Chairman’s Letter
July 2019
Dear Friend,
The soles of our shoes may be wearing thin, but not our drive.
We’ve been knocking on doors across the Bay State, spreading the message of limited government and individual liberty. Every resident who signs up to be a Republican knows what it means.
Personal responsibility. The success of the individual. The courage to stand up and say no to a Beacon Hill Democratic machine barreling down a path towards socialism.
The power in Massachusetts rests in the state Legislature. Since 1990, we’ve had several great Republican governors, but we’ve also had a succession of Democratic House speakers — most of whom have been indicted — who control the structure.
Currently, we have 32 Republicans in the House and six Republicans in the Senate. We can and will do better.
If we can elect 54 Republicans to the House, we can sustain a veto from Governor Charlie Baker, not if, but when, socialist-driven legislation lands on his desk.
My mission, first and foremost, is to support and reelect every single Republican currently serving in the Legislature. We are going district-by-district to defend our incumbents. As someone who knows what it’s like to have the Democrats come after you, I know firsthand early support can be crucial.
There were 637,000 people who voted in the Massachusetts Republican presidential primary in 2016. There are 475,000 registered Republicans in the state. More than 150,000 unenrolled voters voted in the Republican primary. We have compiled a list of those names, and our goal is to knock on the front door of every individual named on that list.
We began our door-knocking campaign at the beginning of May, starting with the 1,750 doors in Representative Marc Lombardo’s home district of Billerica. Since then, our operation has branched out into the neighboring towns of Wilmington and Tewksbury, and beyond.
Statewide, the numbers look like this — 1.5 million Democrats, 475,000 Republicans, and 2.5 million unenrolled.
Our top priority is to build our Republican team of voters. People say you can’t win in Massachusetts, yet I won in Massachusetts. A “firebrand” conservative. Imagine that?
Yes, you can win in Massachusetts.
And yes, every vote counts.
Consider Taunton state Representative Shaunna O’Connell, elected to the House for the first time in 2010 by only a little more than 30 votes after she edged out an entrenched Democrat.
Since then, she has been one of our party’s most important voices for limited government on Beacon Hill.
President Donald Trump received more than 43 percent of the vote in 70 Massachusetts district. There are districts in Massachusetts in the top 15 of that list, several of which saw more than half of their voters back Trump during the general election, that are held by Democrats.
Together, we are going after every single one of them. We’re not just playing to be in the game — we are playing to win.
Over the last several months, we have been engaging with as many Republican town and city committees as possible. The first edition of our new quarterly newsletter focused specifically on them. Future editions will also focus on our teams at the grassroots level.
We want them to know that we need them on the field with us.
We will build our ranks in this state one person at a time. The message is crystal clear: ours is the party of freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise.
The choice is also clear — capitalism, or socialism.
We are now busy driving that message home, in every corner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
When we ask people to make a decision between what our party has to offer and what a radical, socialist-driven agenda has to offer, we expect to win every time.
I got elected to take on the Democrats. Just as important, I got elected to grow the Massachusetts Republican Party. I want to bring us all together. Let’s share ideas and information. Let’s focus on hope and unity.
We might not agree on everything, but something we can agree on is this — we have to beat the Democrats.
As President Abraham Lincoln, a fellow Republican, famously said, drawing on a passage from the Bible, “a house divided, against itself, cannot stand.”
I say a house that is unified can accomplish great things.
Together, we can make Massachusetts great again.
No dream is too big, no campaign is too small.
Yours,
Jim