Notwithstanding the supermoon, Gabriel Gomez will lose the U.S. Senate special election in Massachusetts Tuesday. What he and the next Republican runners-up do next will determine whether there will continue to be a mere nominal, in name only, opposition party in a state that did twice go for Reagan.
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Gabe Gomez is no Scott Brown. He’s more successful. And therein lies a major problem for a Latino ex-Navy SEAL who wouldn’t at first sniff reek of Romney. Gomez is reluctant to get into the weeds of what exactly a “venture capitalist” does. But in staying on message and sparing voters a lecture on corporate finance, he simultaneously appears deposition-like evasive when asked basic biographical questions. Unfortunately for capitalist candidates, perfectly legitimate – prestigious even – companies like Advent International and Summit Partners sound fake or nefarious. Gomez might as well have been a commission-paid Job Outsourcing Associate at a Teapot Dome Financial in this recession-cynical culture. Gabe lives large, certainly larger than his opponent admits to. (U.S. Rep. Ed Markey claims Malden – the “dirty den” per UrbanDictionary.com – for his residency but has spent the plupart of decades in a million-dollar-plus Maryland manse.) Five years ago, Gomez’s house was featured in Boston Globe Sunday Magazine for its chic design. Lambasted as loophole exploitation, Gomez’s income tax deduction of $280,000 on the historic home is more than the median home sales price in the state according to the Warren Group (no relation to the already Senior Senator).
Candidate Brown’s pick-up truck in 2010 was no schtick. Friends and I have seen him around—grabbing a beer, wearing jeans, and looking way cooler than us doing it. Even if his special election opponent didn’t cede the sports guy/gal mantle (Yankees-Red Sox pun intended) by dissing handshake campaigning outside a cold Fenway Park, Brown is a genuine fan. His middle-class Wrentham house, likely to have a man cave that predates the term, is also where he ran a small business small by any standard—a solo law practice. A real estate closing here and there. Brown’s wife had the real job, as an on-air reporter for Boston’s ABC affiliate. The former Senator serves on a paper company’s board now; he needs the work.
In their final TV debate last week, 37-year Congressman Markey Bain-Capitaled (not as catchy as swiftboated) Gomez unrelentlessly. The Bay State seemed Bizzaro World as Markey attacked Gomez for earning ten times his salary. Earning is stealing in the congressman’s zero-sum, no-growth, two-legs-better game. Just 47, Gomez will be pinko-slipped by the few, the proud, the mobilized voters, on Tuesday. The private sector will be his silver parachute.
Gomez is also expected by Romney insiders to further follow the former governor’s career path by following up a Senate election loss to an effete with a gubernatorial run. Deval Patrick, whose resume mirrors friend President Obama’s, is not seeking a third term in 2014 and publicly plans to return to lawyering to keep up with the Gomezs and his own tax regime. The most likely Republican nominee for governor, including Gomez and Brown, is 2010’s—Charlie Baker, a former health insurance CEO. Massachusetts and neighboring New Hampshire have a history of GOP businessman and upstart candidates running for high office as outsiders and disappearing when they lose. If Gomez is really a Republican – and he is suspect due to professions in a letter to Gov. Patrick seeking appointment to the seat after John Kerry’s nomination as Secretary of State – he will build the party as finance chairman for someone else’s statewide run and a candidate for a lower office. Gomez has less political capital than Romney (who’s not a career politician because he lost all but one office election), having lost his one previous race—for town selectman in Cohasset, population 7,000. If he humbles himself by applying anew for public service closer to fewer people, Gomez will earn something that’s impossible to tax and a mistake to mock—respect.
Alex Talcott is the Massachusetts and New Hampshire based public affairs principal of Vaura Consulting and a college academic advisor and international studies instructor. Follow him on Twitter @AlexTalcott