The Massachusetts legislature overrode Mitt Romney's veto of a bill that cleared up state roadblocks on stem cell research yesterday. Before this bill, state law actually required stem cell researchers to get permission first from the local district attorney. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. The new bill ends that and the legislature voted overwhelmingly to override Romney's veto, 112-42 in the House and 35-2 in the Senate.
Just to let you know (I'm a MA resident) Romney has been a disaster for the MA Republican party. When Republican Bill Weld was elected governor in 1990, he had enough Republicans in the state senate to sustain a veto. Romney does not. Romney is widely viewed as being a carpetbagger, who the Republican party imported from Utah to run because of his moderate success in running the winter olympics there--at taxpayers' expense of course. Romney won only because the Dem candidate, Shannon O'Brien, was a dismal candidate. The Dems can't beat somebody with nobody, but that's what they tried to do.
The likelihood of Romney being re-elected is between slim and none. And he knows it, and that's why he's running around the country bashing MA state politics to prepare for some national office. Romney spent millions trying to get more Republicans elected to the state legislature in the last election, and his result was minus-five. Much as I despise Reilly (the current attorney general) for what he did in the Amirault case, he will likely be the next MA governor.
The people who are running MA are DiMasi, the speaker of the MA House, and Birmingham, the head of the state Senate. They appear to have a good working relationship, and so Romney has no role to play whatsoever. After Birmingham got rid of the former house speaker, Finneran, the direction of MA politics was clear: rule by the legislature.