After former chair’s ouster, conservative Republicans eye retaking control of Mass. GOP – The Boston Globe

For years, the state party has been bitterly split between conservatives led by former party chairman Jim Lyons and a more moderate, establishment wing once led by former governor Charlie Baker. Now, as many as 35 of the committee’s current members are not seeking reelection to a four-year term, including many who hail from that more moderate faction.

The vacancies have primed the committee for major turnover and could potentially threaten the leadership of first-term chair Amy Carnevale at a time when the party is trying to find its footing after suffering years of electoral losses, accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and becoming the focus of state investigations.

Enter the “Massachusetts Freedom Slate,” a wide-ranging list of more than 70 conservative candidates who have been promoted by Geoff Diehl, a former state lawmaker, the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2022, and a leader of its more conservative wing. At least 24 incumbents have been endorsed as Freedom Slate members, and dozens of other new candidates have also won backing of the group, including 18 who are challenging other sitting committee members.

While it was not clear who organized the group or picked which candidates it endorsed, Diehl wrote in a fund-raising email that he is supporting the whole slate, saying they are the “conservatives candidates” in their races and share his “vision of growing the Republican Party.” The group’s website derides the current committee as “dysfunctional” and “failing,” and critiques the party’s fund-raising as having “fallen off a cliff.”

Lyons, whom Carnevale beat last year for chair, has also publicly supported several “Freedom Slate” candidates, including through formal endorsements. Dennis Galvin, a state committee member who is seeking reelection, said Lyons was “cooperative” in his own race, and has been involved in others, though he wasn’t sure to what degree.

“He’s actively involved in the state committee races,” Galvin said.

Efforts to reach Lyons and Diehl were not successful.

Carnevale herself is facing a challenge for her state committee seat from a “Freedom Slate” candidate, who is also the chair of the Lynn Republican City Committee. Janet Fogarty, the party’s national committeewoman, is also facing a challenge for her state committee post.

“There’s a feeling [in] the establishment wing of the Mass. GOP that we need to keep bending to the calls to be more moderate,” said Bob May, a former congressional candidate who is challenging a North Shore incumbent for a committee seat and has been endorsed by Lyons. “We’re conservatives. We’re not going to be pulled to the left simply because that’s the way you think you’re going to win more elections.”

Voters in each of the 40 state Senate districts elect a woman and man to serve on the committee, making it difficult even for party insiders to predict how the outcome of these races might immediately impact the panel’s make-up. A number of state committee members predicted the body’s ideological balance may ultimately change little.

State law does not require candidates or other entities involved in the state committee races to submit public filings with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance disclosing their donors or spending on those races. That, too, makes it nearly impossible to track how much money is flowing through the contests, or who is giving it.

Even some of the candidates who had been endorsed by the Freedom Slate group said they were not sure who had decided to endorse them or why.

The committee races can have wide political consequences, from helping determine who may emerge as party chair in next year’s election to where the state party focuses its resources in this fall’s elections when a likely rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump will top the ballot.

Committee elections have in the past served as a front in the Mass. GOP’s own internal battles. Baker twice raised and deployed significant money in attempts to shape the 80-seat committee, with varying success. Baker later clashed publicly with Lyons, who twice won election as party chair over candidates more friendly to the then-governor.

It’s not clear, however, that the advertised slate of conservative candidates would even function as a bloc. State Representative David F. DeCoste, a Norwell Republican endorsed as a “Freedom Slate” candidate, said he backs Carnevale as chair and suspects the push behind the slate is motivated by a desire to eventually replace her. Asked who organized the slate, DeCoste said he “could only guess.”

“I don’t see this as a left-versus-right thing,” DeCoste said. “The race is between those who are supporting competent management and those who are [supporting] going back to inept management.”

A longtime state committee member from Marblehead, Carnevale has served as a Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention and has sought to bridge divides after years of polarization, internal lawsuits, and a steady drumbeat of electoral losses under Lyons.

Carnevale has remained a target for some of Lyons’ most ardent supporters, including some who are pushing for her ouster. Some Republicans are eyeing a routine vote in which the newly elected committee must ratify the chair mid-term after the state committee elections as an opportunity to knock Carnevale off.

“The politics will play themselves out. I’m trying not to focus too much on the elections or get distracted,” Carnevale said.

The candidate challenging Carnevale for her committee seat, Lynn’s Maria Pia Perez, described herself as “an America First individual”— a popular motto of former president Trump. She also said she is an immigrant, though she declined to say from where she emigrated. In a pitch on a local television station, she said her campaign is built, in part, on “suppressing the progressive socialist takeover.”

“We need a new face and a new energy [on the committee] to really address the issues that are happening at the local level,” Perez said in an interview with the Globe.

Some of those choosing to leave the state committee represent the party’s more establishment wing. Matthew Sisk, a 20-year veteran of the state committee who has advised Republican governors and worked for a time in Baker’s administration, said he would not seek re-election because “the foundation of the Republican Party in Massachusetts has been crumbling under the weight of the extreme politics of Donald Trump.”

“I, like so many moderate Massachusetts Republicans, feel there is no longer a place for us in the party,” Sisk told the Globe.

Mike Valanzola, who also hews closer to the establishment wing of the party and supported Carnevale’s election last year, said he, too, was tired of the divisive politics on the state committee.

“The last four years dealing with Jim and his agenda were exhausting,” said Valanzola, who is also choosing not to seek reelection.

Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout. Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff.