GOMEZ IS CREATING PANIC FOR DESPERATE DEMS

With a little over two weeks to go before the June 25th special election to fill the vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts formerly held by John Kerry, the young GOP candidate, Gabriel Gomez, is running neck-and-neck with his opponent, the aging, long-time Democrat hack, Ed Markey.  

Given the deep-blue nature of Massachusetts politics, the surprising strength of the Gomez candidacy is now causing Democrats to have painful flashbacks to a similar special election in early 2010 when Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley for the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy.  Brown's victory was accomplished in large part by the support of the emerging Tea Party.  The targeting of the Tea Party by the IRS and other elements of the Washington bureaucracy began shortly after Brown's victory.

It's a neat role reversal of the usual Democrat talking point regarding the demographic differences of the two parties.  Despite the repeated claim that the GOP is strictly the party of "old white men," the Massachusetts special election pits a 67-year-old Democrat who has been keeping his seat in the House warm since 1977 against a 47-year-old Latino Republican who is a graduate of the Naval Academy, a pilot, and former Navy SEAL.

Most of Markey's re-election campaigns have featured no Republican opposition.  It's been an easy ride all these decades for the abortion-loving guy with a 100% rating from NARAL.  This is particularly obnoxious and disappointing in view of Markey's Irish Catholic background and education.

He's getting plenty of competition this summer from Gomez.  Democrats are now pouring money into the race. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is blitzing Massachusetts with a $700,000 ad buy attacking Gomez.  The ad buy is significant and will likely be augmented by efforts from other outside groups. Predictably, the Democrats are accusing Gomez of planning to gut Medicare and being a foot soldier in the non-existent "war on women."

At the beginning of May, after winning his party's primary, Markey had a four-point lead over Gomez.  Markey immediately came out with an offensive ad that featured a split-screen of Gomez and Osama bin Laden.  Gomez responded in blunt fashion, calling Markey "pond scum."

"You know, I've got four young kids, and they've got to sit there and they gotta see an ad with their dad, who served honorably - talk to anybody I served with, whether as a pilot or as a SEAL or anybody I've worked with - and for him to be as dirty and low, pond scum, to put me up against bin Laden, he's gotta be called what he is."

In a silly (but not surprising) attempt to discredit Gomez, progressives have tried to delegitimize his ethnic status.  In a piece in El Planeta, a Spanish-language weekly in Boston, the paper's director, Jerry Villacrés, said Gomez, whose parents are from Colombia, was an "outsider" to Hispanics because he had not "worked with organizations and individuals from our community." Villacrés​ concludes that "for me, he is Latin In Name Only (LINO)." 

This, of course, is absurd. It's only slightly less insulting than hauling out the old "coconut" ad hominem ("brown on the outside, white on the inside").  How desperate is that?

Earlier in the piece, Villacrés brushed off Gomez's Spanish-speaking skills, saying "he doesn’t speak it perfectly, but is sufficiently fluent enough to impress a majority of mono-lingual Americans."  I'm not sure where one would go to find somebody speaking "perfect" Spanish.  If Villacrés is referring to fluency then he probably should just ask around any Latino neighborhood in Boston, Lawrence or Holyoke.  A MassLive article provides the reality check:

Gomez does media interviews and delivers his stump speech in Spanish. In his speech launching his campaign, he opened with a sentence in Spanish.  "The fact is, we’re actually going into a lot of these communities where Republicans have not historically gone into and been able to communicate and connect with those communities," Gomez said. "While they may be suspicious of the Republican Party in the past, they know I'm a new kind of Republican and they know this election is about the future, not the past.

"They know that I'm one of them," Gomez said. "I grew up like they did, and they share the same American principles that I share and the Republican Party shares. That’s more personal responsibility, more personal freedom, smaller, more effective government."

Supporters say Gomez identifies with them. "His parents are Hispanic... His first language was Spanish. He had to learn English in school," said Regla Gonzalez, vice president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, speaking for herself, not the organization. "He identifies with Latino issues, which is health, education and also immigration issues."

Gonzalez, a former Democrat now registered as a Republican, likes Gomez’s support for term limits and for the comprehensive immigration reform promoted by Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, which would provide a route to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

"He speaks not only the language, but the issues that are important to Latinos," Gonzalez said.

Markey, who has accused Conservatives of being "anti-science" simply for criticizing the Left's "green energy" boondoggles, has his own credibility problems in this regard.  He has repeatedly made a fool of himself, through his annual introduction of legislation that deals with amusement park roller coasters. Call it Markey's "war on amusement parks."

He is obsessed with the idea that newer, faster rides - which exert greater G-pressures on the human body - are "dangerous mentally and physically," despite a lack of evidence to support these claims, and contrary to specific studies that affirmed the safety of roller coasters in general.  No wonder Markey has never authored legislation that was signed into law.

Here are a few other things the people need to know about Ed Markey:

• He was against the disclosure of lobbying rules

• He voted to double the Federal Gas Tax

• He voted against a Balanced Budget Amendment

• Voted for TARP

• Voted for the Stimulus

• Voted against doubling the Child Tax Credit to $1,000, and eliminating the Marriage Penalty

• Voted twice against an amendment requiring a two-thirds majority – in both the House and Senate – to raise taxes

• Voted against Clinton’s welfare reforms

• Voted to increase his own pay by 40%

• Voted for Obamacare

• Has an affinity for raising the debt ceiling (voted 31 times for it)

Markey is the classic tax-and-spend liberal time-server in Congress who isn't out of new ideas because he's never had any ideas beyond the typical progressive groupthink (well, except for the roller coaster silliness).  For those who think Congress sucks right now, my question would be this: Why give a clown like Markey, who has been wasting everybody's time for 36 years in the House, a promotion to the Senate?  

Last Wednesday the two candidates squared off in their first debate.  While it's still too early to know what the effects of it will be, Gomez overcame his campaign inexperience to land some blows on Markey:

Gomez's finest moment came during a discussion of Benghazi. Whether planned, like candidate Ronald Reagan's "there you go again" line to President Jimmy Carter, or not, Gomez's charge that Markey cared more about Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign prospects than about getting answers to the Benghazi stonewall resonated. Gomez should hammer this theme again in the next two debates.

Still a political novice, Gomez could be forgiven for seeming nervous at times — even though he must have steely nerves as a former carrier pilot and Navy Seal. The jitters illustrate how difficult it is to master the art of public debate. In fact, some politicians with decades of experience, those "poster boys for term limits," still stammer and seem uncomfortable recounting a record in Washington shockingly devoid of material policy success.

During the debate, Markey did nothing to distinguish himself as a leader with an affirmative agenda for important issues like consumer protection, banking regulation, or job creation. This begs the question: Is Markey the best that the big, bad Democratic machine in Massachusetts has to offer its constituents in the long run? That remains to be seen, but during the first debate Markey did little to put to rest the theory that he is running to be a seat-warmer for 14 months.

The first debate wasn't close to a knockout. You can also bet that Gomez will get stronger with each debate. Those who would like to see some bipartisanship in Washington and a new, competent face emerging in the Senate from our Commonwealth also have to hope he has a few surprises in store for Markey.

Finally, rather than coasting to victory as he has always done in the past, Markey has seen his lead vanish over the past month.  A poll released by McLaughlin Associates on Friday shows the race in a statistical dead heat.

In a head to head match up, Markey leads Gomez by only one percentage point, 45% to 44%, well within the poll's 4.9% margin of error. However, Markey's support is less intense than Gomez's. If those who are "probable" or "leaners" are removed, and only "definite" supporters are polled, Gomez leads 31% to 28%.  The poll results were compiled from 400 respondents, all likely Massachusetts voters.

According to the findings:

Markey's high unfavorable ratings are clearly impacting his ballot rating. With a one-to-one favorable to unfavorable rating, Ed Markey will have a difficult time increasing his ballot share. What’s more, the intensity lies with Markey’s unfavorable rating, as the plurality of voters, 29%, is "very unfavorable" to Markey.

Conversely, nearly half of the voters, 48%, are favorable to Gabriel Gomez, and he receives a relatively low unfavorable rating of 27%. With a high favorable rating and low unfavorable rating, Gabriel Gomez is giving the voters a strong alternative to Ed Markey.

A strong alternative indeed!