Ballot questions are so important for allowing the people to have a voice. It is especially critical in Massachusetts where Democrats control all the Constitutional offices, the entire federal delegation, and a super majority of the legislature. For the sane, it is the only way to stop Beacon Hill’s profligacy and taxpayer abuse.
Last fall, ballot question 4 to stop licenses for illegal immigrants was our way of taking back the state and slowing the local invasion of aliens. Unfortunately, it lost at the polls in November and we cannot try for another statewide repeal for four years!
For me and so many others, the repeal effort to stop these licenses, which will make it easier for illegals to vote, seemed a sure-fire winner that would have helped the entire GOP ticket.
So why did it lose 54 to 46 percent?
Unlike the 2014 effort tanking the automatic gasoline tax hikes, Question 4 did not face the enormous hurdle of a “yes” vote. It is easier to get people to vote “no” than “yes” on a ballot initiative, so they should have been win, easily. You are probably thinking that Massachusetts has just gotten that much crazier, even just since 2014.
While it has, it also appears the initiative’s sponsors did not handle the campaign nearly as well as they should have.
First, the name of the effort was “Fair and Secure Massachusetts.” Most voters don’t know the name of their legislators, so you need a name that describes the issue concisely. In 2014, we made it simple—Tank Automatic Gas Tax hikes.
Our five words described the purpose of the ballot question. Fair and Secure did not. I understand why they named it that, but tactically it was a bad move.
Second, reviewing the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) reports you can see many of the other problems that plagued the effort. Fair and Secure raised twice as much money as the 2014 Tank Automatic Gas Tax Hikes 2, but their expenditures did not follow our lean mean fighting machine mode of operation.
You have to wonder why Fair and Secure paid the Mass GOP attorney David Carr $17,143? That’s a pretty hefty sum. In 2014, we were fortunate to get an attorney to volunteer his time. But even if we had been paying for legal advice, it would not have been a five-figure bill.
What did Carr do to merit such a fee?
Fair and Secure spent $77,125 on consultants out of the total $217,090 raised. That means thirty-five percent of their funds went to consultants. If you add in Carr’s legal fees, they expended 43 percent on legal and consultant fees. Whereas, only $13,000 went to lawn signs. Nearly half of their money went to management.
Fair and Secure also spent $2700 on a Boston conference. When you don’t have the big bucks to advertise on television and radio, you need to make every dollar count. I cannot imagine what sort of conference would have produced $2700 worth of results. For that amount, you could have texted 18,000 voters or robo-called 54,000 voters.
The ultimate problem is the so-called political people behind the effort. They had attempted to put four questions on the ballot and failed. When they finally got enough signatures, they did not know how to communicate the message to voters. Ugh!
Now we are stuck with illegals getting licenses!