By Craig Sandler
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
(This article replaces the Weekly Roundup this week.)
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MARCH 3, 2005…..Gov. Romney, attracting national notice but struggling with the perception at home that he's out of step with his own constituents, received danger signals on key issues in the inaugural State House News Poll.
A majority of those surveyed said they disagree with their governor about whether it should be legal to create human embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells for medical therapy and research. And more respondents doubted the governor's job creation plan than expressed confidence in the proposal.
And a political warning bell sounded for the first-term governor, as his unfavorable rating surpassed 40 percent. The poll indicated he's well-thought of even among some people who don't think he's turning in a strong performance as governor: his personal approval rating was 55 percent, but his positive job-performance rating was 46.3 percent. Another 8.3 rated his performance "average."
The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4.8 percent. Other findings from the survey of 404 Massachusetts residents polled Monday and Tuesday:
-- Romney lost a hypothetical matchup with state Attorney General Thomas Reilly by almost 10 points: 49.1 percent to 39.6 percent. There was a big gender gap in the numbers: men preferred Reilly by an amount within the margin of error, 46.3 percent to 43.4 percent, whereas women broke for Reilly 51.6 percent to 36.2 percent.
-- New York Sen. Hillary Clinton trounced Sen. John Kerry, 51 to 33 percent, among Massachusetts voters in a very early measurement of opinion about the potential 2008 Democratic presidential primary - and Massachusetts Republican Party Executive Director Timothy O'Brien pounced on that result.
"It looks like even the Democrats in Massachusetts have lost faith in John Kerry," O'Brien said. "It's an electability problem that John Kerry has. If he's losing by 18 points in his home state, it's an indication of problems with any future aspirations."
But Kerry press secretary Setti Warren called the result "ridiculous," and added: "If he were driven by polls, John Kerry wouldn't have gotten out of bed before the Iowa caucuses and Bill Weld would be the junior senator from Massachusetts." Kerry, said Warren, is concentrating on doing his job as senator.
-- Respondents split on whether the state should intervene in the pending takeover of Gillette by the Procter & Gamble Co. of Cincinnati. Secretary of State William Galvin has been attempting to raise eyebrows and generate headlines by questioning the terms of the sale and compensation for Gillette CEO James Kilts. People in the survey said "Massachusetts officials should try to prevent the sale" by a 43.2 to 39.9 percent margin over "the sale should proceed as scheduled," but that was within the poll's margin of error with 14.4 percent undecided or refusing.
The poll is the first in what will be routine measurements of political sentiment by State House News Pollster Gerry Chervinsky, a 20-year veteran of gauging public opinion in Massachusetts. The entire set of data is available to subscribers at www.statehousenews.com. - more -
"Overall, what interests me are the clear warning signals for the governor that it will be hard to run a campaign for governor of Massachusetts and president of the United States at the same time," Chervinsky said. "The problem for Romney is that Massachusetts holds a different opinion than Republican presidential primary voters with regard to many key social issues."
One major theme of hallway talk these days at the State House is whether Romney truly intends to run in 2006; it's easier to find people who think the governor's not going to seek re-election. But GOP party director O'Brien is not among them: "He's running," O'Brien said. "I think it's wishful thinking from a desperate Democratic Party that will do anything to get back in the Corner Office." Romney also insists his perambulations don't signal an intention to seek the presidency.
On stem cells, residents were asked, "Do you think it should be legal or illegal for scientists in Massachusetts to produce cloned human embryos for stem cell research?" Some 56.3 percent said "legal," while 38.1 percent responded, "illegal."
Romney's director of communications, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the result would not faze the state's leader at all. "We'll worry about the politics next year when he runs for re-election," Fehrnstrom said. "You can't use a poll to decide where you stand on ethical issues, and when it come to the cloning of human life for the purpose of experimentation and research, the governor is foursquare against it."
But Democratic State Committee Chairman Phillip Johnston said the stem-cell issue is helping erode Romney's reputation, and his public-approval rating. "The sense people have is that he's not very interested in the state and that he's a real social conservative, unlike (former Govs.) Weld and Cellucci," Johnston said. "It's almost impossible to run successfully in this state as a social conservative, so we have to assume he's running for president. He's behaving in a very strange way for someone who intends to remain here."
Johnston called the mock Reilly victory over Romney "further evidence that he's out of sync with the people of Massachusetts," but Fehrnstrom and O'Brien said the result is the outcome of people knowing Romney well, while Reilly remains relatively unknown and undefined. "He's quite an undefined entity," O'Brien said. "Actually, Reilly's favorables are not as high as the governor's in most polls." Of Romney approval numbers, O'Brien said: "Heading into year three, I think it's a pretty positive position. People know where he stands, and there's not going to be a lot movement in those numbers."
Less than half the respondents described themselves as "very" or "somewhat" confident that the governor's jobs bill, to be filed today, will result in the creation of a significant number of new jobs in the state. Johnston said the issue is Romney's "biggest negative, because he was elected on the strength of his promise to create jobs and improve the economy." But Fehrnstrom said the plan will be viewed favorably by more people as the public learns more about it.
The "right track/wrong track" question produced an odd result: both Democratic and Republican respondents agreed on the state, with a majority of each, saying it's headed in the wrong direction. Only independents said it's headed in the right direction, but they make up the largest political bloc in Massachusetts and are the group Romney depended on for election, and will depend on again in a re-election bid.
With independents factored in, respondents said the state's generally headed in the right direction, by a 46 to 39 percent margin.
Chervinsky cautioned that polls are snapshots; political pros use them to follow trends, not make pronouncements. "It's not just a cliché," Chervinsky said. "Polls reflect public opinion at the time they were taken - they're not predictive of future behavior. What people thought today is often not what they think tomorrow."
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