Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign paid a visit to western Massachusetts this weekend, raised a bunch of Berkshire bucks and rallied the state's Democrats.
Not that they need much rallying at this point.
In the eight days since President Joe Biden called it quits on his campaign and endorsed Harris, we've seen Massachusetts Democrat after Massachusetts Democrat come out in support of the VP.
"The bottom line is people are excited about Kamala Harris, and it's unusual for Democrats because we wrangle over lunch," U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern told NEPM's The Fabulous 413. "Nobody was forced to come together. People genuinely are excited about her candidacy."
And that has translated into winning over the state's convention delegates, too.
Chris Lisinski from the State House News Service joined us, and talked about that process and what it all means.
Chris Lisinski, SHNS: Yeah, so Massachusetts Democrats had some meetings last week, shortly after President Biden announced he would step down from the race, and came together very quickly in support of Vice President Harris. That means she's got all of the support from Bay State Democrats heading into the party's convention in Chicago.
And we're not alone. That seems to be a trend in many other states. You know, nothing is definite and certain until we actually get to the convention and votes to make her the nominee. But all signs point to very significant party infrastructure in Massachusetts and elsewhere lining up behind the vice president.
Sam Hudzik, NEPM: And, of course, there isn't doubt about whether Harris or any Democrat would be able to get Massachusetts' 11 electoral votes in November. But the Mass. GOP is still chiming in on all this. What are you hearing from the state's Republicans?
A couple of different things. Quickly, they expressed confidence and tried to link Harris to Biden — unsurprisingly, she did serve as his vice president — and argued that her policies are not that different from Joe Biden's. And they think that Republicans will have a good case to make to voters either way. They're also linking her specifically to the way that the Biden administration has handled the U.S. Border over the past four years, which could be more of a salient issue for voters this cycle.
To Beacon Hill now. It's been a certainty that Massachusetts needed to do something about its gun laws ever since the Supreme Court knocked down a New York law a couple of years ago. And with Gov. Maura Healey signing a new gun law last week, that Bruen decision remains on folks’ minds. What does this new law do, and is it susceptible to a legal challenge from gun rights groups?
There's a whole lot of different things in this law. It Covers a bunch of different areas. Some of the biggest takeaways are new restrictions on what's referred to as ghost guns, which are typically untraceable, don't have serial numbers. It also has a pretty sizable expansion to the red flag law that dates back to, I believe, 2018, which allows more people to petition a court to remove someone's firearms temporarily if they're deemed a threat to themselves or others. And it's got new restrictions on where firearms are not permitted in public, including schools, polling places and government buildings.
The NRA has already said that it plans to challenge this new law in court. We haven't seen an official filing yet, as far as I know, but that is something to watch out for, for certain.
You said schools. I mean, weren't guns already prohibited in schools?
Yeah, that's an area that there was a little bit of disagreement among lawmakers. I believe their goal is to make it simply more explicit and apply to every single school without any potential gaps.
Well, getting that gun bill off their to-do list is a huge deal, but state lawmakers still have a mountain of work to do, and we're running out of days when the Legislature usually gets most of its work done. The session ends this week on Wednesday. What's left and how hard is it to pass big legislation after that date?
If I tried to tell you every single thing that's left, we'd probably be here until Tuesday. But the biggest ones, of course, are some bond bills authorizing the state to borrow money to pay for housing and job creation investments. Those definitely have to get done and are still tied up in private House-Senate negotiations.
There's also a whole slew of different health care items stuck in the Beacon Hill bottleneck, including some hospital oversight reforms, some prescription drug pricing controls. So expect health care to be a really big focus in these last few days up here.
