U.S. Sen. John McCain came to Boston last week to campaign and help raise cash for Gabriel Gomez. He stood next to his fellow Republican on a small VFW stage in Dorchester, and gave him his endorsement.
“I’m here because I believe in this young man,” McCain said. “I believe he is the next generation of leadership in the country.”
Tufts University political science professor Jeff Berry says at this point in the campaign, Gomez needs two things to win.
“He needs a lot of money, which as of now, he doesn’t have,” Berry said. “And he needs to galvanize the electorate around some issue or some anger about the Obama administration.”
Gomez is trying everything from taxes to national security. At a campaign stop in Mattapan, Gomez attacked his opponent, U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, for voting nearly 300 times in favor of higher taxes. He argues Markey’s voting record has harmed small businesses.
“The problem with somebody who has never had to balance the budget or deal with payroll because he’s never had a job in the real private sector, his initial reaction is to raise taxes,” Gomez said. “Because he wants to make this a class warfare.”
The Markey campaign says Markey has voted for trillions of dollars in tax cuts.
At the McCain rally, Gomez blasted Markey’s record on national security. Gomez says Markey voted against two resolutions that honored the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
“Now one thing I just can’t understand is how my opponent, Congressman Markey, voted against a very basic congressional resolution to simply honor the victims of 9/11,” Gomez said.
Markey says he rejected those resolutions because they linked 9/11 to Saddam Hussein and the war in Iraq.
Kirsten Hughes, the chairwoman of the Massachusetts Republican Party says excitement for the race has been a problem – but the way to get people to the polls is to focus on national security.
“I think the Boston Marathon bombings really put security back into the forefront,” Hughes said. “And again, Ed Markey’s terrible record about keeping us safe here at home will dictate for a lot of people, they’re going to start focusing in on this race.”
But will national security be enough to drive disenchanted voters to the polls? In Republican Scott Brown’s historic 2010 win, he had conservative anger over Obamacare to run on. So far, taxes, security – and even the scandals in Benghazi and with the IRS – might not be dramatic enough to translate into voter participation. The turnout at the McCain rally was anemic – only 50 or so voters showed up to what has so far been Gomez’s biggest campaign event.
"For him to be as dirty and low, pond scum, to, like, put me up next to bin Laden, he just got to be called what he is."
So the next part of the campaign strategy for Gomez is “go negative.”
At nearly every campaign stop, Gomez argues that Markey is too old, has been in office too long and is out of touch.
“He literally started in Congress when I was playing Little League baseball,” Gomez said. “I mean Tom Brady wasn’t even alive when Ed Markey went down to Congress.”
The turn to the negative has been more pronounced in the past few weeks.
Here’s a negative ad Ed Markey ran against Gomez:
“Gomez is against banning high-capacity magazines like the one used in the Newtown school shooting,” the ad says.
Here’s the response from the Gomez campaign. He takes the reference to Newtown and says Markey is blaming him for the massacres.
“Negative ads from dirty Ed Markey, smearing Gabriel Gomez and comparing him to Bin Laden,” the ad says. “Now, Markey actually blames Gomez for the Newtown shooting. Disgusting. Thirty-seven years in Congress. Dirty Ed Markey.”
And then Gomez took the rhetoric a step further during an interview at a campaign stop in Newton, responding to a web video shot by the Markey campaign that puts an image of Gomez on screen at the same time as an image of Osama bin Laden.
“For him to be as dirty and low, pond scum, to, like, put me up next to bin Laden, he just got to be called what he is,” he said.
The negative tone is likely to continue as the candidates get ready to debate next week, with the election less than a month away.
