State follows voters’ lead on criminal justice

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The Senate and House sent a sweeping criminal justice reform bill to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk this week. The Governor has not said how he will proceed. Details matter, and there are a lot of them to parse, but the overall thrust of the bill is very much in keeping with what voters have said

Democracy is breaking out all over Massachusetts

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2018 was supposed to be the year of blockbuster match-ups in Massachusetts. The de facto leaders of both parties are running for reelection, offering the prospect of bruising contests for both Senate and the Governor’s office. Instead, the two main event races are blowouts so far, while a bevy of interesting and important elections are

DA candidates seek to capitalize on public desire for new approach to criminal justice

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Criminal justice reform legislation has yet to emerge from conference committee on Beacon Hill, but many of the ideas the legislature debated in writing their bills are now making their way into District Attorney races across the state. Polling we’ve conducted shows these ideas are popular among large swaths of the public, setting up potentially interesting contests of ideas

A Man of No Party

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The Democratic state representative for one of the most Democratic-voting districts in Massachusetts ditched the party this week. In explaining his switch in party registration, Solomon Goldstein-Rose of Amherst, representing the Third Hampshire district, told MassLive: “I’ve always been unenrolled in spirit. I’ve been acting nonpartisan since I was elected and before.” Goldstein-Rose, who at 24

Is MA-7 minority-majority? Not among voters

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Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley announced last week she is challenging 18-year veteran Congressman Mike Capuano. […] Since Pressley’s announcement, much of the coverage has noted the diversity of the district as a key dynamic in how the race may unfold. The urban district, which includes large parts of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, and Chelsea, is alone

Baker’s State of the Commonwealth, by the numbers

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Latest WBUR polling shows the governor well positioned heading into November It’s an expected cliché for a governor to say in his annual address to the legislature that the state of the Commonwealth is strong, but this year Charlie Baker has some pretty compelling poll numbers to back it up. Our latest WBUR poll finds nearly three-quarters

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A Year in Review

“Polling is an act of political resistance. It agglomerates the messy and inconvenient opinions of everyday people, kneads them into a whole, and forces them through the door into the air-conditioned echo chambers of political elites. This is not newly true, it’s just newly apparent.” That’s from a CommonWealth Magazine piece I wrote early this year, arguing

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Changing the gender balance on Beacon Hill

It’s been a busy couple weeks in #mapoli, and for MPG. We have you covered with a new WBUR article and not one but two new podcasts. WBUR: How The Mass. Legislature Can Get Closer To Gender Balance  Steve Koczela and Jake Rubinstein, writing for WBUR: “State Sen. Harriette Chandler, a Democrat from Worcester, became the acting

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Gomez still weighing Senate run

His entry would crowd the ‘moderate’ lane in GOP primary This article originally appeared on CommonWealth. The Republican primary field to take on US Sen. Elizabeth Warren next year now includes three candidates, but another contender is still eyeing the race. Businessman and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez is meeting with potential advisors to chart a

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Amazon, but for Amazon HQ

With its radically open bidding process for its second headquarters, Amazon is doing to economic development what it did to retail. Amazon, the company that disrupted bookselling and then the selling of most everything else, has thrown economic development agencies for a loop with the bidding to host their second headquarters. From the start, Amazon’s
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