In normal times candidates are looking for a strong person on the top of the ballot to increase turnout for people below it who do not have name recognition but share the party of that top name.
As we’ve reported here before, the one constant in this race has been that people do NOT like Martha Coakley (not even her supporters, I’ve run into only 3 who actually like her). Even with the superstars of the Democratic Party around her, she can not draw crowds comparable to Brown.
When you have an unpopular person at the top of the ticket, the dynamic reverses you need races on a local level that people care about to get your core voters to turn out.
But there is no other race, she is alone, she is trailing in the polls and it is cold and snowy. As of 1:44 p.m. there is STILL no person holding a sign for Coakley at ward 6.
The local democratic pols have absolutely no skin in this race and they see the probability of their regular voters ready to vote republican. They are not going to spend their political capital on a race that appears to be lost for no political reward.
There is nothing local at stake
Update: It’s one thing for the local pols to sit back and do nothing, this is quite another:
He is the president of an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) local in Worcester and says that he is one of three officials of the local who is supporting Republican Scott Brown.
There is top-down pressure from AFSCME pressuring locals to support Democrat Martha Coakley, but the president of this local (there are multiple AFSCME locals in Worcester) says he tosses those directives “straight in the garbage.”
Make sure you read the last line in that story.
