MassGOP chair Carnevale works to rebuild a state party where MAGA battles the moderates

There are signs that the Massachusetts Republican Party is staging a modest comeback. Its chair, Amy Carnevale, is raising money, shifting the tone of the GOP's message and appears determined to make the party relevant again, even as she confronts division and pushback from the party's pro-Trump flank.

For years, the story of the MassGOP has been about a party in decline. Republicans have tiny minorities in the state Legislature and no statewide officeholders since Charlie Baker left the governor's office. But Carnevale, a year into her role as chair, is telling a different story.

"I think the first year has been quite successful," she said. "We're growing in ranks, we're getting back to a stable party financially and we're winning elections."

To appreciate what Carnevale has accomplished, consider the challenges she inherited. One of the low points for the party was the 2020 election, when it got "completely clobbered," according to Tom Mountain, the former vice-chair of the state GOP.

"We were decimated. It was terrible," Mountain said at the time, pointing to the party's string of losses.

"We didn't pick up a single congressional seat," he said. "We lost in the Senate. Every state committee member who ran for something, from Congress to county commissioner, lost. It was a complete debacle."

That election further eroded the party's slim presence on Beacon Hill, leaving Republicans with 30 seats in the 160-person House, and just three seats in the 40-member Senate. Under the former GOP chair Jim Lyons, a hard-right backer of former President Donald Trump, the party lost elections, money and membership. Then, the state committee voted to replace him with Carnevale by a slim margin in 2023.

Since then, Carnevale has sought to shift the party's messaging away from Lyon's divisive brand of MAGA politics, which made moderates like Anthony Amore, a Republican who ran for state auditor in 2022, feel unwelcome in the GOP.

"It was such an unbelievably unpleasant experience to be attacked every day on a personal level by members of my own party," Amore said.

Amore was so disgusted that he left the party, but he's rooting for Carnevale and credits her for changing the tone and making it feel more inclusive. Jennifer Nassour, a former chair of the state GOP and a moderate, agrees, and said Carnevale is "bringing new life back into the party."

"She has two wins under her belt, and that's a really good way to start," Nassour said.

Those wins include Peter Durant's victory in a special state Senate election in central Massachusetts and John Marsi scoring the seat to succeed Durant in the House. Carnevale has also raised more than $800,000, paid down debt and moved the party's headquarters from an office park in Woburn back to downtown Boston, which she said sends a message that the party is back in the game.

"I thought it was important symbolically to bring the party headquarters back to Boston," she said. "We need to be in the capital to compete statewide."

Like her predecessor, Carnevale supports Trump as her party's presidential nominee. But unlike Lyons, she’s not letting Trump's MAGA agenda define her chairmanship. Instead, she said she's focused on local and state issues, including the cost of housing a wave of new immigrants and efforts to make Massachusetts more affordable.

"Those are the issues that I think will resonate much more with voters here in Massachusetts," she said.

Carnevale also wants to grow the party, which accounts for less than 9% of the state's registered voters. That means reaching out to the the state's largest bloc of voters: the unenrolled, or independents. Many of those voters are politically moderate and were key to the success of recent Republican governors Charlie Baker, Mitt Romney and William Weld.

But that approach has alienated the hardline, pro-Trump faction of the state party. They prevailed on Super Tuesday, choosing Trump over his more moderate presidential rival, Nikki Haley, 60% to 37%.

"There is now an all-out political, ideological war for the heart and soul of the Mass GOP,” Jeff Kuhner declared recently on WRKO radio's The Kuhner Report. Kuhner and his like-minded guests regularly attack Carnevale as insufficiently MAGA, calling her a "RINO" — Republican in name only — and accusing her of trying to purge the state party of Trump supporters, something Carnevale says is not true.

"Amy Carnevale may claim she supports Trump because that's the only way now to get votes," Kuhner said recently.

Kuhner's political allies include Lyons and Geoff Diehl, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate and for governor. The two took aim at Carnevale during March elections for the Republican State Committee, which governs the party and elects its chair. Diehl ran for a state committee seat, and promoted a so-called "freedom slate," in a bid to return control of the party to the MAGA wing.

"Just like Donald Trump endorsed me when I ran, we need your endorsement," Diehl said in a pitch on social media before election day. "Let's make Massachusetts great again."

"Please don't let the RINOs win," added Diehl's wife, Kathy Joe Boss, who also was a candidate for state committee.

While Diehl and Boss were both elected to the state committee, the "freedom slate" fell well short of a majority. “They were soundly defeated," said one senior party official. That means Diehl and Lyons — both of whom declined to talk to WBUR about the state of their party — will be unable to topple Carnevale when the newly-elected committee convenes April 6 for its organizational meeting.

Carnevale said she’s focused on unifying a party that’s been split between hardline conservatives and moderates ever since Trump became the dominant force in Republican politics. That divide still exists and may well represent the biggest challenge in her effort to rebuild the state’s Republican Party.

If the hard-right faction had succeeded in taking over the state committee, Amore said, it would have been "a catastrophe" for the future of the state GOP.

"The party could not have been worse off than it was under Amy's predecessor: broke, bleeding members and losing every race," Amore said. "I don't understand what part of that you'd want to return to."