Fwd: JUNE 26, 2013

     They're breathing a little more easily in Massachusetts today.  The Democrat won the Senate race, which is what Democrats are supposed to do there.  A Republican, Scott Brown, won in 2010--big upset.  Now, orthodoxy is restored.  Congressman Edward Markey (a Democrat) will represent a state where voters still remember senators named Kennedy.

     Markey beat a Republican named Gabriel Gomez 55-45%.  The news reports all speak of the money and the volunteers who poured into the state to help him.  The volunteers included President Obama and Vice President Biden.  It's three and a half years since Brown bested Democrat, then Attorney General, Martha Coakley in a special election to fill the seat that had been owned by Edward Kennedy.  Markey, yesterday's winner and a longtime House veteran, assumes the seat held by John Kerry, who left the Senate to become Secretary of State.  

 

    One Democratic strategist said the 2010 Brown win proved the Democrats must never take a seat for granted.  This time, they didn't.

     And the appointee who filled the vacancy for six months before the election?  William Cowan had some words of wisdom for the Washington Post.  He loved the job, he said, but "I think money has such a pervasive, pernicious influence on governing here that it's getting in the way...I've come to love the job, but I still hate the application process." He means the scuffle for cash, of course.