Attorney General Martha Coakley may have run a less-than-scintillating campaign, but she started this sprint of a special Senate primary race with too many advantages for a trio of male Democratic opponents to overcome in a short period of time.
The only candidate to have run statewide before, she started with astronomically high favorability ratings and low negatives. Throughout a generally genteel three-month campaign, that didn’t change. Her rivals succeeded in improving their own images, but neither they nor the news media tarnished hers significantly. In the end, there was never a cogent argument for those voters who started the campaign liking Coakley to abandon her at the end.
She won by huge margins across vast swaths of the state Tuesday.
Coakley played it safe from start to finish, and her candidacy seemed to be in jeopardy only once and then briefly. Four weeks ago she said she would vote against a health care bill in Congress if it placed restrictions on abortions. Her chief opponent, US Representative Michael Capuano, who two days earlier had voted against the abortion amendment but for the final version of a House bill that included it, pounced and attacked her stand. But less than 24 hours later, he too said he would vote against a health care overhaul if the bill that ultimately combines House and Senate versions emerges with the abortion restrictions.
Capuano was then forced to explain the inside baseball of congressional lawmaking as he attempted to draw a distinction with Coakley, who emerged from the scrape as the leading defender of the reproductive rights of women. Cultivating support among women was a Coakley priority from day one.
It was one of several head-scratching moments in a fitful Capuano campaign that often seemed to be living by its wits from day to day without a coherent, overarching strategy.
In an overwhelmingly Democratic state, Coakley is now the heavy favorite to capture the Senate seat held for 47 years by the late Edward M. Kennedy and become the first woman elected to the Senate from Massachusetts.
Her opponent in the Jan. 19 special election, Republican state Senator Scott Brown, however, will offer voters a stark contrast on many issues and try to tap into voter anxiety about job losses, soaring federal budget deficits, and a skyrocketing national debt under a Democratic administration and Congress.
“Jobs are Job One’’ will be a theme of Brown, who supports President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan, while Coakley opposes it. On other issues, Brown opposes a public insurance option in a health care overhaul, and a cap-and-trade bill to reduce industrial emissions. Coakley supports both. Brown is also critical of Coakley’s support for allowing the income tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire.Continued...