a tour of the state, meeting with activists.”
However, Wakeman also urged Carnevale to break with Lyons by making herself a spokesperson for Republicanism statewide.
“He saw the candidates as the people who should talk to the press,” Wakeman said of Lyons. “He absolutely had a policy of not speaking to the press if he didn’t have to, because he felt that wasn’t his role."
Today, Wakeman said, “We’ve come to a breaking point in terms of who we have representing the Republican Party. We don’t have other people out there making that case. And I think a shift in that policy would be wise.”
Carnevale seems to agree.
“I plan to prioritize engagement with the media,” she said.
As Wakeman notes, Carnevale is taking over the leadership of the Mass. GOP at a moment when the party’s influence may have reached an all-time low.
“They lost Charlie Baker, the most popular governor likely in the history of Massachusetts, at least in recent polling, the most popular governor in the nation,” said Tatishe Nteta, a political scientist at UMass Amherst and the director of the UMass Poll. “They lost Charlie Baker’s supposed heir to the position in [former Lt. Gov.] Karyn Polito.
"They have a historic disadvantage in the state Legislature. There is no candidate on the horizon that will compete for two of the [U.S.] Senate positions that are currently held by individuals over the age of 70 years old. I think this is the bottom, as it pertains to the party in the state.”
The good news for Carnevale, Nteta said, is that the Mass. GOP’s current nadir gives her a chance to create and implement a brand-new vision for the party moving forward.
“The thing we know about American politics is, just when you think a party is down and out, they can surprise you,” Nteta said. “That happens historically at the national level, and I think it potentially could happen here at the state level. But it’s going to need effective leadership and a vision and hard work to achieve the overarching goal.”
While the party’s dwindling influence in Massachusetts helped pave the way for Lyons’ exit, he was also hurt by a series of revelations about internal party dysfunction, including unpaid debts, an investigation Lyons ordered into two Republican opponents, and seeming coordination with a super PAC in the 2022 election cycle that may have violated state law.
As of October 2022, less than 440,000 Massachusetts residents were registered Republicans, compared to more than 1.4 million registered Democrats and nearly 3 million unenrolled voters.
That, too, is another, is another dynamic that Carnevale hopes to change.
“The Republican Party is a party that wants to attract new members and new voters,” she said. “We are a party that cares about the citizens of the commonwealth and their priorities across the board. … We want to grow our party.”
