Kennealy scored only 14.1 percent of the delegate vote at the party’s state convention in Worcester last weekend. That vote came hours later than scheduled and amid what was described as a chaotic event, causing some delegates to leave early and others to head for the open bars sponsored by now endorsed candidate Mike Minogue. Minogue, a former medical device company CEO, has poured some $12.5 million into his campaign so far, including a six-figure donation to effectively buy his own superdelegates to that convention and dominate the caucus process — the key both to sewing up the endorsement and, if possible, eliminating the competition. Minogue’s remaining competitor will be former MBTA general manager Brian Shortsleeve, who just barely cleared the hurdle with 15.5 percent of the delegate vote.
The same hurdles exist on the Democratic side and have caused similar problems. At an equally chaotic 1990 convention, then Boston University President John Silber managed to stay in the gubernatorial race with 15.45 percent of the vote — a mere 22 delegate votes — before going on to win the Democratic primary.
The system is rarely friendly to political outsiders — as Harvard professor Danielle Allen found out the hard way in 2022. She jumped into the race for governor in June 2021, more than six months before then-Attorney General Maura Healey announced her entry. By mid-February Allen ended her campaign, denouncing the party’s caucus system that selects delegates.
“Our campaign foundered inside the Massachusetts Democratic Party ballot-access process, where candidates compete with one another to get their name on the ballot in roughly 600 winner-take-all local caucuses,” she wrote in an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal that May.
And while party rules technically do not require delegates to vote for particular candidates, the candidate who gets his or her supporters to the caucus to be elected as delegates essentially wins the day.
Allen, a professor of government, also pointed to the broader problem, certainly here in Massachusetts.
“Too many people no longer saw a place for themselves in political parties,” she wrote in that same piece. “Active volunteers for my campaign — ones who were willing to host organizing house parties, call voters, and tell their neighbors about us — weren’t willing to enroll in my party on behalf of our campaign. The majority of Massachusetts voters are no longer enrolled in a political party.
“Yet the parties control which candidates make it to the ballot for the state primary,” she added.
Welcome to the catch-22 of Massachusetts politics.
And it could come back to haunt Democrats again this year, in the race between incumbent Senator Ed Markey, who remains a darling of his party’s political establishment, and Representative Seth Moulton, who attempted the same strategy as Allen of getting some independents to reenroll in time for the February caucus — which then become do-or-die preludes to getting 15 percent at the party’s May convention.
As Jim Smith, a longtime member of the Democratic State Committee and a Markey supporter, told the Globe in March, “[Moulton] is a sitting congressman. If he can’t get the 15 percent, the rule is flawed.”
Yes, it is — and yes, it has been. The parties shouldn’t need further examples of exactly how dysfunctional that part of the political system has become.
Conventions to determine ballot access — and disenfranchise 65 percent of Massachusetts voters — should have been a relic of history long ago. Abandoning the 15 percent rule at party conventions would at least indicate to those engaged voters who aren’t willing to label themselves Democrats or Republicans that “we hear you.” Certainly no candidate for statewide office these days can win without the support of those unenrolled voters.
The signature requirements mandated by state law (10,000 for governor or Senate) are already sufficient to deter unserious candidates. A majority of states don’t have conventions at all to determine primary ballot access. Others have hybrid systems. New Mexico, for example, requires extra signatures for those who don’t receive convention approval — a not-bad alternative to the Massachusetts do-or-die system.
State party conventions have become an anachronism, as this latest Republican debacle showed. If the party regulars must gather to listen to candidate speeches, well fine. Knock yourselves out. Enjoy the open bar.
Just stop pretending this is a critical step on the road to a democratic outcome.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.
