ALL FOOT-DRAGGING INSIDERS, PLEASE STEP FORWARD. In the video accompanying the announcement of her candidacy for governor earlier this week, Boston state senator Sonia Chang-Diaz cited her legislative accomplishments in helping to fund public education and reform the criminal justice system. She asserted, "Those wins didn't come easy. Beacon Hill insiders dragged their feet every step of the way, saying 'Think smaller.' Instead, we fought unapologetically for the things working families actually need. They said our ideas were impossible, we made them into law. The trouble is: that kind of urgency in our state government is still the exception rather than the rule. Too many leaders are more interested in keeping power than in doing something with it." Chang-Diaz is the Senate chairperson of the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy and the Joint Committee on Racial Equity, Civil Rights and Inclusion. She is the Senate vice chairperson of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, and a member of the Senate committees on Redistricting and on Reimagining Massachusetts Post-Pandemic Resiliency. Also, she's a member of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, and the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting. Chang-Diaz has been in the thick of "Beacon Hill insiders" since joining the Senate in January, 2009. Maybe that's why she avoided naming any of them in her announcement? She missed a good opportunity to liven up her announcement by doing so.
BUT WHAT'S MAURA GOING TO DO? Senator Chang-Diaz is the third Democrat so far to enter the race for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2022. The others were Ben Downing, a former long-time state senator from Pittsfield who now resides in East Boston, and Danielle Allen, who once won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and now teaches political science and ethics at Harvard University. The expectation is widespread that two-term Attorney General Maura Healey will also run. Until Healey makes a decision one way or another, Downing, Allen & Chang-Diaz will have to work extra hard to draw attention to their candidacies. Though officially off-stage for now, Healey is the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in the Dem governor primary.
THE HOUSE OF ULTIMATE CAUTION. Governor Charlie Baker had one of his typically salient observations this past Wednesday when he was asked during a press conference about re-opening the Massachusetts State House to the public. It is one of the last major public buildings -- one could argue the only major building -- where the public is still barred due to the pandemic. As reported by the State House News Service, Baker said, "I think the biggest challenge we have with reopening the State House is it's very hard to have rules in this building around how many people congregate, how they gather, whether they're vaccinated, whether they're not. It's really like a public space; it's like being outside in Boston Common, except it's not outside. We talked to the Legislature about this and I'm hoping at some point we'll be able to put some policies together that will satisfy the concern about indoor versus outdoor and at the same time keep people safe." I'm not a policy guy, but if anybody asked for my two cents on this, I'd say open the building fully to the public on July 1 but require everyone to wear a mask everywhere inside it, and continue to hold hearings on pending bills remotely because even the best State House hearing rooms are too small and social distancing is impossible within them.
WHEN HASHING OUT THE ISSUES, REMOTE DON'T CUT IT. Interviewed this past Thursday on WGBH public radio, Charlie Baker was borderline poetic on the importance of spending time in person with legislative leaders, which he hasn't been able to do for a long time because of the pandemic. As reported by the State House News Service, Baker said, "...I know this sounds kind of corny, but the fact that I haven't actually seen Karen Spilka (Senate President) or Ron Mariano (House Speaker) in person, except maybe at one event for a couple of minutes, and that we don't actually sit down and eat stale cookies and drink bad coffee once a week, I think it's a problem. Human beings see each other as people when they spend time with each other in person."
STRONG WORDS FROM EX-REPUBLICAN. Stuart Stevens, a Middlebury College (VT) grad, author of highly regarded travel books, and a Republican veteran national political strategist, was former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's top campaign guru when he ran for President in 2012. That's enough of a local political hook for me to highlight this quote by Stevens, excerpted from an April 21, 2021, article in The New York Times by Thomas Edsall, ("Why Trump Is Still Their Guy"): "We are in uncharted waters. For the first time since 1860, a major American political party doesn't believe America is a democracy. No Republican will win a contested primary in 2022 or 2024 who will assert that Biden is a legal president. The effect of this is profound and difficult to predict. But millions of Americans believe the American experience is ending." Stevens was a lifelong Republican until last year, when he changed his registration to Independent.
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