Republicans top of mind at Massachusetts Democrats’ Convention

By Colin A. Young

WORCESTER – While Democrats in other parts of the country feel like they and their ideas are increasingly under duress at the national level, a parade of elected officials on Saturday urged Massachusetts Democrats to not become complacent with the almost universal Democratic control of elected offices here.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party’s convention at the DCU Center in Worcester on Saturday focused on the candidates running for state office, but speakers also rallied the more than 5,000 blue-blooded Democrats participating as delegates to get behind the party’s broader national messaging around issues like abortion rights, gun control and the threat that extremism poses to American democracy.

U.S. Rep. James McGovern of Worcester said that the Republican Party has embraced conspiracy theories and misinformation and lashes out at any one who disagrees as “pedophiles and murderers.” He told attendees of his experiences on the U.S. House floor during the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and said those “very same people” are now trying to rig future campaigns.

“We refuse to let that happen because for all of our party’s flaws and imperfections, the Democratic Party is the party of democracy. We cherish voting rights, Republicans want to take voting rights away. We protect women’s rights, they want politicians to tell women when they can get an abortion. When we build bridges, they burn books. When we promote peace, they embrace Putin. When we improve infrastructure, they incite insurrection,” McGovern said.

Secretary of State William Galvin referenced the speech that Republican candidate for secretary of state, Rayla Campbell, gave two weeks ago at the GOP convention in Springfield as an example of what Democrats are up against. In her remarks, Campbell suggested that teachers in Massachusetts were telling five-year-old boys they can have oral sex with each other and referred to Democrats as “rotten devils.”

“They have become the party of suspicion and intimidation and hatred. Just two weeks ago, my Republican opponent stood in Springfield and delivered a vile, homophobic attack on the citizens of our state and all states,” said Galvin, who will need to win his own party’s primary before Campbell is his direct opponent. “We are the party of pride, not of attacks. They are the party of suspicion and hatred. We need to call them out when it occurs.”

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said it makes her “downright furious … but not surprised” that the right is poised to see Roe vs. Wade fall at the Supreme Court and to roll back abortion rights around the country.

“Yes, Massachusetts has strengthened protection of Roe, but understand this: We are under attack,” Warren said. “Just a few weeks ago, Mitch McConnell told us where these extremist Republicans are heading next. If they can take control of Congress and the White House, Mitch McConnell says they’re coming after every state, red or blue, to make abortion illegal across this country. If Mitch McConnell has his way, there will be no safe havens anywhere in America.”

Reproductive Equity Now Executive Director Rebecca Hart Holder asked Democrats to “double down on state politics” as a backstop to the rightward shift at the national level. She said the “anti-abortion” agenda is not simply to ban abortion in red states, but to ban it across the country and to then target other existing policies.

“They are coming for birth control and same sex marriage,” she said. “They are terrified of immigrant and racial justice and they are making it more difficult to vote them out of office.”

Though the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, TX, and Tulsa were not a central theme of any remarks Saturday, Warren did raise the issue of the “epidemic of gun violence” and pointed out that 110 Americans are killed by guns each day.

“And yet, in Washington, not one single Republican is willing to tackle gun violence head-on. Not one Republican politician is willing to take even the smallest steps to improve gun safety. Not one Republican politician is willing to take on the NRA to save lives,” she said.

Like McGovern, Warren also brought up “the big lie” in her remarks and said that Democrats around the country, including in liberal bastions like Massachusetts, need to mobilize to counteract the conservative movement.

“When national Republican leaders tell us they’re coming for our rights, and when state Republican leaders describe efforts to protect ourselves as extreme and radical, then it is time to get angry, deep down angry, and to channel that anger into powerful action,” she said.

Warren, who easily turned away a challenge from Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl in the 2018 U.S. Senate election, tied the front-runner on the GOP side to the national GOP policies and ideas that Democrat after Democrat railed against Saturday.

“Now a Donald Trump wannabe is running for governor right here in Massachusetts. Geoff Diehl has jumped on the extremist bandwagon,” Warren said. “Geoff Diehl can try to talk out of both sides of his mouth on every issue, but at the end of the day, he stands with the white supremacists and January 6 insurrectionists and anti-choice radicals who have taken over the Republican leadership even here in Massachusetts. And that this why he will not be the next governor of this commonwealth.”

At times, though, the Democrats got a bit carried away with their rousing speeches to delegates and let the truth get away from them. U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, for example, boomed to the crowd in Worcester that he and Warren had voted to confirm the nation’s first Black Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, while “every Republican voted no.”

In fact, three Republicans in the U.S. Senate — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and former Mass. governor Mitt Romney of Utah — voted to support Jackson’s confirmation.