Ron Crews, the former Georgia State Senator who headed
Massachusetts Family Institute for three years, announced his run
for U.S. Congress in the Third District of Massachusetts in May. He
opposes incumbent Rep. James McGovern, referred to by some
conservative wiseacres as “James (I Heart Fidel) McGovern” for his
outspoken concern for Cuba and the rest of Latin America. You could
not find a more distinctly contrasting set of candidates. Crews, an
ordained minister, one of the nation’s most visible advocates
against gay marriage; McGovern, who never met a gay or feminist
activist he didn’t like. I wrote about the contrast then, in
“A
Georgia Preacher Takes on Massachusetts.”
Surprisingly, Crews said, many people in the Third have no idea
how McGovern votes. Crews has kept himself busy, telling them.
For example, McGovern voted, with 160 other Democrats, including
all 10 members of the Massachusetts delegation, against an
amendment to forbid U.N. monitoring of the 2004 U.S. elections.
(The measure was offered by Steve Buyer, Indiana Republican, as an
amendment to the appropriations bill, HR 4818.) The application of
a handful of Democrat wingnuts to the U.N. for such monitoring got
wide press notice. But the vote, against a move to forbid “giv[ing]
away a piece of our sovereignty to the U.N., I found that
outrageous,” Crews said. “And the press here pretty much ignored
that. I trust the town clerks of Attleboro or Shrewsbury to conduct
fair elections. I don’t want blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers standing
around here.” (For a story about that vote, see the Washington
Post’s coverage here.)
Another of Crews’s favorite points is that “McGovern gave an
impassioned speech about increased funding for education — in
Colombia, not in Princeton or Worcester. I think we ought to be
concerned about school funding here.”
Talking about McGovern’s votes has won over voters, Crews
said.
“I was at a home in Fall River last Wednesday. There were 22
folks there. When I identified votes McGovern had taken, several
said, ‘I had no idea.’” Several of his audience were registered
Democrats, but they are Catholic, and pro-life, Crews said. “One
person came up to me and said, ‘Ron, I’m 82 years old. I’ve been
driving since I was 18, and I’ve never had a bumper sticker on my
car, but I will tonight.’”
The old man gave Crews an envelope with five dollars in it. “I
felt that that was the widow’s mite,” Crews recalled. “It was very,
very precious.”
Since I first spoke with Crews about his then prospective
campaign, back in April, he has acquired the practiced savvy of a
politician on the stump — nothing new for him, after repeated
races in Georgia. He drops names of local towns into his sentences
quickly and frequently. It’s a rhetorical trick, of course, but an
effective one: I know the district. I’m a local guy. Crews speaks
every day at some venue or other. And he’s getting positive press
from two newspapers in the district, the Metro West Daily
News and the Attleboro Sun Chronicle.
It’s almost funny, seeing how the two papers rope Crews’s name
and campaign into stories about almost anything — media bias in
reverse. An ordinary story based on recent Federal Election
Commission reports of campaign contributions in the Daily
News, for example, spent almost twice as many words on Crews
as on incumbent McGovern.
The bad news is that McGovern has raised more than five times as
much money as Crews, $215,675 to $42,262. McGovern has spent about
half his funds; Crews, almost all of his.
“We don’t have any polling yet,” Crews said. “We’re working on
that.” He cited two polls done last year, one of the district, and
another statewide poll on the marriage issue. Those polls, Crews
said, “confirmed was we believed — that this district is a
conservative district. Well over a majority, in the high 50s and
low 60s, identify themselves as pro-life, pro-traditional marriage.
They support tax cuts, and they support the war on terror.”
So what are Crews’s chances?
“That’s a good question. I honestly don’t know. I’m running this
race to win. If we can expose the McGovern voting record for what
it is, people will realize that he is not in touch with this
district. That there is someone who does hold the values of the
majority of this district.”
Against that effort, there is the sheer bloody-minded inertia of
Democratic voting in Massachusetts.
