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Republican Mike Minogue is soldiering on alone in his campaign for Massachusetts governor after his running mate, New Bedford City Councilor Shawn Oliver, dropped his bid for lieutenant governor.
Oliver announced he was suspending his campaign after being arrested on a drunk driving charge over the weekend. He pleaded not guilty in New Bedford District Court on Monday morning.
So, what happens now?
It’s too late for Oliver to be pulled from the ballot. The general election is only two weeks away, on Nov. 3. Nearly 300,000 ballots had been cast through early and mail-in voting by Monday, according to the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office.
If Minogue is elected as governor, Oliver will be elected with him, because governors run on a ticket with lieutenant governors in Massachusetts.
Oliver has announced he was suspending his campaign, but he didn’t specifically say he would resign if elected. He hasn’t made any public statements since. Meanwhile, the Minogue campaign has cast Oliver’s resignation as inevitable.
“His resignation will become official when Minogue takes office as governor,” the campaign said in a press release on Monday afternoon.
A campaign spokesperson told The Light that Minogue and Oliver had spoken, and that Oliver would not be Minogue’s lieutenant governor. But the campaign did not specify what Oliver had agreed to — whether Oliver plans to take office and then resign, refuse to take office at all, or follow some other procedure.
The governor does not have the power to remove a sitting lieutenant governor, legal experts say. Only the Legislature can do so through an impeachment proceeding.
Oliver hasn’t spoken for himself on this issue. He and his defense lawyer did not return The Light’s voicemails on Monday asking for clarification on what he has or hasn’t committed to do.
What happens if Oliver resigns
If the Minogue-Oliver ticket is elected and Oliver resigns, the state constitution has no process for filling the vacancy, legal experts say.
“It’s always been accepted that if the lieutenant governor resigns, you just go without a lieutenant governor until the next election,” said Sean Kealy, a professor of state constitutional law at Boston University’s School of Law.
It has happened in Massachusetts before. When Lt. Gov. Tim Murray resigned in June 2013, the Deval Patrick administration went without a replacement until Karyn Polito took over as Charlie Baker’s lieutenant governor in 2015. Before that, John Kerry left the lieutenant governor’s seat open for two years when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984.
The vacancies aren’t usually a major problem, because the lieutenant governor has only a couple of official duties.
Their main job is to step in as a temporary acting governor when the sitting governor is outside the state or can’t serve for some other reason, such as when they have surgery. They also would step in until the next election if the governor dies or resigns.
But there’s a line of succession in case the lieutenant governor is unavailable, legal experts say. The next official in line to serve as acting governor is the secretary of state — a relatively common occurrence when both governor and lieutenant governor are traveling. The line continues with the state’s attorney general, treasurer, and auditor.
The lieutenant governor’s other job is to cast tie-breaking votes on the eight-member governor’s council, which approves the governor’s decisions on pardons and appointing judges.
Legal experts interviewed by The Light disagreed on whether the governor could instead cast the tie-breaking vote, but they did agree that the absence of a lieutenant governor isn’t likely to cause major problems with the council.
The Minogue campaign is taking the prospect of an open lieutenant governor’s seat in stride, casting it as a cost-cutting measure.
“Moving forward, leaving the position unfilled will save taxpayers well over $300,000 in salary and security costs,” the campaign said in a press release.
Current Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll is paid a salary of $217,169 per year, state payroll records show. Gov. Maura Healey takes home $243,493.
What happens if Oliver doesn’t resign
Oliver has suspended his campaign, but he hasn’t made an explicit commitment to resign. If he is elected and refuses to resign, there’s not much Minogue can do about it.
The only way to remove a lieutenant governor is through an impeachment proceeding in the state Legislature, which is similar to the federal impeachment process, legal experts say. The state constitution says the Legislature may vote to remove constitutional officers like the lieutenant governor “for misconduct and mal-administration in their offices.”
That last part, “in their offices,” could prevent an Oliver impeachment — there’s an argument that Oliver’s alleged drunk driving would not be an impeachable offense because it happened before his potential election, legal experts acknowledged.
In the hypothetical scenario where Oliver refuses to resign and is impeached by the Legislature, he may be able to appeal to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. But whether the justices should weigh in on such an issue would be “a very hotly debated question,” Kealy said. It’s their job to decide what’s constitutional, but they risk overreaching and violating the separation of powers if they try to tell the Legislature what is or isn’t an impeachable offense, he explained.
Lawrence Friedman, a professor at New England Law Boston who has co-authored a textbook on the state’s constitution, said the Legislature would have a way around that: it could decide Oliver had committed misconduct by refusing to resign.
“Ultimately it doesn’t have to be criminal to be impeachable,” he said. “To approach the failure to resign as impeachable conduct would solve that problem.”
Both Friedman and Kealy found it unlikely that Oliver would refuse to resign. Kealy pointed out that Minogue has made it clear he doesn’t want Oliver in office, and the lieutenant governor’s job doesn’t come with much power.
Most people probably haven’t thought much about the role of lieutenant governor until now, Friedman said. But he said Oliver’s circumstance has revealed succession problems that might prompt the Legislature to amend the state’s constitution.
“I could imagine an amendment that spelled out a process for having a special election for lieutenant governor,” he said. “Or giving the governor some authority to terminate the lieutenant governor for something.”
Election officials try to quell confusion
Ballots across the state list Minogue and Oliver as a ticket next to a single bubble, even though just one of them is still officially running.
“People are going to be confused about that,” said New Bedford Election Commissioner Manny DeBrito.
It adds yet another layer of complexity to an already complex election this year, DeBrito said. Because there are nine ballot questions, voters will need to fill out two separate pages. New Bedford is also subject to the scrutiny of federal election monitors this year.
DeBrito said he may call his poll workers in for additional training to prepare to handle voter questions about Oliver’s candidacy.
The Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office, which oversees elections, faced questions from local officials across the state Monday morning, said spokesperson Debra O’Malley. Many wanted to know how they should count ballots if voters try to cross out Oliver’s name or write in a new lieutenant governor candidate while also filling in the Minogue-Oliver bubble.
The office sent out guidance to address the most common concerns on Monday afternoon. The bottom line is that if you want your ballot counted, don’t try to cross out or write in just one candidate on the two-candidate gubernatorial ticket, O’Malley said.
“The options are to vote for one of the full tickets listed on the ballot, or to write in an entirely separate ticket,” she said.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.
