Politics is changing fast in Massachusetts. And the movement for progressive, Democratic reform is getting boosts due to the record and behavior of leaders in both major parties.

On the Republican side, the vice-chair of the state party — and former treasurer — has been indicted for laundering drug money. Meanwhile, Governor Mitt Romney has been testing the waters for president — and failing the test. His popularity in the state has been tanking as he criticized his own state in front of conservative Republican audiences in the south and west. Nevertheless, rumor has it that he may run for reelection after all.

Meanwhile Attorney General Tom Reilly, who has been running for governor for years as the candidate of the oligarchic wing of the Democratic Party — raising $3 million along the way — is losing support over his controversial ruling to allow an initiative to place an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution on the ballot. The Reilly-certified initiative, which he says he personally opposes — is the new focus of antigay forces in the state in the wake of the defeat of a proposed constitutional amendment that would have revoked same sex marriage rights, but recognized civil unions. The amendment lost by a vote of 157-39. Some of those voting against it were conservatives who do not support civil unions and were, along with Governor Romney, supporting the new initiative. But there is little disagreement that same sex marriage is widely accepted in Massachusetts, and those who oppose it are on the wrong side of history, of decency, and of the law.

The Brockton Enterprise reports that

“Local attorney and Republican Party leader Lawrence Novak was caught in taped conversations mapping out plans with a jailed drug suspect to launder $107,000 in illegal drug profits, federal officials allege.

“You need to clean the money,” Novak told the suspect, also a federal informant, according to papers filed in federal court Tuesday.

Novak, 54, state vice chairman of the Republican Party and a councilor-at-large candidate in Tuesday’s city primary, was arrested and charged with federal money laundering offenses Tuesday, minutes after depositing drug money at a Brockton bank, authorities said.

Novak told the bank teller that “he had found the money,” court papers said.

The head of the city’s Republican committee was arrested at his…. home following a three-month investigation by federal agents into allegations he offered to file false paperwork in court and launder drug money for a client.

Tim O’Brien, Republican Party executive director, said the charges are unrelated to Novak’s GOP role. Novak served as the party’s treasurer in the late 1990s….

“This is very strange and very unexpected,” Mayor John T. Yunits Jr. said. “He is not known…. as an underworld lawyer who would be dealing in drug money.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Reilly claims that he is just following the law — but his reasoning seems highly dubious to many. Interestingly, he sided with the argument of the Massachusetts Family Institute, the state political unit of one the top Christian Right organizations, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. In a letter to opponents of the initiative, Reilly claimed that the petition does not overturn the court decision that legalized same sex marriage, but that the constitution allows for an initiative to amend the constitution in response to the court’s declaring unconstrained a statute. Many critics see this as a distinction without a difference. Some see it as a radical failure of moral leadership.

A former top Reilly aide, Mary Breslauer, writes in The Boston Globe

“….this attorney general has consistently hid behind existing order, even when it is blatantly discriminatory. Reilly is vigorously defending a 1913 law which was created to perpetuate discrimination and was ignored for decades until same-sex couples from out-of-state came to marry here. I think he’s forgotten that civil rights advances occur when people, including attorneys general, challenge bad laws rather than stand behind them.

Reilly said last week that even though he’s personally opposed to the ballot measure, the state Constitution required him to certify it. But when pressed by reporters whether that meant he would personally work to defeat it in the Legislature or use the bully pulpit of the governor’s office to fight it, he said that was a question for another day.

I can tell you what gay families heard. They heard the attorney general waffling yet again on a very basic question of fairness and equality. And the waffle came after the kick in the stomach.”

While Reilly has sought to present his decision as a profile in courage, calling it as he sees it, The Boston Globe reported that

“Reilly’s decision triggered immediate condemnation from the state’s gay and lesbian community, as well as sniping by a fellow Democratic candidate for governor, Deval Patrick. It also prompted Barbara Grossman, the wife of Steve Grossman, Reilly’s campaign treasurer, to withdraw her support. She not only endorsed Patrick, but donated $500 to his campaign.

“In the core of my being, I believe it is a civil rights issue,” she said Friday. “I certainly don’t want to inflate my importance in any way, but I could not continue my support for Tom Reilly in light of this.”

For his part, Deval Patrick said: “I am disappointed in the Attorney General’s decision, but not surprised. He has had more than one chance to show leadership and political courage on this issue over the last few years and he has failed every time. The [Supreme Judicial Court] got it right. By ruling in favor of same sex marriage, the Court affirmed that everyone comes before their government as equals. Equality before the government and the law is a central value of our society.”

Blogger Nohomissives writes about the rally on the steps of city hall in Northampton yesterday — and has the exact language at issue in Reilly’s ruling.

“It was a moving event — songs, speeches, stories, etc. A great moment was when Peter Vickery took out his copy of the Massachusetts constitution — a document, he said, that trumped Reilly’s — and read the section on citizen-initiated constitutional ammendments.”

Governor’s Councilor Vickery, according to The Springfield Republican, “blasted Reilly.”

“His job is to apply the clear language of the constitution,” Vickery declared, “and the constitution says that you should not use a ballot initiative to reverse a judicial decision.”