MFI maintains profile among Bay State conservatives

The Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) may be working to rebuild its influence on Beacon Hill (See "Mass Family Institute is down, but is it out?") but it has been keeping a high profile within Massachusetts's conservative movement. Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation (CLT), said MFI president Kris Mineau has been a fixture of the Friday Morning Group, a monthly off-the-record meeting of right and center-right advocates organized by CLT's Associate Director Chip Faulkner. The meetings are modeled after the famous Wednesday Meetings organized by Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, which bring together Washington's conservative movement leaders and politicos to share strategy. Anderson said the meetings draw anti-tax libertarians like herself, social conservatives like Mineau, gun rights advocates, home-schoolers, and other conservative movement activists who form what Norquist has termed the "Leave Us Alone Coalition."

Anderson said the main point of agreement among Friday Morning Group attendees is a desire to reduce government power and influence over people's lives. She said while she herself supports the right of same-sex couples to marry she has found Mineau to be "a gentleman" and an agreeable ally.

"And we all get along quite well, which kind of surprises me because libertarians and religious right don't have too much point of contact over social issues, but we do over tax issues. ... [Mineau's] just a nice person to have to deal with," said Anderson.

She said CLT lent its support to MFI when Mineau's organization worked with former Gov. Mitt Romney to sue the legislature in late 2006, after the legislature used a procedural vote to try to kill MFI's initiative petition to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Anderson said while CLT had no official position on the marriage amendment itself, it supported the lawsuit because it believed the legislature's actions threatened the initiative petition process.

The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled in December 2006 that it could not force lawmakers to take an up-or-down vote on the amendment but that they were constitutionally obligated to do so. Under pressure from the court the legislature took its two required votes on the amendment; the first passed in January 2007, but the second vote that July failed, killing the amendment. Anderson said she did not expect MFI's campaign to force the legislature to vote on the amendment to succeed, and she credited Mineau with leading the charge.

"They just did a brilliant job of getting their vote, and once they did we were happy. We didn't need them to win their vote," said Anderson. "[Mineau's] extremely determined, focused and effective. He pulled this off when I would have said nobody could do it."

MFI has also maintained a high profile among the Bay State conservative blogosphere. After the November elections the blog Red Mass Group began running a series of Q&A's with conservative leaders in Massachusetts to discuss how to energize the conservative movement in Massachusetts. The blog picked Mineau as the second interview in the series, following Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Peter Torkildsen.

Mineau urged the state Republican Party to embrace social conservative positions as a way to help regain their footing in Massachusetts.

"In many cases, the party lost its moorings on traditional family values and fiscal conservatism - even when they had the majority of Massachusetts voters on the conservative side of the issues (such as allowing a vote on marriage). When they are no different than the Democrats, people vote for the real Democrat rather than the pseudo-democrat," Mineau told Red Mass Group.