In Massachusetts Politics, Welcome Back to the 1990s

By Matt Murphy
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

For all of Gov. Deval Patrick’s talk of governing for the next generation, the race to take his place in the Corner Office took a turn for the nostalgic.

Consider these headline makers for the week: Bill Clinton, Ebola, and Weld-era budgets. The 1990s are back in vogue in Massachusetts politics. And somewhere in Westfield, Michael Knapik is smiling next to his wayback machine.

The governor may be giving up politics for now, but he hasn’t lost his ability to whip up a crowd, whether he’s talking innovation economy or standing on a chair, jacketless, exhorting a room that Martha Coakley is up to the task to continue his legacy. It’s enough to leave some Democrats wishing he could have run for one more term.

Perhaps that’s why Patrick, during an interview with WBUR’s Bob Oakes, said there’s no reason to be concerned by his chosen successor’s “more reserved” style. If campaigning is “performance art,” as Patrick put it, then governing is about substance, and Coakley’s full of it, he said.

Coakley was certainly not reserved during the first Boston televised debate of the general election, a lively affair, and perhaps the last for the three independents in the race who had their invitations to a debate in Worcester rescinded this week due to poor polling numbers.

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The debate, to a significant degree, was fought along battle lines drawn when Coakley was an up-and-coming prosecutor heading the child protection unit in the Middlesex District Attorney’s office. Louise Woodward, not Aaron Hernandez, was in the headlines, and Baker was making a name for himself while serving under two Republican governors.

During the debate, Coakley invited the fight over her record on child protection, thrust into the spotlight by a super PAC ad, and sharply questioned Baker’s record at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Sure he saved the insurer from bankruptcy, Coakley said, but what about raising premiums and taking home a nice seven-figure salary?

For his part, Baker kept cool and calm, simultaneously thanking Coakley for her career of service (sincerely) while ably raising questions about Coakley’s decision to fight a lawsuit filed by a child advocacy group against the Department of Children and Families. The attorney general, Baker said, should have worked with the group to fix the agency rather than fight it in court.

Baker had a hard time fully recalling why, as Bill Weld’s budget chief, the administration returned almost $2 million to the general fund rather than hire social workers for the Department of Social Services, as it was intended. But he stood up for his work in the mid- to late-90s to improve foster care and reduce caseloads, high though they still were.

Both camps walked away from the WBZ debate stage feeling good about their candidate’s performance, not to mention their ability to stay out of moderator Jon Keller’s “cocoon of horror” for bad debate behavior.

The child protection issue has persisted as a key theme in the race for governor, and the fallout from a super PAC funded by the Republican Governors Association and targeting Coakley may be taking its toll.

The momentum that appeared to be behind Baker has, at the very least, halted with the latest Boston Globe/SocialSphere poll showing an eight-point swing in the race to Coakley, who led by five points in a survey released Friday after trailing by three last week.

In preparation for the big debate, Coakley skipped out on the Health Policy Commission’s annual two-day cost trends hearing, drawing ridicule from Baker for avoiding an issue - health care cost control - that the attorney general said her staff was more than capable of addressing.

Patrick did show up, kicking off the hearing with prediction that the Health Connector exchange website, version 2.0, will work when it launches on Nov. 15, at an additional cost of $26 million to the Commonwealth.

If talk of Weld-era budgeting decisions and criminal au pair’s weren’t enough to make you want to drop a needle on your copy of “Rumours,” the Coakley campaign announced that Bill Clinton would be coming to Worcester next week to headline a rally. His wife, and perhaps the more popular Clinton these days, Hillary, won’t be far behind, though the Coakley camp says a date has not been nailed down.

Mitt Romney will be in town helping to pry open a few check books for Baker, but he has no plans to go out on the trail. And not that Baker needs much help in the money department. Former billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Baker and Democrat Seth Moulton were on his list to support with PAC ads this month.

Further down the ballot, the race for treasurer between Democrat Deb Goldberg, Republican Michael Heffernan and the Green-Rainbow Party’s Ian Jackson hasn’t exactly lit the political world abuzz. But it is giving the state’s pension chief nightmares.

“And what keeps me up right now is worrying not about the markets or the geopolitical tensions, it’s worrying about the transition to new elected officials,” pension fund executive director Michael Trotsky told his board this week. Whoever becomes Trotsky’s next boss, he or she will probably be happy to hear that the state pension fund ended August with a record high balance of $61.2 billion.

While the next administration - in the governor’s office, the Treasury and elsewhere - is sure to usher in staff changes throughout state government, the good-bye party circuit has been relatively quiet, much to the chagrin of Beacon Hill watering holes.

Transportation Secretary Richard Davey stepped into that void late this week, announcing he would resign at the end of the month to do some travelling with his wife. Bound for Australia in December and maybe Europe next month, Davey just couldn’t bear to bring his blackberry down under.

While the water-cooler scuttle in some circles had Davey heading the Boston2024 Olympic bid within hours of his announcement, the Back Bay resident insisted his job search starts on Nov. 1.

While Davey is bailing on the Patrick administration two months early, Patrick does not have that luxury. So why not consider some pardons? It’s been 12 years since acting-Gov. Jane Swift issued the last gubernatorial pardon (not to be confused with a commutation releasing a current inmate), and Patrick has three recommendations for pardons on his desk for consideration.

“I’m ready and I think the Governor’s Council, which has to approve them is ready, within bounds,” Patrick said this week.

There’s 25 days until the election. So in the words of Christine McVie, “Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here.”

STORY OF THE WEEK: Keller-at-Large guides gubernatorial field to promising curtain raiser for debate season.

FROM THE DEPT. OF HONEST ASSESSMENTS: From outgoing Transportation Secretary Richard Davey, on what he’d take back from his time as head of MassDOT: “I wish I didn’t propose banning strollers from buses. That had to be the dumbest idea I floated, but that was mine.” Bon voyage, Secretary.