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How Massachusetts' Republican Governor Has Remained So Resilient In A Blue State

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Massachusetts is one of the most Democratic states in the country, a state where President Trump is pretty unpopular. But polls show that Massachusetts voters really like their Republican governor, Charlie Baker, who's running for re-election. NPR's Asma Khalid reports.

ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Charlie Baker is not the kind of Republican we usually see on the national stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CHARLIE BAKER: Success is measured by what we accomplish together.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Governor Charlie Baker's bipartisan leadership...

STEVE KOCZELA: He doesn't really talk a whole lot about being a Republican. He talks a lot about being bipartisan.

KHALID: That's Steve Koczela, a pollster in Massachusetts.

KOCZELA: The thing that really sticks out about his poll numbers is how broad his support is. Oftentimes his support numbers have actually even been higher among Democrats than among Republicans.

KHALID: Democrats like Dan Rivera, the mayor of Lawrence, a city where three quarters of the population is Latino.

DAN RIVERA: Investment in education under Charlie Baker has gone up. And we have more local aid and more education aid than we've had. And he's been able to do that without raising taxes.

KHALID: A couple of years ago, the region was hit with over a hundred inches of snow, and Rivera says he was impressed with how Baker handled the blizzards. He still disagrees with the governor on things like expanding charter schools and taxes, but he likes him in part because, he says, government is working. Baker has a 61 percent approval rating among registered Democrats. After Baker was first elected, he met with Stephanie Pollack, and she was well-known as this transportation guru working in academia.

STEPHANIE POLLACK: I thought to myself, as a lifelong progressive Democrat, OK, he's not going to hire me, but it's a great opportunity to tell him what I think he should do on transportation issues.

KHALID: The governor did hire Pollack as his transportation secretary. She says they've found common ground on the need to improve the subway.

POLLACK: What his philosophy is - is we owe it to taxpayers to run in government well. And isn't that a core progressive belief?

KHALID: This focus on managing government well means that even supporters sometimes struggle to point to specific achievements, and that opens Baker up to critics.

JOHN WALSH: Literally the most conservative Republicans in Massachusetts and I agree about Charlie Baker. We're not voting for him because he stands for nothing.

KHALID: John Walsh is the former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. He says even though Baker signed a law this year mandating a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave, these were already widely popular ideas in the state.

WALSH: He values his high poll numbers more than progress on any issue on any side of the issue spectrum.

KHALID: In this deep blue state, Baker has been a critic of President Trump but in a consistent and detailed way. Will Keyser was an aide to the late Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy. He's now a senior adviser on Baker's re-election campaign.

WILL KEYSER: Trump in an odd way has created, yes, its challenges but it's also created its contrast. People are seeing how they'd like it to be done versus how they'd like it not to be done.

KHALID: Keyser, who has never worked for a Republican before, says Baker is a fiscal conservative. He's supporting the GOP challenger against Senator Elizabeth Warren. But Keyser says being a Republican governor is fundamentally different than being a Republican member of Congress.

KEYSER: When you're the governor, you're a caucus of one, and you get to be your own person. And voters get that distinction.

KHALID: And Baker benefits from that distinction. All of the recent polls have him ahead of his Democratic opponent by about 40 points. Asma Khalid, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Asma Khalid
Asma Khalid is a White House correspondent for NPR. She also co-hosts The NPR Politics Podcast. Khalid is a bit of a campaign-trail addict, having reported on the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. She joined NPR's Washington team in 2016 to focus on the intersection of demographics and politics. During the 2020 presidential campaign, she covered the crowded Democratic primary field, and then went on to report on Joe Biden's candidacy. Her reporting often dives into the political, cultural and racial divides in the country. Before joining NPR's political team, Khalid was a reporter for Boston's NPR station WBUR, where she was nearly immediately flung into one of the most challenging stories of her career — the Boston Marathon bombings. She had joined the network just a few weeks prior, but went on to report on the bombings, the victims, and the reverberations throughout the city. She also covered Boston's failed Olympic bid and the trial of James "Whitey" Bulger. Later, she led a new business and technology team at the station that reported on the future of work. In addition to countless counties across America, Khalid's reporting has taken her to Pakistan, the United Kingdom and China. She got her start in journalism in her home state of Indiana, but she fell in love with radio through an internship at the BBC Newshour in London during graduate school. She's been a guest on numerous TV programs including ABC's This Week, CNN's Inside Politics and PBS's Washington Week. Her reporting has been recognized with the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Gracie Award. A native of Crown Point, Ind., Khalid is a graduate of Indiana University in Bloomington. She has also studied at the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the American University in Beirut and Middlebury College's Arabic school. [Copyright 2024 NPR]