Baker takes issue with Trump; won't vote for him
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A day after Donald Trump thumped the GOP field in the Massachusetts presidential primary, Gov. Charlie Baker, facing external pressures to become a more active player in his party's presidential contest, went a step further Wednesday in rejecting Trump as a suitable nominee for his party in November.
Baker, who previously said he would not vote for Trump in Tuesday's primary, joined with other Republican Party leaders at the national level in stating he would not support the New York businessman should Trump become the nominee.
The popular governor, a moderate Republican who touts his willingness to work with Democrats, said he was unwilling to concede the inevitability of Trump's candidacy, and accused the media and political pundit class of prematurely writing the postmortem on the Republican primary contest.
"I said I wasn't going to vote for Donald Trump yesterday and I didn't, and I don't plan to vote for him in November, but I'm not willing to concede with 35 states to go that he's going to be the Republican nominee," Baker told reporters after attending an elementary school assembly in North Andover to celebrate Dr. Seuss and reading.
Trump rolled to a resounding victory in the Massachusetts presidential primary Tuesday night, drawing from both registered Republican and unenrolled voters as more than 630,000 voters cast Republican primary ballots, eclipsing turnout of the 2008 contest between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain.
Baker would not say who he sees as having the most viable path to block Trump's surge to the nomination, but expressed frustration that after the Super Tuesday results so many pundits in the media and political consulting class appeared ready to declare both races over.
"If I were a Sanders supporter or if I were Bernie Sanders or any of the Republican candidates it would annoy me that people are deciding that this is over before half the ballots have actually been cast," Baker said.
Asked if he might support the Democratic nominee should Trump take the nomination, Baker said, "I'm not much of a fan of Hillary Clinton, let's put it that way." He said nothing of Sanders, and urged reporters to let the process play out when asked about a possible third-party candidate.
Trump captured nearly 50 percent of the vote on the Republican side Tuesday night, followed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who were essentially tied at 18 percent. Baker said he had no insight into why the Republican and independent voters that helped sweep him into office in 2014 might be flocking to Trump, who he has described as lacking the temperament and substance to be president.
"I think the voters who supported me supported me because they wanted somebody who was going to focus on the work, and that's what I plan to do, continue to focus on the work, and I think the rest of it to some extent is certainly nationally important but I think what voters care about here is how I'm doing in the job they voted for me to do, which is to serve as governor of Massachusetts," Baker said.
Trump, at his victory rally in Florida Tuesday night where he was introduced by Baker's previous choice for president, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, countered charges that his nomination would irrevocably fracture the Republican Party. Some Republican leaders, including Nebraska Sen. Benjamin Sasse, said that if Trump is the nominee Republicans will have to find a third-party candidate.
"We have expanded the Republican Party. When you look at what's happened in South Carolina and you see the kind of numbers that we got in terms of extra people coming in they came from the Democratic Party, or the Democrat Party and they were Democrats and long-time Democrats and they were never gonna switch and they all switched and there were independents," Trump said.
Republican primary turnout in some states on Tuesday night, including the battleground of Virginia, reached historic proportions. The numbers, Trump said, reflected enthusiasm among GOP voters that might be lacking on the Democratic side.
"I'm a unifier. I know people are going to find that a little hard to believe, but believe me. I am a unifier," Trump said.
Baker downplayed the idea that Republicans could show up in Cleveland for the national convention in July unsure of who the nominee will be.
"I think anything that happens between now and then needs to play out based on the facts. I don't anticipate that there will be a brokered convention, and again I think that's pure hypothetical, and I think that's part of the problem here. You guys are trying to write the story in June when in fact we're still barely into the month of March," Baker said.
Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior advisor to former Gov. Mitt Romney at the both the State House and his two national presidential campaigns, noted during an interview on Boston Herald Radio on Wednesday that the 2012 Super Tuesday results were similar to this year's. Romney won six states on that day to Rick Santorum's three and Newt Gingrich's one victory.
"Four years ago Romney was basically declared the presumptive nominee. Now the race went on for some weeks after that, but it became impossible for his opponents to catch up and I think we're in the same situation with Trump right now, and if you look at the calendar going forward, it's not very kind to Trump's opponents," Fehrnstrom said.
Romney plans to hold a press conference on Thursday morning at the University of Utah where he plans to discuss the state of the 2016 race. While the former GOP standardbearer has expressed serious concerns about the direction of the race, Fehrnstrom dismissed the suggestions that Romney might get into the race as a third-party candidate.
Mary Lou Daxland, the president of the Massachusetts Republican Assembly, said she plans to support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as long as he's in the race, but would get behind Trump if he becomes the nominee.
Daxland was one of the conservative Massachusetts Republican State Committee members targeted by Baker on Tuesday who lost her seat, but she remains the head of MARA, which bills itself as the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
Asked about Baker refusing to support Trump, Daxland said, "That's the establishment. That's just...wow. That just shows that he is lockstep with the establishment and he's going to go exactly that way."
Fehrnstrom said the rallying process around Trump could take longer than usual due to his polarizing persona, but he downplayed the idea that the Republican Party was fracturing around Trump.
"If it's coming apart at the seams, it's because our turnout is setting new records," Fehrnstrom said, predicting a "race to the bottom" if Democrats and Republicans both nominate candidates with high unfavorability ratings in Trump and Hillary Clinton.
"It's going to look like something out of a Transformers movie," he said. "It's going to be a real ugly knock-down fight."
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