Candidates for the Suffolk and Middlesex District state Senate seat traded rhetorical blows during a Wednesday forum focused on transparency on Beacon Hill.
Incumbent state senator Will Brownsberger and challenger Daniel Lander debated topics including an audit of the state Legislature, a ballot question about public records and campaign funding.
Twenty-three people attended the forum at St. James Church Hall in Porter Square. The Cambridge Committee for Transparency and Accountability, a group of voters focused on making state politicians’ activities on Beacon Hill more accessible to the public, hosted the event, along with the organizations ACT on Mass and the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature. Pete Septoff, a Transparency and Accountability steering committee member, moderated.
Lander, a former aide to Boston mayor Michelle Wu and the first challenger Brownsberger has faced since 2014, accused the incumbent of maintaining a culture of opacity in the Legislature that keeps Massachusetts residents from knowing what their politicians do.
“We have the least effective and least transparent legislature in the country, and my opponent is the architect of that broken status quo that sees good ideas and bills die every single year without a vote,” said Lander in his introduction.
Brownsberger said he has been committed to making the Legislature more transparent throughout his career as a state senator. He talked about how his advocacy led to the creation of CThru, a program that makes state finances and state employee payrolls available to the public, and a database showing where state funds for affordable housing go.
Brownsberger has represented the Suffolk and Middlesex District – which covers Cambridge, Allston, Brighton, Fenway, Watertown and Belmont – since 2012 and served as the state Senate’s president pro tempore since 2019. He said his experience made him a more effective leader than a newcomer.
“I know that this district is much better off with the power and experience that I have as a result of my good service in the Legislature. I hope I’ll be reelected, for the sake of this district,” Brownsberger said.
Rating the transparency
When Septoff asked the candidates how they would rate the transparency of the current state Senate session, Lander rated it an F, citing opposition to a proposed legislative audit and pointing to a hot mic moment during the Senate budget debate on May 19, when a senator said that a vote on an amendment had been decided behind closed doors.
“I don’t think that is the leadership that is meeting this moment, and I don’t think that is leadership that is bringing people into this process,” Lander said.
Brownsberger didn’t like Septoff’s question, saying that there are multiple layers to legislative transparency. The Legislature had done “a very good job of making things public,” he said, citing how the trajectory of every bill is detailed on the Legislature’s website – an award-winning website, he mentioned three times.
Brownsberger also said that he makes the reasoning for all of his decisions clear in detailed blog posts on his own website.
Adding transparency
Both candidates supported a ballot initiative that would make all documents from the Legislature and the governor’s office public record. It is one of 47 filed with the Attorney General’s Office to go before voters this year or in 2028.
Brownsberger, however, opposed the idea of a legislative audit by state auditor Diana DiZoglio. The senate complied with DiZoglio’s requests, he said: “She finally said what she wants, and we gave it to her. Boom. Now she’s going to change what she wants.”
Brownsberger compared the auditor to Elon Musk, the right-wing tech oligarch empowered by president Donald Trump to run a federal program called the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025, but didn’t elaborate. Lander called the comparison “crazy,” and mentioned that 72 percent of Massachusetts voters support an audit.
Throughout the night, Lander said that he would challenge a status quo that has prevented the Legislature from addressing the needs of Massachusetts residents during a statewide affordability crisis. “We need leaders who do not continue to buy into a system that isn’t working and want to show up every single day with a fire lit under them,” he said. Brownsberger reminded the audience that, while urgency is important, legislation is a slow and deliberative process.
Compensation and closings
During discussion of whether the current payment system for legislators is fair, Brownsberger said state legislators should be well compensated. He said that increasing the current salary to $150,000 or more from $82,000 “would be great.”
Lander attacked the $20,000 stipends given to chairs of “do-nothing committees” – and said that list included Brownsberger’s Senate Committee on the Census. “I do not think that is fair pay for real work,” Lander said. Brownsberger rebuked the claim by saying his committee’s work produced a research article published in a journal run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
When asked what donations the candidates would reject, Brownsberger pointed to Lander getting $1,000 from billionaire Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google and later its parent company, Alphabet. Lander did not address that fact in his response, and said that he did not take money from corporate PACs. After the forum, Lander said he had met Schmidt once; his father, Eric Lander, a prominent scientist and mathematician and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, worked with Schmidt on Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Brownsberger closed the event by saying he had a track record of fighting for civil rights, providing health care and housing access, and lowering the incarceration rate. “I am a dedicated public servant. I work very hard. I deliver results,” he said.
Lander said Massachusetts was no longer a model for progressive policies. “We can once again be a leader for the rest of the country, but what that is going to take is the leadership that’s going to meet this moment,” he said.
The primary for the Suffolk and Middlesex District state Senate seat is Sept. 1. Either Brownsberger or Lander will go on to face Brandon Charles Wood of Belmont in the Nov. 3 general election.
A 2nd Middlesex District candidates forum is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Friends Meeting House at 5 Longfellow Park, near Harvard Square, Cambridge. This state Senate seat, which includes the cities of Somerville and Medford and parts of Cambridge and Winchester, has been held by Pat Jehlen since 2005. With her retirement, the seat is sought by Cambridge city councillor Burhan Azeem, state representative Christine Barber, Winchester School Committee member Tom Hopcroft, Somerville city councilor Matt McLaughlin and state representative Erika Uyterhoeven. Cantabrigian Neheet Trivedi dropped out, endorsing Azeem on June 2.
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