Mass Republicans rethink mission

Jennifer Nassour, who took the reins as chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party last January, is on a mission to bring the party back from one of its lowest points in recent memory, and her top priority is to reinvigorate the party's grassroots activists. But those looking for Nassour and her colleagues at the state GOP headquarters to rally the base by campaigning for social conservative causes such as opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion will be disappointed. Similarly, there are no plans for the party to take more progressive positions on social issues. Nassour said the state party would steer clear of social issues under her leadership, and would support candidates for office regardless of what side they take in the culture wars.

"To me social issues are personal issues. Those are personal views, and we are not legislating here - at least I am not legislating anyone's personal views," said Nassour. "I have no personal agenda I'm trying to push through other than electing Republicans."

Instead the party will focus on economic issues, which Nassour said are winning issues for the party, given the state of the economy.

"Right now in 2009 a winning formula for Republicans [is] being fiscal conservatives. Families are hurting right now, individuals are hurting right now, taxpayers, toll payers, people who have cars and are paying for gas, everyone is starting to feel the pinch. I think the most wining message for us is being fiscally conservative and showing how we can tighten our belts and run an efficient and effective government," said Nassour.

The party's agnostic approach to social issues represents a shift in direction from recent years. During former Gov. Mitt Romney's administration the governor positioned himself as the state's most high-profile opponent of marriage equality through his aggressive support of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (in addition to his failed attempt to reinstate the death penalty, his veto of an embryonic stem cell research bill and his flip-flop on abortion) The state party, then chaired by Romney ally Darrell Crate, also got involved in the push to ban same-sex marriage. While the party platform at the time took no position on the issue of same-sex marriage, the Boston Globe reported in 2005 that the state party sent out e-mails to supporters outlining the party's efforts to collect signatures on behalf of VoteOnMarriage.org, a ballot question committee that waged an ultimately unsuccessful effort to pass a marriage amendment. The party used the amendment signature drive to identify potential supporters for Republican candidates in the 2006 elections.

When Romney's lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, ran in 2006 to succeed him in the corner office her campaign downplayed social issues, and Healey announced her support for civil unions. Her loss to Democrat Deval Patrick broke a 16-year hold by the party on the governor's office. Peter Torkildsen, who became party chair in 2007, was largely seen as a social moderate and he steered clear of social issues. But in May 2007 the Republican State Committee voted to instruct Torkildsen to write a letter urging state House and Senate Republicans to vote for the marriage amendment. Torkildsen acceded to the committee's wishes, but the next month lawmakers defeated the marriage amendment with crucial opposition from several Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Richard R. Tisei and House Minority Leader Bradley Jones.

Nassour, a longtime Republican Party activist who worked in former acting governor Jane Swift's administration and served as finance director for Dan Grabauskas's failed campaign for state treasurer in 2002, assumes leadership of the state party at the lowest point in its recent history. In the 2008 elections the party lost three seats in the legislature after three retiring Republican House members were replaced by Democrats. Currently, the party holds just five state Senate seats and 16 House seats; there are no Republicans in statewide office or in the congressional delegation.

Nassour declined to assign blame for the party's decline, except to say that prior to her election the GOP had lost its message. That message, as articulated by Nassour, contains none of the social conservative rhetoric championed by Romney and the Romney-era state party.

"At some point I think we lost our message, and in doing so we started losing candidates and we started losing the quality candidates, [they] just weren't coming out as much. ... The core message before is just what the Republican Party is about, which I view as individual responsibility, lower taxes, smaller government, entrepreneurship, giving people the ability to take charge of their lives," said Nassour. "And whether it's opening up a little caf? on the corner or deciding where you want to live, what schools you want to send your kids to, that really is the Republican message."

Nassour said her first order of business is to rally the party's grassroots, which is organized through a network of town and ward committees. Throughout March and April the party has been holding a series of forums across the state with the goal of learning which issues are most pressing to Republican voters and getting them involved in campaigns and party activism.

Some within the party worry that a Massachusetts GOP agenda devoid of social issues may have diminished appeal to the party's conservative grassroots. For instance, Robert Willington, executive director of Rebuild The Party, a national coalition urging the Republican Party to embrace the Internet as an organizing tool, believes many of the diehard conservative activists who the party depends on for its strength will not be energized by an agenda focused solely on the economy and good government. Prior to joining Rebuild the Party this year he served for three years on staff at the Massachusetts GOP, first as political director and then as executive director; before that he served as campaign director for VoteOnMarriage.org and helped organize its signature gathering campaign.

"I think the Massachusetts Republican Party could certainly benefit from having a stronger conservative message. Voters don't go to the polls with the party platform in mind, but the activists and workers of the party will finally come home. ... I think Republican candidates should be whatever it is they feel is right, and the Mass GOP should articulate a strong conservative message to draw a sharp distinction with the Beacon Hill Democrats and fire up our audience. People don't volunteer hundreds of hours of their time knocking on doors and licking envelopes to roll back the income tax .3 [percentage] points," wrote Willington in an e-mail to Bay Windows . He said he was speaking only from his own perspective and not on behalf of Rebuild the Party.

And there are signs that social conservatives are finding ways to advance their agenda in Massachusetts without the help of the Republican Party. The state GOP lost three seats in the 2008 elections, but Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), the lead organization in the VoteOnMarriage.org coalition, helped elect three new socially conservative House members, Jim Dwyer of Woburn, Dennis Rosa of Leominster, and Michael Brady of Brockton. All three of those members are Democrats.

In an e-mailed statement to Bay Windows MFI President Kris Mineau said his organization had no allegiance to any party.

"MFI is a non-partisan organization and does not seek to influence party politics. Our hope is that all political parties in the state would see the value in strengthening families, supporting policies that value life at every stage and promoting the goal of children being raised by a married mother and father," wrote Mineau.

But in prior years Mineau has been a booster of Republicans in Massachusetts. In 2005 he delivered the keynote speech at the annual convention of the Massachusetts Republican Assembly, a group of conservative Massachusetts Republicans. According to the Globe's coverage of the convention Mineau urged attendees to use the VoteOnMarriage.org amendment campaign as a springboard to elect conservative Republicans in the state to office, telling them, "We have three years to make history or be history. ... Get involved and help stamp out RINOs [Republicans In Name Only, a pejorative term to describe moderate Republicans] in Massachusetts." This past election cycle, by contrast, MFI was trumpeting the election of three new Democrats.

Yet some Republican lawmakers in the state argue that sidelining culture war issues is essential to rebuilding the party in Massachusetts. Tisei, a Wakefield Republican and a longtime supporter of LGBT rights legislation, said focusing on the economy and good government is the only way the party can attract the independent and Democratic voters needed to win in a state with a very small number of registered Republicans. About half the registered voters in the state are independents, and Nassour said only 11.6 percent of voters in the state are Republicans.

"Obviously building a strong grassroots and a farm team to get people to run for office [is important], but I think what's also important is to reach out to people who aren't part of the Republican Party right now and try to expand the party and bring new people in, and I would include the gay and lesbian community," said Tisei. "There are a lot of individuals right now who are entrepreneurs, who own small businesses, who believe the government shouldn't grow too large, who support low taxes ... who would probably be willing to vote for the Republican Party on those issues, and those are the issues the Republican Party needs to be stressing over the next few years to attract those people."

Tisei cited Romney's predecessors, Republican governors William Weld, Paul Cellucci and Swift, as examples of lawmakers whose moderate positions on social issues helped attract a broad base of support. Weld earned a national reputation as a supporter of gay rights in the '90s, appearing on the cover of The Advocate, and broke new ground by creating the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth to address high gay youth suicide rates. Cellucci expanded the powers of the commission. The Swift administration had several high-ranking openly gay staffers, and when Swift, then the acting governor, announced her 2002 gubernatorial candidacy she picked openly gay Patrick Guerriero as her running mate. (Swift later dropped out of the race to make way for Romney.)

"[Weld, Cellucci and Swift] were all very friendly and understood the need to bring diverse voices into the party. I'd say Gov. Romney was a disaster we're all still trying to recover from, and I would hope the leadership of the party going forward, both with our new chair and with our gubernatorial candidate in the next election would be more in the tradition of Weld and Cellucci," said Tisei.

Tisei's Senate colleague Robert Hedlund (R-Hingham) agreed that the party should focus on the economy and good government issues. Unlike Tisei, Hedlund voted in favor of the marriage amendment in 2007, although he said it was one of the most difficult votes he has taken and he is still unsettled on the issue of marriage equality. Hedlund said the divisions among the Republican caucus on social issues make it difficult for the party as a whole to come out ahead by taking a position on either side of those issues.

"You've got divisions in both parties on social issues. In the Republican Senate caucus a majority are pro-choice, a majority voted against the constitutional amendment, for gay marriage. ... There shouldn't be a monolithic party position on that stuff because the division's already there," said Hedlund.

Willington said that while he believes the party should adopt messages appealing to both fiscal and social conservatives, he does not believe that there are any major social conservative causes that would be winning issues for the party in the current environment.

"The closest thing to being a social issue statewide, right now, would be gambling. The caucus is split on it and I don't see it being a big issue to mobilize the base with," wrote Willington in an e-mail to Bay Windows .

Polling shows that neither Republican nor independent voters are a monolithic voting block when it comes to the issue of marriage equality. A March survey of 400 Massachusetts residents conducted by Suffolk University's Political Research Center found that only 30 percent of Republicans and 11 percent of independents support a prohibition on same-sex marriage and civil unions. A majority of both groups support either marriage or civil unions. Among Republicans, 32 percent support full marriage equality while 34 percent support civil unions but oppose allowing couples to call their union a marriage; among independents those numbers are 47 percent and 36 percent respectively.

David Paleologos, director of Suffolk's Political Research Center, said the center has been tracking public opinion on the marriage question since the state began allowing same-sex couples to marry in 2004. The implementation of marriage equality prompted a spike in support for either marriage or civil unions among independents and Republicans, and since then there has been a gradual but steady increase in support among those voters for either marriage or civil unions.

Paleologos said focusing on the economy is a poll-tested strategy, and given the division among Republican voters it makes sense for the party to avoid taking a position on the marriage issue one way or another.

"Republicans are probably not going to want to be in the position of turning off fellow Republicans," said Paleologos. "You've got a situation now in the Republican Party looking at these numbers where 30 percent are saying absolute prohibition [on same-sex marriage]. ... They're probably saying 66 percent [support for either marriage or civil unions] isn't bad, but we can't afford to alienate 30 percent of Republicans on one issue."

Michael Motzkin, former chair of the Massachusetts Log Cabin Republicans and a longtime party activist, said he believes even the party's social conservatives understand the need to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters. He pointed out that the Republican State Committee, which two years ago urged the Republican legislative caucus to vote to ban same-sex marriage, voted in favor of Nassour over two other candidates, including one, Michael Franco, who argued that the party should oppose same-sex marriage.

"I think even they are realizing that if we want to succeed as a party we have to have more inclusion here, and people are just tired of the rhetoric and making it about one issue," said Motzkin, who said that he almost left the party during the Romney years when both Romney and President George W. Bush took hard-line stances in favor of banning same-sex marriage.

Motzkin said he had some contact with Nassour when both of them worked in the Swift administration, and he got to know her better while volunteering for Grabauskas' treasurer campaign. He said Nassour seemed to have a high comfort level with gay people, particularly in her work for Grabauskas, an out gay man. Nassour, he said, is going to have to find a way to expand the party's outreach to a more diverse group of voters without alienating social conservatives.

"You really have to get your base back. And the sad part is there are so few Republicans in Massachusetts, and the base of that group are the anti-marriage folks. Jen knows she has to work with them, but she also has to be more inclusive. ... I think that Jen realizes too that if she tries to demagogue, that's not going to work, and she's not going to be able to bring new blood into the party let alone the old," said Motzkin.

Nassour said that given the small number of Republicans in the state, she wants all party members and supporters to get involved, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum.

"We are not classifying people. [With] 11.6 percent [of voters] I don't have the tolerance to classify people as conservative, uber-conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, liberal, somewhat liberal. We just don't have it, we're just not big enough," said Nassour. "So really it is everyone is welcome to come on in and to participate, but really I can't tell someone - and I'm not going to - it wouldn't be right for me to say to a specific person or people, you need to feel this way. Again it goes back to, I believe social issues are personal issues. I don't want anyone telling me how to feel, and I don't want to tell anyone else how to feel, but if there are people who want to be involved they absolutely need to be involved."