Election, this Tuesday

[cos]

The Massachusetts primary election is this Tuesday, September 19th.

We have two parties with official ballot status in Massachusetts: Democratic and Republican. Both parties will be holding primaries on Tuesday - but there are no contested Republican primaries in this area. With the exception of Governor/Lt. Governor, Democratic nominees will win every office that Cambridge & Somerville vote on. This is the election that counts, more than November!

You can vote in the Democratic primary if you registered to vote before August 30th, either as a Democrat or as unenrolled (no party). If you registered for a past election, you don't need to re-register. If you moved in the past six months and didn't re-register with your new address, vote at your old address. Find your precinct and polling place at WhereDoIVoteMA.com.

Contested Democratic Races

• Governor: Deval Patrick, Chris Gabrieli, Tom Reilly


• Lieutenant Governor: Andrea Silbert, Tim Murray, Deborah Goldberg


• Secretary of State (technically, Secretary of the Commonwealth): John Bonifaz, Bill Galvin


• Middlesex Clerk of Courts: Bruce Desmond, Michael Sullivan

Research the candidates...

• Visit their web sites.


• For the statewide races, a lot of candidates have videos on YouTube - search for their names


• Look for coverage on the Massachusetts political blogs, starting with Blue Mass Group. Blue Mass Group's blogroll lists all the other MA politics blogs.

I posted this a few days ago on ljmass and massachusetts without my own recommendations, but since there are a number of people on this community who ask me for candidate recommendations, I strongly recommend Deval Patrick, Andrea Silbert, and John Bonifaz for the statewide offices, and I have a mild preference for Bruce Desmond for Middlesex Clerk of Court. There are no other contested races in the Davis Square area (Somerville wards 6 & 7).

Disclosure: I am John Bonifaz's campaign blogger. Bonifaz is a voting rights and election reform leader, running for Secretary. You can read my blog posts at johnbonifaz.com. See also last week's front page Globe article about this race - why won't Bill Galvin debate?

Comments

Re: Uh-oh: can of worms opened

[cos]

I like Tim Murray, and I'm glad we have two great candidates in this race. Silbert actually raised more money than Murray, but held on to much of it and has only started running ads recently. That's why polls have shown she has less name recognition, but I think that's changing now that her ads are on the air (and on youtube :)

Though I think both Murray and Silbert are strong candidates who would be good Lt. Governors, the reasons I prefer Andrea Silbert are:

• She's bolder, more charismatic (yes I've met both, as well as seen public speeches), and more likely to make a difference by going to the public on important issues.


• I co-founded a small business in the 1990s (we had our office in Davis Square for several years, in fact), and I'm really drawn to the fact that Silbert has been involved in founding hundreds of small business (including, for example, ZipCar). She's worked with people who had ideas to get them started, get them funding, get them offices, comply with employment law, etc. She knows what the major pitfalls and common obstacles are, where the bureaucracy fails and where it succeeds, and where the opportunities are. She plans to make job creation a focus of her tenure as Lt. Governor, and unlike other candidates who say "job creation" she doesn't mean tax cuts for big corporation, she means helping residents with ideas be better able to start small businesses.


• Tim Murray, as mayor of Worcester, prevented the Worcester city council from hearing a local civil liberties resolution. If it weren't for him, Worcester would've probably passed one, as hundreds of other cities have (including more than 50 cities and towns in Massachusetts).


• Tim Murray strongly supports MCAS as a graduation requirement for high school, and I think it's ridiculous to use a test that's supposed to measure as a requirement. You can't measure something when your instrument of measurement has high stakes - it becomes a roundabout method of setting curriculum, and the result is a disaster.


• Andrea Silbert is supported by almost every Progressive Democrats and Democracy for America group in the state. I like those groups and support their goals, and I think the more votes the candidate they back gets, the more political strength they'll have, which I think is a great side-benefit of voting for Silbert.

I support Tim Murray's priorities of better interface between state and local governments, increased local aid, and more regional public transportation. I won't be upset if he wins, but I definitely prefer Andrea Silbert.