The December 17 issue of The Republican, the daily newspaper of Springfield, Massachusetts, has this editorial, opposing any 3-candidate debates in the upcoming special election for U.S. Senate. The independent candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy, should be excluded, the paper argues, because he is “little-known” and “no relation to the family of the deceased Senator.”
The political cultural of Massachusetts, and especially of its newspapers, seems highly tilted against having real competition in elections. According to the neutral, scholarly book “Reforming State Legislative Elections” by Political Science Professor William Salka, Massachusetts has the second-least competitive elections of any of the 50 states. Massachusetts is the only state in the east in which most legislative elections have only one candidate on the ballot. Massachusetts was the only state in the nation in 2008 in which a majority of U.S. House seats only had one candidate on the ballot. But, the Massachusetts media never comment on that aspect of Massachusetts elections. They seem to take it for granted, as though it were the norm, not worthy of commentary.
An obvious MAJOR change in Mass. since 19 Apr 1775 — Day 1 of the American Revolutionary WAR.
Perhaps New Age Mass. should join the wreckage of the old Soviet Union — with its former one candidate elections ???
P.R. and A.V. — even in Mass. (IF it stays in the U.S.A.)
Note – Mass. happens to also have an about 90 percent REAL *democratic* city council due to STV PR in Cambridge, Mass. (special P.R. law from the 1930s).
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Massachusetts was once a heavily Republican state, but the Kennedys were largely responsible for changing it to a Democratic state.
When Tip O’Neill became speaker of the Massachusetts House in the 1940s, he was the first-ever Democratic speaker.
Mass. Republicans actually elected two congressmen in 1994, but they were both defeated in ’96.
Edward Brooke, beaten by Paul Tsongas in 1978, was the last Republican US senator from Massachusetts.