Keith Davis and Scott Lively statewide Republican Primary write-in totals released
Some undercounting already revealed
POSTED: Sept. 27, 2010
It was a spirited try, but unfortunately never got the necessary momentum or publicity.
Although Jim McKenna was an overwhelming success as a write-in candidate to get on the ballot for Attorney General in the Sept. 14 Massachusetts Republican Primary, the other pro-family candidates fell seriously short.
Scott Lively and Keith Davis were running as pro-life, pro-family write-ins for Governor and Lt. Governor -- alternatives to the anointed Republican candidates, Charlie Baker and Richard Tisei. Baker and Tisei are considered to be the most radically anti-family candidates in memory.
The statewide write-in totals for have been posted by the Secretary of the State:
Republican Primary Totals - Statewide
CHARLIE BAKER 215,008
SCOTT LIVELY (write-in) 1,021
TIMOTHY CAHILL (write-in) 448
RICHARD TISEI 191,442
KEITH DAVIS (write-in) 1,925
JAMES MCKENNA (write-in) 27,711
GUY CARBONE (write-in) 9,505
Way short on publicity & support
One one hand, McKenna's and Carbone's efforts to get on the ballot as Attorney General generated a lot of media attention. The Boston Globe formally endorsed McKenna on their editorial page, and various pro-family groups made big efforts to push one or the other. Interestingly, Independent Gubernatorial Candidate Tim Cahill was written in the Republican Primary by several hundred people.
But except for some local coverage, none of the mainstream media (not even State House News) would cover Lively and Davis. And none of the major pro-family groups -- except for MassResistance and Operation Rescue -- put serious effort into helping them, ostensibly out of fear of alienating the Republican Party and being labeled "homophobic."
Election officials ignoring write-ins
As we've described in the past, Massachusetts makes it difficult for write-in candidates by having a small area to write in on the ballots and not supplying proper pens, among other things.
Also, unless a write-in candidate specifically notifies every city and town in the state in advance that he's "officially" running, they will often ignore his votes. Davis, McKenna, and Carbone went through the process of notifying the cities and towns, but Scott Lively did not. As a result his votes were probably widely ignored (and possibly Davis' also, since his race was not well publicized in the media).
For example, in Newton the election officials have declared that Scott Lively received no write-in votes. However, we contacted seven Newton voters who said they definitely wrote-in Scott Lively on the ballot. (We're going to investigate this some more.) It's not a huge amount, but it really makes you wonder about the accuracy of the whole system. In attition, the Newton officials were pretty condescending about the our concerns.
NOTE (SEPT 30): After further communication with Newton election officials, we got a call back today telling us that Scott Lively got 25 votes in Newton.
In any case, we think that the biggest problem was that the word on Davis and Lively was not well publicized. A lot of people in the last week have told us that they just didn't know about them. And particularly they didn't know how bad Baker and Tisei are regarding homosexual issues, since the media absolutely does not discuss their support for the homosexual movement.
Part of this can be attributed to the fact that Lively and Davis appeared less than a month before the primary, and the AG candidates had been at it for much of the summer. Also, AG Martha Coakley had NO Republican opponent, which energized many voters to write in a candidate. But we had anticipated a bigger push from churches and pro-family groups, which simply never materialized. It's certainly a lesson learned.
