Is new poll a Diehl breaker? 

THE HEADLINE IS not exactly the sort of unqualified boost that campaigns usually go out of their way to promote. But if you’re running for governor of Massachusetts as the Trump-backed Republican nominee, you take what you can get. 

So it is that the homepage of Geoff Diehl’s campaign website, under latest news and press, promotes a Boston Herald column from Monday proclaiming, “New poll gives Republican Geoff Diehl glimmer of hope for his underdog campaign.” 

An Emerson College poll released last week, the first to appear after last Tuesday’s state primary, shows Democratic nominee Maura Healey with a 52-34 lead over Diehl among likely voters. The gap is smaller than the 30-point margin she had over Diehl or his erstwhile primary rival Chris Doughty in polls earlier in the summer. The new Emerson poll also shows Diehl leading Healey 45-38 among unenrolled voters. That finding, in particular, said Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld, “should be a warning sign for Democrats not to take the governor’s race for granted.” 

Any warning aside, Spencer Kimball, director of the Emerson College Polling Center, said the big takeaway from the survey is “that Maura Healey, I would expect, to be the next governor of Massachusetts.” Kimball said Diehl would need a much bigger margin among unenrolled voters – on the order of 2-to-1 or more – to threaten Healey.

Appearing Sunday on WCVB-TV’s “On The Record,” Diehl was asked if he plans to make a big issue of the November ballot question on repealing the state law allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. “I think the economy right now is going to be the No. 1 issue,” he said. “The Biden economy is really poor right now. We’ve got high inflation, high cost of fuel, obviously high cost of food. So I think that’s going to be front and center.” 

Diehl then pointed to the Emerson poll’s finding that voters identified the economy as their top concern (41 percent said it was their top issue) and that he leads Healey (49-33) among those respondents. Kimball said Republicans often do better than Democrats nationally on poll questions centered on the economy, but he pointed out that Healey is the overwhelming choice of those who cited abortion rights and health care, the next highest ranked concerns, as their top issues. 

While Diehl seemed to wave off the idea of a prominent place for the driver’s license issue in his campaign, Rob Gray, a veteran Republican strategist, thinks the ballot question – along with the millionaires tax question – is actually one of the few openings for Diehl to try to make up ground. With only $17,000 in his campaign account as of the end of August, Diehl is heading into the general election with virtually no resources, said Gray. The ballot questions, on the other hand, will have some campaign dollars behind them and draw media attention. 

“I see the two ballot initiatives as one of the few bright lights for Diehl,” said Gray. “If he can identify himself with the anti-tax side on the income question and with the pro-repeal side on the driver’s license question he would do himself some good.” 

Healey is on the opposite side of Diehl on both questions, having voiced support for the 4 percent surcharge on annual income over $1 million and for preserving the law on licenses for undocumented immigrants. “The only way to defeat Maura Healey is to create doubt about her and drag her down, and to that you have to identify wedge issues between you and her,” said Gray. “I’m not sure what the strategy is of trying to tie Healey to Biden or the ‘Biden economy.’” 

The most recent polling shows Diehl’s position on the two questions losing, but ballot questions are prone to big shifts in voter sentiment as campaigns play out.

“Geoff Diehl needs to convince voters that she’s nothing like Charlie Baker,” said Gray. But he has no resources to do that, Gray said. What’s more, by aligning himself with Trump to lock down his party’s right flank and echoing his false statements that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, Diehl has gone out of his way to convince voters that he’s nothing like Charlie Baker.