Jeff Beatty

Jeff Beatty (R-Harwich)

Jeff Beatty, the Massachusetts GOP's nominee for U.S. Senate this year, said Monday that he is currently not seeking the chairmanship of the party, but wouldn't shut the door on any future possibilities.

"I am not pursuing it," Beatty told PolitickerMA.com. "I have had people ask me to consider it, but tomorrow will be two weeks since the election and I said I wouldn't consider anything for a couple weeks."

Beatty lost to U.S. Sen. John Kerry by 35 percentage points this year. Since the loss, his name has surfaced in some Republican circles as a possible candidate for the chairmanship following current chair Peter Torkildsen's decision not to seek re-election.

Beatty would not, however, rule out the possibility when asked if he had shut the door on a run.

Buried in this Cape Cod Times political round-up on Monday is an interesting tidbit from U.S. Sen. John Kerry's recent race against Harwich Republican Jeff Beatty.

The Times reports that Kerry bet Congressman Bill Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat, that he would defeat Beatty by a larger margin than the 33.8 percent Delahunt beat Beatty by in 2006 for his congressional seat.

Based on unofficial results, it appears Kerry won the bet; he beat Beatty by 34.8 percent.

The Times said Kerry and Delahunt did not disclose what they wagered.

Politicker Photo

Jeff Beatty (R-Harwich)

U.S. Sen. John Kerry's trouncing of Republican challenger Jeff Beatty left some questioning what it would take for a Republican to run successfully in a statewide race.

Analysts told PolitickerMA.com there's still the possibility of a Republican senator from Massachusetts, but to have a legitimate shot, a candidate from the state's minority party would need to stand on a strong, well-communicated platform.

Kerry defeated Beatty by 35 percentage points, according to the Boston Globe. Beatty, like Kerry's primarily challenger, Ed O'Reilly, earned just 31 percent of the vote.

Steven Grossman, a Boston Democratic strategist and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said he doesn't believe Massachusetts voters dismiss Republican candidates out of hand.

"I don't think Massachusetts just reacts against a Republican candidate," Grossman said. "But Republicans don't have a very deep bench."

Republican U.S. Senate challenger Jeff Beatty said Tuesday that he has conceded the race to U.S. Sen. John Kerry and that he is proud of his campaign but disappointed he wasn't able to get his message to more voters.

"There are two sides of the coin," Beatty told PolitickerMA.com in a phone interview. "We're disappointed but we are very encouraged that the people that we met liked our message."

"We just didn't get our message out in front of enough people," the Harwich Republican added.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry said Tuesday night that he is "humbled" by Massachusetts voters sending him back to the U.S. Senate for a fifth term.

With 17 percent of precincts reporting, Kerry leads Republican Jeff Beatty 65 percent to 32 percent, according to the Boston Globe, and TV networks have already called the race for him.

In a statement, Kerry commented on Americans' perseverance.

"Yes, we have challenges to tackle in this country and in Massachusetts," Kerry said. "But the American people's remarkable reservoir of talent, innovation, resolve and selflessness has triumphed time and time again. Our history is one of not just overcoming challenges but of emerging from difficult times stronger and better prepared to prosper as a nation."

Morning voter turnout in Massachusetts may have increased by more than 25 percent compared to the past three election cycles, John Kerry's Senate campaign just told PolitickerMA.com.

The Kerry camp uses a turnout model to measure where the vote total should be using an average of results from the last three elections.

Between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., the Kerry camp found that voter turnout Tuesday was up 30 percent compared to the average level it was at 10 a.m. in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

With polls opening in less than 16 hours, PolitickerMA.com asked the local punditry to handicap the state's top of the ballot races. Here's a breakdown of what they said.

Presidential:

Nothing shocking here, as PolitickerMA.com couldn't find a single pundit or strategist that believes Republican nominee John McCain is going to beat Democratic nominee Barack Obama in the Bay State, which hasn't backed a Republican presidential candidate since 1984. Some analysts did differ, however, on what Obama's victory margin will be.

Charles Stewart, a political scientist at MIT, crunched the numbers Monday morning and said he believed Obama would carry the state by about the margin that U.S. Sen. John Kerry won it in 2004 - 25 percent. "That's about where the average of the polls has been," Stewart said, "though it might be a little higher because these polls are kind of stale."

Stewart noted that Obama is up about 8 to 10 percentage points across the country compared to where Kerry was at this point in 2004. The problem for Obama, Stewart said, is that there isn't much room to expand the margin in Massachusetts since Democrats pretty much maxed out for Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore, who hit the 60 percent mark when he won by 27 percentage points in 2000.

"There is nowhere for Obama to go in Massachusetts compared to Kerry," Stewart said.

While his Republican challenger, Jeff Beatty, went to three sign standouts Sunday, U.S. Sen. John Kerry was in Washington D.C. Sunday morning to appear on NBC's Meet the Press. According to his campaign, Kerry returned to Massachusetts immediately afterward and attended a get out the vote rally in Shrewsbury with Congressmen Richard Neal (D-Springfield) and Jim McGovern (D-Worcester). State Senate candidate Michael Moore, a Millbury Democrat who is running for state Sen. Edward Augustus' 2nd Worcester seat, was also at the event.

On Monday, Kerry is slated to attend an evening event in Barnstable.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry responded to Republican challenger Jeff Beatty's criticism Sunday, blasting Beatty for not offering a vision for the future of the country.

In an email to PolitickerMA.com, Brigid O'Rourke, a spokeswoman for the Boston Democrat, said Beatty has focused more on personal attacks than on offering his own policy proposals.

"Instead of worrying about prom dates, Jeff should just focus on his own campaign and start talking about what he stands for, because most Massachusetts voters still don't know," O'Rourke said. "Jeff has no clear stances on critical issues like providing health care to Americans, improving education, fixing our economy, or even taxes. All Jeff has been clear on is his support for guns in our schools, his reckless plan to drill our way to energy independence, and the fact that he is a faithful supporter of George Bush and the McCain-Palin ticket."

Republican U.S. Senate challenger Jeff Beatty said Sunday that his campaign to defeat John Kerry is going exactly as planned.

In a telephone interview with PolitickerMA.com on the way to the first of three camnpaign events on Sunday, Beatty said he knew all along that they would have to make a move late in the race to close the gap with Kerry.

"This is exactly the way we knew the plan had to unfold," Beatty said, "that we were going to have to rise up in the last days of the campaign."

The most recent polls show Kerry holding a significant lead over Beatty heading into Election Day A 7News/Suffolk University poll at the end of October showed Kerry up by 37 percent.