Somerville Elects a new State Rep tomorrow

[cos]

A few months ago, as many of you know, the Somerville State Representative Pat Jehlen was promoted to the state Senate in a special election. That left an open state house seat, and the electon to fill it is tomorrow - Tuesday, January 10th. Technically, this is the Democratic primary, with the general election on February 7th. However, the only two candidates who filed papers to be on the ballot are both Democrats. That means that whoever wins tomorrow's primary will be the only one on the ballot in February. So, practically speaking, the election is tomorrow.

The 27th Middlesex district covers roughly the middle half of Somerville, and includes all of Ward 6, which Davis Square is located in. To find out if you live in this district, check WhereDoIVoteMA.com. If it says your "Representative in General Court" is "VACANT", then you're in the district. Polls are open 7am-8pm.

The two candidates are,

• Somerville Alderman-at-Large and former Somerville City Attorney Denise Provost
  
• Somerville planning board member Elizabeth Moroney, also an aide to state Senator Pam Resor of Acton.

The two candidates match on far more issues than they differ. Both are very liberal on traditional economic and social issues. They're both strongly pro-gay marriage and pro-choice, oppose the death penalty, and oppose cutting the state income tax, which they both feel would put more pressure on cities to raise their property taxes.

I support Denise Provost and will be volunteering for her tomorrow.

In my view, the points where the candidates differ are:

1. Engagement with Somerville: Denise Provost has been everywhere in Somerville, talked to every group, worked on just about every city project, and everyone knows her. She is Somerville's most popular elected official, topping the ticket for Alderman-at-Large two years in a row. In 2003, when there was a contested mayoral election, she got more votes than the mayor (in 2005, mayor was uncontested). Elizabeth Moroney has been on the Planning Board for a while, but outside of city hall and the Democratic party committees, hardly anyone else in Somerville had ever heard her name until this campaign began. She's done some good work, but it's not even close.


2. Election Reform: I find this to be a good heuristic for picking out the real progressives from the liberals. Moroney's actually not bad: she supports clean elections, and nonpartisan redistricting, for example. But Provost takes it a step further - she volunteered to advocate for Instant Runoff Voting in her PDS questionnaire, when we didn't even bring it up.


3. Smart Development: When conflicts come up between the community and developers, Denise Provost consistently works to have the City actively engaged in planning development, while Moroney has a more laissez-faire history of favoring letting the developers do things their way.


4. Progressive engagement: Over the past several years, Denise Provost has been with us in the new progressive movement that came out of the Reich and Dean campaigns. She's worked with PDS and supported our candidates. Moroney had hardly been seen or heard from except when she opposed us. For example, Elizabeth Moroney supported Vinnie Ciampa against Carl Sciortino in the 2004 Democratic Primary. Vinnie was her friend and it's understandable, but he was also an awful state Rep, unresponsive to his constituents, extremely conservative, and bigoted, as became clear with his gay-baiting write-in campaign later on (to her credit, Moroney disavowed that). I trust Denise Provost to be with us on the issues and on the campaign trail, and to help build the progressive movement.


5. Building Bridges: Denise Provost is the most popular elected official in Somerville for good reason - she engages with many different communities that normally don't have much to do with each other, and builds bridges between them. We can see from the past few municipal elections that her base of support spans traditional boundaries. She has strong support among both old and young voters, and from both "old Somerville" (the people who were born here) and "new Somerville" (the ones who have moved in over the past couple of decades, who are actually the majority of Somerville's population, but fewer of them vote).

Progressive Democrats of Somerville, as part of our endorsement process, asked both candidates to fill out questionnaires, which I recommend reading: Denise Provost, Elizabeth Moroney.

• PDS overwhelmingly voted to endorse Denise Provost
  
• The Somerville Journal endorsed Denise Provost
  
• Even the cranky Somerville News endorsed Denise Provost
  
• The rest of Somerville's legislative delegation, Representative Carl Sciortino and Senator Pat Jehlen, both endorsed Denise Provost. Davis Square alderman and PDS founding chair Rebekah Gewirtz also endorsed Denise, as have another alderman and three school committee members. In contrast, as far as I can tell, not a single elected official in Somerville has endorsed Moroney.
  
• MassEquality is staying out of this one. Whoever wins will support gay marriage. However, the Bay State Stonewall Democrats did pick sides, and endorsed Denise.
  
• Planned Parenthood is staying out of this one. Whoever wins will be strongly pro-choice. However, Elizabeth Moroney is on the board of NARAL, and they have endorsed her (IMO, that's solely because she's on their board. Keep in mind that NARAL endorsed Mike Moran against Tim Schofield in Allston-Brighton last year, so I think their credibility on legislative endorsements is highly suspect.

Whichever candidate you choose to support needs your help tomorrow. If you live in the district, vote!. But even if you don't live in the district, please pick one of them and volunteer. Because this is a special election, an overwhelming majority of Somerville voters will not vote. Both campaigns need volunteers to help get out the vote - that is what will determine the outcome of the election. Yes, it is entirely possible for the candidate with significantly more supporters, to lose the election, because most of them don't vote.

Comments

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

In that other election a while back, when Ciampa was getting nasty all over Carl Sciortino, Provost supported Carl, but Moroney supported Ciampa.

That settled it for me. I will always reward the person who was on the equality bus longer.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I was a volunteer for Tim Schofield, but I have to say, a lot of well-meaning progressives backed Mike Moran because they had been scared about splitting the vote and throwing the election to the conservative. It turned out to be a close election--between Mike and Tim. The conservative candidate (whose name I'm completely blanking on) didn't have a chance. I mostly blame the Phoenix and the Globe for misrepresenting the situation.

[cos]

Actually, it's not just the Phoenix and the Globe, it's NARAL too. It took all three of them to push Moran just barely over the top. The vote-splitting scare was a very skillful last minute save by the Moran campaign. It was actually false: Schofield was significantly ahead as of a week before the election, and people worried about splitting the vote should have switched the other way, from Moran to Schofield. But the Moran campaign skillfully made a lot of people believe the opposite, and got them to switch the other way.

It was because of those numerous last minute switches that the vote actually was split almost evenly between Schofield and Moran, which put Glennon much closer to winning than he otherwise would have been. Fortunately, it turned out that there were more than enough progressive & liberal voters to beat Glennon even when they split evenly over two candidates. phew!

Now, for the Moran campaign, that was a great move, and I've praised them for it. Well done, and they managed to get a narrow win out of the jaws of likely defeat. The Globe and the Phoenix, yes, they didn't back the candidate I preferred. With the Globe, that was unsurprising - Moran was their kind of candidate (crudely put, "the local party guy"). With the Phoenix, I don't really understand - probably they got taken in by the vote splitting scare themselves. But when it comes to NARAL, I'm really angry. Moran will vote pro-choice. Schofield would have been an active, articulate, effective champion of reproductive rights. There is simply no comparison between the two. For an organization that claims to be a single-issue pro-choice group to pick Moran over Schofield was scandalous. And it gave Moran the little bit of progressive "cred" he needed to pull off the whole vote-splitting scare thing. NARAL was the only organization with a "progressive" image that endorsed Moran over Schofield, and made it appear to progressives that they had two reasonable choices.

So yes, a lot of well-meaning progressives switched their vote in the last few days and voted Moran, but that doesn't excuse NARAL, which acted rather regressively and betrayed its own stated ideals.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I didn't have any real sense of the numbers from day to day, so I'll have to defer to your knowledge.

So why did NARAL behave the way they did?

the numbers

[cos]

Re: NARAL - I think I know, but I may be wrong, or have only a partial understanding, and some of what I know I learned in confidence, after the election, so I shouldn't post it here.

As for the numbers, we had something like 1625 IDs by election day on the Schofield campaign. We had enough volunteers to recanvass and phone bank every precinct in the final couple of weeks, so our IDs were fresh. We also had a kickass GOTV on election day, and in precinct after precinct, we got more than enough of our IDs to the polls to win. And, in precinct after precinct, the number of votes Schofield got was significantly lower than the number of ID'ed supporters confirmed to have voted - which is backwards, usually you get more votes than turned-out supporters because there are some voters you didn't know about. That's very strong evidence for the theory that lots of people switched in the last week, and that we actually turned out a significant number of Moran voters.

As you recall, we ended up with about 1200 votes, 64 shy of winning. That means a) we had significantly more than enough supporters to win, and b) if just 32 fewer of them had switched their vote in the last few days, we'd have won, because we did everything else right.

[ron_newman]

See also the comments to my post a few days ago on the same subject, which talk about both candidates' campaign contributions and about Moroney's negative postcard mailings.

May the best woman win!

[cheapwinelover.livejournal.com]

I applaud you for volunteering tomorrow in the special election for State Representative since many people don't even get involved or have any awareness that there is an election. Hey, maybe we'll pollcheck together...

I have to disagree with you on an endorsement. We have two strong, progressive women here, but I'm for Elizabeth Moroney. She has the state house experience. The woman knows how to get things done and she has a much a right to call herself a progressive as the next person. She has a strong records on labor, the environment, and women's rights.

She is known in the community, although certainly Denise has more name recognition. (Hey, if being known in the community is so important, how do you explain endorsing Tony LaFuente?--couldn't resist the cheap shot.)

On a serious note, there is a factual error in your post. Carl Sciortino and Pat Jehlen are not the entirety of Somerville's legislative delegation. You're forgetting Tim Toomey and Jarrett Barrios. They may not represent your side of Somerville, but they represent Somerville nevertheless.

Who are Somerville's legislators?

[cos]

Actually, I live in Tim Toomey's district ... in Cambridge. Both he and Jarrett Barrios are from Cambridge. Carl recently bought a house in Medford, but he was elected from Somerville, and Pat of course lives in Somerville.

Barrios, in addition to being from Cambridge and having the largest portion of his district here and in Allston-Brighton, also has several other towns (like Everett and Revere). Toomey is, in addition to state rep, also a Cambridge City Councilor. His base of support is in Cambridge Ward 1, where he gets the majority of his votes. Avi Green actually beat him in Somerville in 2004 (and Vinnie Ciampa beat Carl Sciortino in Medford). So yes, you would be correct to include Barrios and Toomey in one definition of Somerville's legislative delegation. I think the definition I used - legislators from Somerville, elected by support in Somerville - is more meaningful in this context.

Also, Toomey and Barrios haven't endorsed anyone in this race.

the progressive choice

[cos]

I won't dispute Moroney's "right to call herself a progressive" - and she's certainly a strong liberal on most issues. However, as someone who has been very active in the Somerville progressive political movement for several years, I can say that Denise Provost has been with us all along, actively engaged and supportive, while Elizabeth Moroney has mostly been nowhere to be seen, except on those occasions where she opposed us (like in supporting Vinnie Ciampa). She's pretty good on many issues, but I don't think her winning this election would do the progressive movement any good. Denise is just as good on all of those issues, and a small handful more, and her victory would be a boost for us and all we're trying to accomplish. I think that for anyone who supports our goals (which includes many of Moroney's goals), a Provost win in this election is a better result for the future.

The question here isn't, "which candidate can call herself a progressive" - clearly, both can. The real question is, "which candidate is the progressive's choice in this particular election", and to that, I think the answer is clearly Denise Provost.
(who, incidentally, also knows how to get things done, and has shown that in abundance)

I am, however, quite happy that this is the choice we're faced with, between reasonably good and extremely good, with no mediocre or bad or awful on the ballot.

Re: May the best woman win!

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

cheapwinelover, In reference to your comment on "how do you explain endorsing Tony LaFuente?" who exactly are you refering to that endorsed Tony LaFuente?

Re: May the best woman win!

[cheapwinelover.livejournal.com]

PDS

Re: May the best woman win!

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

You are mistaken. PDS NEVER endorsed Tony LaFuente. PDS has NEVER endorsed ANY Mayoral Candidate.

Re: May the best woman win!

[cheapwinelover.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm glad to here that. He didn't seem to work with the mix. In fact, I don't get him at all.

Denise, Mark, and Marty make sense together. And it seems to be a collaborative effort.

Re: May the best woman win!

[ron_newman]

While Tony Lafuente got a majority of votes in an endorsement vote at a PDS meeting, the vote fell substantially short of the super-majority that PDS required for an endorsement. So it is incorrect to say that Tony received PDS's endorsement.

At last night's Provost victory party, Tony kept telling me that I should stop posting comments on the Somerville News blog, while at the same time saying that he didn't read the blog and therefore couldn't tell me which of my comments he disagreed with. So I'm not very favorably inclined towards him.

Re: May the best woman win!

[ron_newman]

By 'Mark' do you mean Mark Niedergang, or some other Mark?