JOHN TLUMACKI/GLOBE STAFF/FILE
The governor’s announcement in February of a panel to overhaul the MBTA has led to disagreements with unions.
Union workers are frustrated by Charlie Baker’s bid to privatize services at the MBTA.
Environmentalists worry that he plans to gut the state’s clean air and water regulations.
Advocates for criminal sentencing reform say he appears to have cooled to their agenda, despite campaign promises.
Baker, a Republican who was elected governor by appealing to Democrats as well as his more natural constituencies, has, in the course of governing, demonstrated how difficult it is to please everyone on every issue.
Consider his fumble last week over the question of removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House, after the massacre at an African-American church in Charleston. His initial answer: Leave it to the state to decide. But an immediate backlash forced him to back down and call for the flag’s removal. Friends, Baker said, had asked him, “What were you thinking?”
“Charlie Baker is a conservative, it will continue to emerge, and there will be some people who will be surprised by it,’’ said Peter Ubertaccio, an associate political science professor at Stonehill College.
In his first few months in office, Baker was mostly managing broken agencies, trying to make the MBTA’s trains run on time, getting the highways plowed, and closing a budget deficit, applying the managerial skills that were his strong suit in his race for governor.
But analysts say Baker is now crafting policies and spending decisions that sometimes go against the liberal grain of Massachusetts politics.
To be sure, the governor enjoys sky-high popularity ratings from the public. And he has made several decisions — raising pay for home health care workers, funding urban programs, increasing budgets for environmental programs — that are likely to be popular among liberals and moderates.
For its part, the Baker administration points with pride to his progress on attacking the state budget deficit, while spending on public education and other critical areas without raising taxes.
“Additionally, the administration, one of the most bipartisan in recent history, has won praise from leading Democrats for the governor’s crossing the aisle on issues such as battling the opioid epidemic, aiding low-income families, and offering state government opportunities to minorities,” said Tim Buckley, a Baker spokesman.
At this point, none of the criticisms of Baker has jelled into full-throated opposition from Democratic leaders. In fact, the first-year governor appears to have good relations with the Democrats who run the House and Senate.
Still, Baker’s unusually warm honeymoon is showing its first signs of fraying. It’s not a political crisis, but small cracks in the eclectic coalition that put him in the governor’s office are appearing.
It is particularly evident among some of the Democrats — liberals and moderates — who comfortably crossed party lines and chose Baker over Democrat Martha Coakley in last November’s election. Despite his conservative leanings, they found him to be sensible, approachable, and compassionate.
“Constituencies and interest groups can read into a candidate anything they want,’’ Ubertaccio said “With Baker, you could watch the campaign last fall and say, ‘He’s not a threat to my interests.’ But in the end he is a conservative.’’
The most high-profile example of such tension involves Baker’s push to privatize some services at the beleaguered MBTA, against the wishes not only of the T’s unionized workers (whose radio advertisements warn of “shark privatizers”), but also Democrats in the state Senate.
But there are less heralded skirmishes as well.
