Wednesday, January 15, 2003 -- One of the on-going sagas of Massachusetts is how liberal of a state are we. Contrary to the prevailling national opinion, that holds that the Commonwealth is just a little bit to the right of the People’s Republic of China, the sentiment on Beacon Hill blows to the right. There is a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, and a Democratic House Speaker, Tom Finneran, whose social positions -- on abortion and gay marriage -- are to the right of the new governor’s. Fifty-one percent of state voters are unenrolled independents, and no Democratic governor has won election since Michael Dukakis did it in 1986.

Remember him? Republicans certainly do, and one argument Team Bush will surely trot out against Senator John Kerry if he is the Democratic nominee in 2004 is that Kerry is merely another Massachusetts liberal. If the Republicans get creative, they will even dig up campaign ads and news footage from 1982, when Kerry was Dukakis’s actual running mate and number two as lieutenant governor. (Think of another candidate anywhere in America against whom they can do that.)

If John Kerry wants to be president, then he must convince people that he’s not just another Massachusetts liberal. That motivation may be, at least partially, behind his recent praise of the conservative think-tank, the Beacon Hill Institute, which likes to call itself "pro-free market" Kerry recently wrote to the non-profit, anti-tax, and officially-non-partisan, organization in praise of its recent study, Metro Area and State Competitiveness 2002.

"I write to thank you for sending me Beacon Hill Institute’s Metro Area and State Competitiveness 2002," Kerry wrote to the group’s executive director David Tuerck. "The careful way in which authors Jonathan Haughton and Corina Murg quantify ‘competitiveness’ and use this measure to rank the major U.S. cities is impressive and will doubtless inspire further debate on the factors that contribute to comptetiveness." Kerry praised, in particular, the study’s determination of "Boston’s...high-ranking post". (The Boston metropolitan area, which runs from Southern New Hampshire to New Bedford and the Cape, finished third after Seattle and San Francisco in the study.)

Kerry’s letter is smart politics. But it also shows how far he’s come since he was Dukakis’s lieutenant governor. Kerry, after all, made it to the Senate in 1984 after a bruising election fight with Republican activist, the late Ray Shamie. And Shamie helped found the Beacon Hill Institute in 1991.

Meanwhile, state Democrats are reacting to the reality of the state in other ways as well. Some members of the Massachusetts Democratic Party say the state needs a Bill Clinton-like infusion of centricism. Clinton, who helped found the rightward-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, became president after 12 years of Republican rule. Now, less than three months after the loss of the Massachusetts governor’s office to Republican Mitt Romney, a group of Massachusetts Democrats is forming a group to move the party rightward. State senator Richard Moore of Uxbridge, and state representatives Peter Larkin of Pittsfield, Charley Murphy of Burlington and Barry Finegold of Andover, are founding a Massachusetts branch of the Democratic Leadership Council along with two private businessmen, Jonathan Seelig of Polaris Ventures and David Belluck of Riverside Partners.

The reality of Massachusetts politics is that the state has changed. Kerry knows that, and so do the founders of the Massachusetts DLC. For Kerry’s sake, he needs the rest of the country to realize this as well.