Question 1 backers say Steve Forbes supports their effort

The Committee for Small Government said Tuesday that Steve Forbes has endorsed its effort to abolish the state income tax with Question 1 on the November ballot.

Steve ForbesIn an editorial set to run in Forbes magazine next Monday, Forbes, a wealthy businessman and publisher of the magazine, said the measure will serve as a necessary wake-up call to the Democratic establishment in the Bay State.

"The reason the measure stands even a chance of passing is not that Bay State citizens are selfish (even though each would enjoy on average an additional $3,700 of income) but that they are angry," Forbes writes, according to an email sent by the Committee for Small Government obtained by PolitickerMA.com. "This is an attack on political establishments there and throughout the U.S. that routinely put their own interests above those of their constituents: lavish government pensions with payouts that would bankrupt private companies; resistance to genuine reform in Medicaid spending, which has become the biggest item on virtually every state's budget; ever more pork-barrel spending; and ever more obsequiousness to rapacious special interests."

Forbes, who competed for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, also takes a swing at the Democratic bent of Massachusetts.

"It's telling when one of the most liberal states in the Union, with two extremely liberal U.S. senators and a House delegation with nary a Republican, is on the verge of a tax rebellion," Forbes writes. "Bay State voters -- go for your proposition. Your pols didn't enact your polite initiative of a small income tax reduction. Maybe they'll wake up when you whack them with a 2-by-4."