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- Aug 7, 2012
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Marsha Mirkin, PhD is a Professor of Psychology at Lasell College in Massachusetts.
She wrote this column for the Denver Post after the first debate.
She wrote this column for the Denver Post after the first debate.
Here I am, a resident of Massachusetts listening to my former Governor
speak convincingly and with seeming conviction at the Denver debate.
I was startled by my Déjà vu experience and by the assumptions held by
my out-of-town friends about Mr. Romney's governorship. So, as an
editor and author of articles and texts about social and political
contexts, I wanted to reach out to my distant neighbors in Colorado
and share my understanding of Mr. Romney's governorship and the
implications for the Presidency. Massachusetts is known as a liberal
state, but we often vote for Republican governors, and the three
governors who immediately preceded Mr. Romney were Republicans. Mr.
Romney was a one term governor who left office with a 31% approval
rating, the 3rd lowest in the entire country. What does our
experience in Massachusetts say to the country?
Mr. Romney claims to have experience reaching across the aisle. Maybe
he did do some reaching, but not much of it went toward the Democrats.
In his first two years of office, he vetoed legislation at more than
twice the rate of Republican predecessor Governor Weld. Governor
Romney had a record 800 vetoes (most of which were overturned,
sometimes unanimously). One example is when the legislature provided
a budget amendment to stop contracting with companies that outsource
state work to other countries. Governor Romney vetoed the provision.
This meant that he supported outsourcing jobs at the expense of U.S.
workers. He also started a huge campaign to unseat Democratic
legislators, but failed and ended up with even fewer Republican seats
than before he took office.
Governor Romney correctly claims that Massachusetts rose to #1 in
education-but it was based on former Governor Weld's education reform
plan. Governor Romney moved in the opposite direction--he vetoed bills
that would have strengthened preschool education. However, the issue is not so much how he voted, but that Mr. Romney won the governorship by presenting himself in one way, as a social and fiscal moderate (some saw him as a social progressive), and by the end of his single term, he had acted in an entirely different way. He said during his campaign that he favore stem cell research and then vetoeda bill to fund it. He argued for a lower minimum wage than the state legislature ended up passing (over his veto). He vetoed a bill funding hate crimes prevention, and took back money approved by a former Republican governor for a bullying prevention program. He denied all requests for commutations and pardons, including one from a soldier serving in Iraq whose was convicted at age 13 for a BB gun incident. He vetoed emergency contraception. He raised many fees in my state-even quadrupling the gasoline delivery fees.