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The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 28 episode of the “Say More” podcast.
Anna Kusmer: Welcome to “Say More” from Boston Globe Opinion. I’m Anna Kusmer, filling in for Jim Dao. On this month’s political panel, we’re going to dig into the current debate on rent control and Maura Healey’s bumpy ride to re-election.
But first, we want to discuss a Massachusetts legend and his final words for Democrats. Longtime Congressman Barney Frank died this month of congestive heart failure.
But in true Barney style, he went down swinging, sharing tough words for the left and the Democratic Party in general. I’m joined by Abdallah Fayyad and Joan Vennochi from Globe Opinion to discuss Frank’s final message. Thanks, both of you, for being here.
Abdallah Fayyad: Thanks for having us.
Joan Vennochi: Nice to be here.
Kusmer: Frank is a liberal icon in the United States. He was a 16-term congressman from Massachusetts, the district which includes Brookline and Newton, and he basically used his dying words not to yell at Trump, but rather to call out the left, saying Democrats have a “vote-repelling platform.”
Joan, you covered Frank for much of his career. Did you have any run-ins with him?
Vennochi: I didn’t cover him as thoroughly as other people that I’ve written about, but yeah, it’s impossible to cover Barney Frank without having at least one run-in, and the one I recall had to do with a column I wrote from 2004, which is a long time ago, about redistricting.
In that column, I interviewed Margaret Heckler, who was a Republican congresswoman, who claimed that because of redistricting, she had lost her seat.
I wrote the column, she was on the record, and Barney called and basically yelled at me and told me that I’d gotten it all wrong and it was a disaster and it was a very, really uncomfortable conversation. But I didn’t write a correction.
Kusmer: So Frank is known for his brand of long-term strategy, political incrementalism, and deal-making. One example is when he was fighting for gay rights, as he did for most of his career, he was careful not to go for marriage equality right away. He started with things like gays in the military or getting security clearance for people who are openly gay.
He thinks many Democrats are too focused on what he considers fringe-like issues, like letting trans girls play girls’ sports, and says Democrats should start smaller with issues that are more popular with the base. This actually reminds me of the trouble Seth Moulton got in last year when he said something similar, particularly about trans girls playing girls’ sports.
What do you think of this argument, Abdallah, that the Democrats are not focusing enough on incrementalism, coalition-building, and they’re maybe being too ambitious with their platforms?
Fayyad: I think it’s a really tricky question. Particularly because the Democratic coalition is more fragile than it’s ever been. Because the Republican Party has really become the party of Trump, and so anti-democratic at its core, the Democrats have to fill a lot of gaps.
That means being the party of those former Republicans that don’t really have a political home anymore, and they’re generally more conservative on economic policy. So the Democrat is trying to court those voters at the same time the Democrat is trying to court young voters, people on the left, and respond at the same time to Trump’s economic populism with their own brand of economic populism.
Even when you look at demographics like economic or income demographics of voters, more and more college-educated and wealthy suburbanites are Democrats now than they used to be. If you’re going to pass tax policy that is more worker-friendly and pass economic legislation that’s more worker-friendly, that’s more aimed at lifting up the poor and the working class, inherently there are going to be divergent interests in the party.
It’s a tightrope that Democrats have to walk down. And I don’t know that they’re always doing it successfully, but particularly when it comes to culture, I do think this critique that the party has been hijacked by the left is a little bit overblown. Because by and large, Democrats are still voting for Democrats.
You have a lot of left-wing politicians that are put in this category, like Zohran Mamdani, that can beat, yes, a scandal-plagued, but a former, almost three-term governor of New York State, for mayor of New York City.
So, I think a lot of this politics can translate to electability. You just need the right messenger, and you kind of need to be smart about it. But, there’s always purity tests. I think there are always purists. That’s always existed, but I don’t think it’s particularly bad now.
Vennochi: I agree with Abdallah. Democrats can get elected running on, I don’t want to say extreme platforms, but a progressive platform like a Mamdani.
But then what do you actually accomplish? I think what Barney Frank was sort of talking about in terms of, particularly from the lawmaking perspective, the old maxim, “The perfect is the enemy of the possible.” And do you strive for the possible?
I happen to think that is how things get done. And that may be out of favor right now. I think the problem the Democrats have right now is that you might not be able to do that anymore in today’s environment because the possible has become the impossible.
But the tendency to demonize, which I know is a strong word, but to demonize people who are saying there’s a middle here, and sort of take that as, ‘Well, you’re against trans, you’re against gay people, you’re against this, you’re against that,’ and not see it as a means to an end, the better end.
I think that’s what he kinda stood for and what he was speaking to in that last month of his life.
Kusmer: Abdallah, Barney Frank was famous for being a champion of gay rights in Congress. Do you think it’s hypocritical that he’s not more sympathetic to the cause of trans civil rights?
Fayyad: I don’t know that it’s hypocritical because I think Barney Frank was very vocal about LGBT issues broadly, and I think he often took the stance of, “This is what I believe in. I don’t think it’s possible right now, so we’re going to take the more incremental step.”
I don’t know that I would go so far as to call him a hypocrite. I think his main critique is one of strategy, and I think that’s a very valid debate to have.
But I think my main disagreement over the strategy is that sometimes politicians get too bogged down into thinking about what’s possible, and I think there is truth to the idea that you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose, as Mario Cuomo used to say.
I think Democrats have just forgotten to campaign in poetry. I think voters are okay with watching their lawmakers govern in prose. I think they want more poetry on the campaign trail. And I think that’s okay because campaigns and elections are the opportunity for politicians to actually shape public opinion. You’re fighting for something.
So tell us what you’re fighting for. You don’t have to promise that you’re going to do it on day one. I think that’s totally fine. But you have to promise us that we’re moving towards something.
Obamacare is a great example of something that was packaged as something that is incremental, and absolutely, it is incremental. It has fundamentally changed how we as Americans think of healthcare and the government’s role in making sure that everybody’s covered. Obviously, it’s a very far step from Medicare for All or universal coverage, but it helped push that conversation.
But what was Obama campaigning on in 2008? He was campaigning on the fundamental message that healthcare is a human right, that this is something that the government has to make sure that everybody has. How we get there doesn’t really matter right now, but this is the vision I have.
That’s campaigning in poetry, and I think that’s what Democrats need to do more of. And that’s why I brought up Mamdani earlier, too. I think he’s really good at that, too. He campaigned in poetry and has a big, grand vision for New York. I don’t think anybody expects him to transform New York like this, but I do expect that a lot of what he’s doing now will be appreciated by a lot of people, yes, as incremental progress, but like there’s a vision.
“Where are we moving towards?” I think he’s really good at articulating that. So I think that’s part of what’s missing from the debate here.
Kusmer: So Barney Frank lived his final years in the state of Maine, and in a recent CNN interview right before his death, Jake Tapper asked Frank about why he endorsed Governor Janet Mills over upstart oyster farmer Graham Platner.
Frank is worried that Platner is really good at making the most out of people’s anger, but it won’t be able to translate to legislating essentially. I’m curious what you think of this.
Vennochi: I agree that he’s tapped into anger, and I guess there’s a Trump-like quality to that. Platner still hasn’t actually won the Senate seat, so the first thing he has to do is marshal the anger, get enough people to vote to beat Susan Collins, and the polls are showing him ahead.
He’s under pretty heavy attack right now. I don’t think it’s gonna be as easy as it was getting Janet Mills out of the way. But I do think that when he gets there, it’s going to be really, really hard to achieve some of the things that he’s promising right now.
I understand the need for poetry, I understand the mission and the goals, and the Democrats have to lay out exactly what they stand for and where they wanna get, but there have been some really powerful speakers and advocates for what Platner is taking up right now.
Bernie Sanders for one, Elizabeth Warren for another. To get to that point where you’ve got a critical mass of people in Congress that are gonna make that happen, I don’t wanna be cynical, but it’s just so hard. It’s sad that it is, but it’s just really hard.
Fayyad: But isn’t part of it that obviously no one expects Platner to get elected in Maine and then change the country.
Vennochi: Some people do.
Fayyad: Maybe, maybe so, but he’s one of 100 in the Senate, he’s one of 535 members in Congress. Overall, he’s not even running for president. He won’t have any kind of authority there. By design, he’s going to have to build a coalition.
We see this happen in Congress maybe less often than used to be, but if you want to pass something, you’re going to have to work with people who disagree with you. I think that’s perfectly legitimate.
Vennochi: That’s how Obamacare came to be. You know, John McCain and Ted Kennedy, reaching across the aisle.
Fayyad: Right. Exactly. Yeah.
I think part of the appeal here for Platner’s base, is they’re sending somebody, or they’re trying to send somebody to Congress who is more like Bernie Sanders, more like Elizabeth Warren and that type. And they are trying to increase their critical mass.
That doesn’t mean that they expect the economy to fundamentally change just because Platner was elected, but it means that he’s telling people, “This is where I’d like to go,” and then it is his job to try to get as close to that as possible.
If that means compromising and passing bipartisan measures that help you get there, infrastructure bills that invest in fisheries and farms, and things like that, I think he can go back to his constituents and say that he’s starting to deliver on some of those things.
But I don’t think that means when he’s campaigning he should say like, “Oh, I don’t think this is possible, so here’s a half-measured approach to how we can get there.”
Vennochi: No, that would not be a successful campaign strategy. But I’d like to hear a little bit more about when he got there, what he would actually do. How would he do? Who would he reach across the aisle to? Who does he see as a possible ally?
Fayyad: No, those are good questions. I agree with you.
Kusmer: I want to go now to the question of rent control, which you have both written about recently.
Abdallah, you wrote that you are generally pro-rent control, but you are not in favor of a proposed initiative in Massachusetts right now. Can you explain that?
Fayyad: Yeah. I think the housing crisis, not just in Massachusetts, but across the country, requires all kinds of solutions. I don’t think it’s just a supply issue. I also think there’s a demand issue, and I think that means you attack the problem with both supply-side policies, like building more housing, and also demand-side policies on regulating prices. Rent control is just one tool that lawmakers shouldn’t keep off the table.
The problem with this ballot question in particular is that it is essentially introducing what would be the strictest rent control policy nationwide. It is capping annual rent increases at inflation or a maximum of 5 percent. So if you break down what that means, that means if you have an apartment anywhere in Massachusetts and this passes, rent will never actually increase in real dollar values. It can only decrease in real dollar terms because if inflation is over 5 percent, landlords won’t be able to match it, which means that rent actually relatively would decline for you, even if the dollar figure is not down. It’s just because of inflation.
And that is so strict that it’s bound to fail, I think, as a policy in Massachusetts because it leaves very little room for landlords to make money. Or when the economy’s doing better, for developers to have incentive to build. I think there are all these problems with it. It’s not well considered, and I think this is Beacon Hill’s problem and they should address it in the legislature, not at the ballot box.
Kusmer: Joan, you wrote about how developers are basically saying, “We will not be able to get bank financing for our proposed projects if this ballot measure passes.” Do you think that’s actually true, or do you think this is a way to manipulate public opinion before elections in November?
Vennochi: Well, first, on the overall question, I’d say what Abdallah said.
I think a big problem with this ballot question is that it mandates for every city and town in Massachusetts. If it was a local option scenario where Cambridge could decide that they wanted this, that would make some sense. But to mandate it across the board, I just think that’s bad.
As far as sympathy for the developer, I talked to the CEO of Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, and he was very convincing in showing me how the numbers work and how hard it is to make money as a developer. And how just the thought of this option has chilled financing.
It is hard to buy into that. You just want to say, “Well, couldn’t you make just a little bit less money?” And he had a whole long answer to that that I didn’t entirely understand.
But what Abdallah said, essentially it’s freezing rent at a certain level, it is true that who’s gonna give money if they already know that on the other side of it, it’s not gonna be generating as much revenue as they want. So I do think there are legitimate reasons for concern.
I will throw out one other thing. I’m sure no one here watches regular television like I do, but they’re running ads right now that are really scary, which make me want to vote for the rent control ballot question.
It’s the whispery voice, and it’s this really, really sort of scary. It’s [trying] to scare people into voting against it. I just kinda wonder about that as a tactic. They probably have done focus groups, and it probably works, but my instinct is to not support it. But when I see the ad, I think, “Hmm, I wonder.”
Fayyad: The majority of Massachusetts voters support rent control. I think they would support this ballot measure. If it gets on the ballot, and everything is finalized, I think it’s on its way to passing.
But I think it’s a loss either way. If the opposition campaign succeeds with this fear-mongering campaign, then rent control fails and the Beacon Hill lawmakers will say, “Hey, see? We put it to the voters and they don’t want rent control again.” Just like when the prohibition on rent control came along in the 1990s by ballot measure.
Lawmakers have used that as an excuse ever since: “Voters don’t want this. There was a referendum. Voters don’t want this.”
Vennochi: Right. They wouldn’t even let Michelle Wu have the local option to do it when she went to the legislature, so they’re just cowardly.
Fayyad: Yeah.
Kusmer: Abdallah, in your piece, you argue that this shouldn’t even be a ballot measure. Rent control should not be a ballot measure. This should be like a legislative solution. Can you discuss the difference there and what you would like to see?
Fayyad: The reason I think a legislative fix is better is because as proposed, this ballot question is across the board. Like Joan mentioned, this is across the board for every city and town in Massachusetts, which means that rent control would just become the law of the state, and there’s no way to opt out of it.
I think a much better route, which could have also been a ballot measure actually, is if it was just to end the prohibition on rent control, so that if cities and towns want to impose their own form of rent control, as Mayor Michelle Wu proposed in Boston, they can do that for their jurisdictions.
But a policy that makes sense in Boston doesn’t necessarily make sense in Western Massachusetts. I think cities and towns should have the right to design their own policy when it comes to rent control, and I think there can be a lot of debate there as to what’s good policy. But when you’re designing this, I think it has to be tailored to the town. You need lawmakers involved.
It’s a better legislative fix than something broad-based across the board. The only form that would have worked as a ballot measure is to just end the rent control prohibition, the ban on rent control statewide, and then give lawmakers at the local level the ability to design their own policies.
Kusmer: Do you think that ballot measures are sometimes like stand-ins for an indictment of the legislative process? Like it’s when citizen groups just say, “Hey, we’re tired of the legislature not fixing a problem that we all agree is here.”
And then we get into the situation where we have like an imperfect ballot measure that our legislators should have been kind of on this problem this whole time, and they haven’t been solving it.
Vennochi: Right. In the case of rent control, the lawmakers have just been kicking the can down the road and just refusing to take it up.
The other example in Massachusetts right now is the ballot question that passed about — we don’t want to get into all the grisly details but — whether or not the auditor could audit the House and Senate, the legislature.
That’s kind of a proxy for people feeling that there’s a complete lack of transparency in how the government operates in Massachusetts, and so it’s become this cause célèbre when actually the legislature could address it just by saying, “Hey, here are our books. Just take a look. It’s all here. You don’t need a ballot question to have somebody look into it.”
Yeah, I think it’s frustration with the way Beacon Hill is working.
Kusmer: Just for our own edification, Abdallah, are there other states or cities that you think have the best rent control that you’d like to see Massachusetts follow more in that direction?
Fayyad: Yeah, I think there are plenty of examples that Massachusetts could follow, but specifically cities and towns like Boston or Cambridge could take into account.
One great example of a rent stabilization policy that has largely worked is in Washington, DC. The policy in DC is designed to cap rent increases at inflation plus 2 percent, a maximum of 10 percent when inflation is really high, and a maximum of 5 percent for seniors and people with disabilities.
So when times are good, that means that landlords can still increase the rent, not just inflation, but an additional 2 percent, which means that their net income would increase. It also has specific carve-outs for repairs, that you can raise the rents if you’re gonna renovate your building and make sure that there’s upkeep.
I think there are definitely models and jurisdictions that Boston can look to, that Massachusetts can look to, of rent control policies that work. I think that’s the problem that lawmakers have ignored for so long and why we’re at this juncture to begin with, which is that Beacon Hill has continued to say no to rent control just because of the ballot measure in the 1990s, and it’s said that this is what voters want.
But there has been no appetite to really deal with the housing crisis from the demand side at the legislature. I think that’s why voters are taking it into their own hands. And I think, obviously, they have the right to do that, so that’s where we’re headed.
Kusmer: I want to end our conversation today talking about Governor Maura Healey. She maintains a comfortable double-digit lead against her Republican challengers. But her personal approval ratings are struggling, and I think they’re the lowest they’ve been. The number one issue that people have is the high cost of living.
Joan, what are you hearing from voters and strategists about people’s frustrations with the governor?
Vennochi: Well, I think the frustration with Maura Healey is interesting because she’s trying to do a version of what Charlie Baker did, and he was the most popular governor in America, supposedly, and very popular here in Massachusetts. He was doing what they called in the Clinton years “triangulating,” or finding the middle.
I think Healey has been trying to do that, and in these times, the middle just isn’t where people want you to be.
You’re displeasing the conservatives. You’re displeasing the liberals. People want you to stand for something, as we were talking about earlier. I think that kinda seeps into the likability factor.
She’s had some tough issues to deal with, too. The migrant crisis, the fight with the Trump administration, and cutting of federal funding. They’re just tough, tough issues, and she honestly doesn’t look like she’s having that good of a time dealing with them. I think some of that sorta seeps into people’s perception of her.
Kusmer: Abdallah, do you think that she would benefit from playing less to the middle or do you think that’s sort of an obvious strategy in a place like Massachusetts?
Fayyad: That’s a good question. I think what really drags any incumbent is the cost of living. So I think no matter what she does, even if she is bolder and more ambitious and passes all my dream lefty legislation, I don’t think that’s gonna solve her political problems in the near term because when it comes to an intractable crisis like the housing crisis, you’re not going to see results for years down the road, and people are still going to be paying rent every month.
I think, given how high the cost of living is, any incumbent governor right now would suffer from lower approval ratings.
I also think you can’t over-interpret these numbers, or you shouldn’t over-interpret these numbers because she’s cruising to re-election. Unfortunately, this is a symptom of how uncompetitive elections are in Massachusetts. But it’s not really counting as political baggage for her, at least in the near term.
Maybe she has presidential ambitions later on. Who knows? But for now, I don’t think it’s going to really impact her governance.
Vennochi: I agree with that. I think an interesting sort of sidelight into what’s happening in Massachusetts is both parties are really losing registered members. Republicans are down to I think maybe 11 percent. Democrats, I’m forgetting the percentage, but the big number is the Independents.
I think it’s a little bit harder to figure out where that big group of people actually is on a lot of issues.
Kusmer: We’re historically the liberal state with popular Republican governors. We’re the land of Mitt Romney and Charlie Baker. Do you think that that era of sort of popular Republicans is over in Massachusetts?
Vennochi: Well, once the MAGA movement drove the Mitt Romneys and the Charlie Bakers out of the party, it left it with the extremes.
On social issues, I don’t see any way that Massachusetts voters would ever vote for somebody that represents those extremes on social issues. But the independent base might be a little bit more fiscally conservative and looking again with the legislature sort of running amok and sort of being seen as this sort of secretive entity, the push for more transparency, that could push people for saying, “Look the Democrats are basically in power. We’re looking for a new leader and a new vision for how we wanna get out of this.”
Kusmer: What do you think Massachusetts as a state loses when we don’t have a good kind of competitive governor race? Do you think that might make the current governor more complacent, less bold if they don’t have a serious kind of legitimate challenger from the right?
Vennochi: I think we miss a real debate.
Fayyad: I think it’s just bad for democracy. It’s bad for holding elected officials accountable. Ultimately, elections are about accountability, and if you can just cruise to re-election, even if you’re doing things that people aren’t happy with, I think democracy’s really not functioning the way it should.
I think a big part of it is that the Republican Party’s too homogeneous, and it has been turned into a party solely about Trump and his petty grievances, and that just doesn’t work in Massachusetts.
If the GOP wants to be competitive here, they just have to not take their cues from the national party. Obviously, it’s hard to do that, but yeah, I think ultimately that’s where we are right now. The lack of competition is really bad for democracy.
Kusmer: Abdallah Fayyad is a writer for Globe Ideas. Joan Vennochi is a columnist for Globe Opinion. Thank you both so much for being here.
Vennochi: Thank you for having us.
Fayyad: Thanks for having us.
Listen to more “Say More” episodes at globe.com/saymore and wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show, please follow us and leave us a review. You can email us at saymore@globe.com.
Kara Mihm of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Anna Kusmer can be reached at anna.kusmer@globe.com.
