http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/how-the-gop-wins-in-the-northeast/article/2559060How the GOP wins in the northeast
By Walter Olson • | January 26, 2015 | 5:00 am
If the evening of Nov. 4 provided an electrifying moment for conservatives, it came when it emerged that Republicans were going to win tough races not just in states like Iowa and North Carolina — let’s face it, winning states like those is no big deal in a strong GOP year — but also in some of the most passionately Democratic corners of the Northeast. Massachusetts, home of Harvard liberalism, where the share of voters who are registered Republicans stands at a frankly pathetic 11 percent, chose as its governor Charlie Baker, a businessman whose resume includes a stint at Boston’s Pioneer Institute, a free-market think tank. Maryland, long known as a strongly Democratic state thanks in part to strong minority demographics and high rates of government employment, elected an unapologetic conservative of its own, businessman Larry Hogan.
This was a genuine feat for Republicans: With the possible exception of California, no major part of the country is as resistant to their message as the Northeast. Democratic White House candidates have swept the region’s 11 states for the past six elections in a row, the only exception being Al Gore’s narrow 2000 loss in New Hampshire. Only three of the region’s 22 senators are Republicans, not much higher than the number of declared socialists (one). Democrats control most of the local legislatures, sometimes by margins that are almost comical, as in Massachusetts where they outnumber Republicans 34-6 in the upper house and 125-35 in the lower. Not a single Republican currently serves as an elected attorney general in the Northeast. If Baker and Hogan can win here, the thought goes, maybe the right kind of Republicans can win anywhere.
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