Questions are lobbed at the Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates all the time. Complex or simple. Specific or broad. Controversial or mundane. Answering them is part of the job.
How will you win the women’s vote? Are you confident you did nothing to violate pay-to-play rules? Where are you on early education and earned sick time?
But one question almost never asked cuts to the heart of why these five are campaigning. Simply: Why do you want to be the governor of Massachusetts? So, we asked impromptu and unprompted. What follows are their answers, in full.
“I am so excited about the opportunities for Massachusetts now, to be able to invest in our people, our workforce, to make sure our kids are ready. As we roll out a red carpet for businesses, we know that we are doing so much better than other states. We know that with our innovation economy and our opportunities to move ahead that Massachusetts now has the opportunity to be prosperous and fair. I was attorney general during a time when we saw Wall Street take our money, gamble with it, lose it. We’ve worked for the last eight years to keep people in their homes, to make sure that as we challenge the Defense of Marriage Act that people would be treated fairly by businesses, by corporations, and by the state. And I think the governor, and I believe it can and should be me, is in a position to say ‘We’re going to invest in our kids. We’re going to invest in our workforce. We’re going to move ahead in Massachusetts to a state that’s prosperous and fair.’ I’m really excited about it. Can’t wait to start.”
. . .
“I think I can make a difference. I really believe that based on the experience I had working in state government before and the work that I did at Harvard Pilgrim and in the private sector generally, I think I can make this state great. I really enjoyed and, in fact, loved the time I spent working in state government before. I enjoyed the back and forth. I enjoyed the opportunity to make stuff better. I’ve said before I grew up with a mom and dad who used to talk about this across the dinner table the whole time we were kids. My mom is a Democrat. My dad is a Republican. That back and forth just instilled in me an appreciation for the importance and the value of public service and the public sector. It’s really not more complicated than that.”
. . .
“I think the political establishment today is not taking people seriously or treating them seriously, and what we need to do is to create a new framework to bring in lots of new independent people. It starts with electing the first independent governor in our history, but that’s the beginning of it. To bring about long lasting change to have a permanent independent voice in our politics and get us away from this left/right stuff that we’ve been bogged down in for decades, we need to start with that. That’s that first brave step. That’s why I’m doing it. I’m doing it to be genuine and real and talk directly to voters and connect with them and hear what they have to say and take all the really good things that people have to say, because there’s a lot of really, really good things that people are doing, and put them on the level of state policy.”
. . .
“It’s a great opportunity for me to serve the Commonwealth. I have the skill set of solving problems, bringing people together, of thinking out of the box, of creating jobs and that’s what we need in Massachusetts right now. That is the No. 1 reason. That’s the big reason for me. Things are broken. They need to be fixed. They need someone not tied to the status quo. And I think an independent candidate with the right experience in all these areas is the solution.”
. . .
“I’m running to advance a biblical world view in the Massachusetts political arena, something that hasn’t been articulated or hasn’t been heard by the voters in a very long time. That’s my reason. No one in the last several election cycles that I have been paying attention to has been advocating the positions I hold. I’m running to represent people who believe the way that I do.”
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