The Bay State is blessed! There are two – count ’em, two – pieces in the Weekend Wall Street Journal about the Ed Markey/Gabriel Gomez special U.S. Senate bakeoff.

First up: This piece about conservative donors holding back on Gomez, in contrast to their contributions to Scott Brown in his 2010 special U.S. Senate race.

GOP Donors Are Sitting Out Massachusetts Senate Race

Next week’s special Senate election in Massachusetts is offering a stark contrast to a similar contest three years ago that came to symbolize a newly emboldened Republican Party.

In 2010, a bevy of conservative groups and outside supporters surged in to help the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, pull off an upset victory that shocked Democrats and complicated their quest to overhaul the country’s health-care laws.

This time, such groups are giving scant help to the Republican nominee, Gabriel Gomez, in his uphill battle against veteran U.S. Rep. Ed Markey for the seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry. The dearth of outside support has left Mr. Gomez exposed to a wave of ads from the Markey campaign and its allies, stirring anger in some Republican circles that the party is being too hesitant and too timid.

Then again, that reluctance to grubstake Gomez might just be a grasp of the obvious by conservative groups, given this Eric Convey WSJ op-ed:

Mr. Markey’s much better funded campaign has pulled out all the stops, launching a barrage of negative ads that Mr. Gomez has had a hard time countering. Between Jan. 1 and June 5, Mr. Markey raised $7.87 million, compared with Mr. Gomez’s $1.78 million. As of June 5, Mr. Markey had $2.26 million on hand; Mr. Gomez, $997,000.

Translation: Money talks. Gomez walks.