Massachusetts Politics

News coverage of the candidates for governor this year seems fixated on campaign cash: how much Republican incumbent Charlie Baker has and how little the candidates in the Democratic primary, Jay Gonzalez and Robert Massie, have. Yesterday, for example, The Boston Globe reported that Baker is sitting on a campaign account of more than $8 million and that Democrats Jay Gonzalez and Robert Massie have, combined, only $132,000. Until after the Sept. 4 primary, and until the winner of the primary raises many millions of dollars, we are not likely to hear a whole lot about what Gonzalez and Massie stand for or what they want to do as governor. That’s too bad.   Each Democrat is peddling some audacious ideas. To ease the struggles of persons with addictions, Gonzalez, for example, wants to require health insurers to cover the cost of medical marijuana.   And, to reduce deaths by overdose, he wants the state to allow safe injection sites. To combat climate change, Massie wan...

“Health care is a right!” Someone is bound to say that whenever our nation's excessively costly health care system is being debated and pronounced upon.  But, until early this week, I hadn’t heard it in a while, which meant I had been able to avoid obsessing over it, as I tend to do, for reasons I cannot explain. Then an email from the campaign of Barbara L’Italien, the Andover Democrat state senator running for Congress in the Third Massachusetts District, arrived in my inbox on Monday, May 21, at 3:57 p.m. I’ve been obsessing ever since.   In the voice of the candidate herself, this is what that email said: “Health care is a right, not a privilege, which is why I’ve spent my career fighting for a single-payer system.   With endorsements from Mass-Care and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, I’m proud to be the single-payer candidate in this race.   It will be one of my biggest priorities in Washington…Every single person in this coun...

What does it take to run again for the same public office you resigned from because you manipulated the balloting process and were going to prison? Chutzpah? Shamelessness? A compulsion for vindication? Whatever it takes, Everett’s Steve “Stat” Smith apparently has it in spades. In December of 2012, Smith agreed to plead guilty to civil rights violations and resign from the Massachusetts House of Representatives (28th Middlesex District) for his role in submitting fraudulent absentee ballot applications and casting invalid ballots in multiple elections in 2009 and in 2010. In April of 2013, Smith was sentenced to four months in federal prison for two misdemeanor counts of voter fraud, ordered to pay a $20,000 fine, and prohibited from running for public office for five years. I remember talking to a friend in Everett at that time, someone who knew Smith well and who talked with him after his sentencing but before he reported to prison.   This is what he told me: “Stat says he’...

If Amazon did in Boston what it did in Denver as part of its ongoing quest for a second headquarters city (HQ2), I hope someone has written an inside account of the proceedings and will release it soon to the public. The New York Times reported that a 10-person Amazon team met in January with Denver officials to discuss their city’s HQ2 bid, [“One Goal of Amazon’s HQ2: Learn the Lessons of Seattle,” 4-29-18]. During that get-together, Amazon reps asked questions focusing on how local officials could help them avoid recreating in Denver problems exacerbated in Seattle by HQ1, like traffic congestion and high housing costs. “I think they feel in Seattle they’re the scapegoat every time there’s an issue in the community and traffic,” Sam Bailey told The New York Times .   Bailey is vice president of economic development for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. Denver, like Boston, is among the 20 finalist cities in the HQ2 competition; Suffolk Downs, the old ...