Though labeled as taking on racial, social and economic justice issues, a candidates forum held Thursday for the 25th Middlesex District seat in Cambridge felt largely like it was once again about good government – the topic in May, a previous in-person meeting of incumbent state representative Marjorie Decker and challenger Evan MacKay.
There were glimpses of issues-based ways voters might differentiate between candidates for Sept. 1 primaries in Cambridge, where the office seekers are likely to all be progressive and pursue many of the same policies.
“Tax the rich,” MacKay said 10 times during the forum, “to make sure that government is working on behalf of everybody.”
“I only try not to laugh, because I’ve spent my entire career trying to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to those who don’t have it,” Decker responded.
Roughly 15 questions on everything from gun violence and housing costs to protecting trans people and reprioritizing funds were asked by moderator Brian Wright O’Connor, a journalist, poet and political adviser, on behalf of sponsors and hosts NAACP Cambridge and The Cambridge Community Center. Many answers, though, circled back to a couple of points.
MacKay, who is trying again to unseat Decker after coming within less than 50 votes of it two years ago, railed against secrecy in the Legislature to shake up a status quo that benefits “oligarchs” and urged Decker to take a pledge against taking “dark money” campaign funding from groups known as super political action committees.
One of MacKay’s prime concerns is the Legislature’s secrecy on votes in committee, where bills often go to die, and the bundling of omnibus bills that package together so many items it is hard to discern the intent of a single vote. “We need to have open and honest government,” MacKay said, “to be on a level playing field with the ultrawealthy.” This was even more important, they said, considering the state filing Wednesday for a new funding group, The Progressive Cambridge Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee.
“We are proud to have taken the Cambridge People’s Pledge to insist that we don’t want any of that dark money. Representative Decker, will you also take the people’s pledge? Will you denounce dark money in Cambridge politics?” MacKay asked more than once.
Decker, a former Cambridge city councillor who grew up in public housing here, did not take that pledge – but referred in almost every answer to her record in office since 2012, when she took up the mantel and seat of mentor Alice Wolf.
“I’ve secured a million dollars for this community center. I’ve helped secure funding so kids in Cambridge don’t go hungry on the weekends. I helped secure funding so we can continue providing programs for LGBTQ youth. And right here, we did a briefing on Black maternal health,” Decker said in one of many answers enumerating the popular legislation she’s worked on or funding she’s brought the city.
Gun laws, violence prevention and earmarks
In at least one case, these tendencies showed some difference between the candidates. In a question about how to stem violence in the community, based on Saturday’s fatal shooting of Xavier Bautista in The Port neighborhood, Decker pointed to Massachusetts’ record as having the second-lowest gun homicide rate in the nation, and to the gun laws she has passed. MacKay said that the “harms of violence are not randomly distributed throughout society” and urged funding for “violence interrupters” and youth jobs and summer programming.
Without liking all the ways the Legislature functions, Decker argued that she’s become very effective at making it work. To a question about earmarks, the essence of delivering money to a specific community and constituent base, Decker said she opposed them when first elected but “started seeing some of the things that other communities were bringing back” – and dove in, with wins such as securing $460 million “ to make sure that the Cambridge Health Alliance doesn’t shut down.”
MacKay agreed that the direct support to neighborhoods and organizations was essential. “We absolutely need to keep on supporting these earmarks. But there is a lot of reform that needs to happen there, because many of these earmarks go to the wealthiest communities,” they said.
Similarities and differences
When it came time to identify what the candidates admired about each other and their most important difference, MacKay said there were several things about Decker “that are really terrific” and they would continue doing, such as cash assistance to low-income families and fighting for abortion rights. “The question is, can we challenge State House leadership when they are doing the wrong thing? Can we go public with the bad behavior from this clique of politicians who hold our state hostage?” MacKay said. “There are disagreements within the Democratic caucus. It is my perspective that these disagreements should be visible.”
Decker’s response was class based, saying she admired MacKay for running and for pursuing a third degree at Harvard. “I always wanted to go to Harvard Law,” she said. “Where we differ is that I come from this community, and I come from a place in public housing where too often I understood the humiliation of what it meant to be looked down upon.”
Now, she said, “people in power are a little afraid of me,” because she’s “in a place I was never supposed to be.”
Allegations of misrepresentations and smears were exchanged, including around whether auditor Diana DiZoglio – who has endorsed MacKay – was being allowed to run the legislative audit 72 percent of Massachusetts voters approved by ballot question two years ago. Decker said the House voted to allow DiZoglio access and “she got everything she wanted”; MacKay produced a Boston Globe editorial about that bill headlined “House plays political games over audit, public records” that blasts the body and its speaker because “the closer you look, the more the bill looks like a piece of political theater – and that’s no substitute for real transparency.”
On ShotSpotter, it’s let the people decide
When the candidates were asked about the city’s defunct ShotSpotter gunfire-listening technology, newly controversial after Bautista’s death, MacKay said they were concerned that it was flawed, producing lots of false positives and negatives, and that it is reactive and does nothing to prevent a shooting.
Decker took an approach peculiar for an elected official, especially one whose challenger has made an issue of her legislative body’s preference for secrecy.
“Families like mine, families like yours, we were not a part of the conversation,” Decker said, making a populist complaint to the audience about a City Council decision in May to shut down ShotSpotter. “Whether or not we should have ShotSpotter should be a community-based conversation where people are told the pros and the cons and the decisions are informed by what people say and what they feel. I don’t believe that we have fully vetted that conversation. It is one that we need to have.”
The 150-plus people crowding the Riverside neighborhood center were weighted toward Decker supporters and cheered much of what she said, but to the voters that had MacKay in a virtual dead heat with Decker two years ago, this may feel like a couple of Decker’s previous clashes with public processes: reholding meetings in 2024 about whether to close Memorial Drive on Saturdays for more Riverbend Park time; and the emails by her about that decision turned up a year earlier in a public records request reported by Streetsblog.
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