Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

… and then there were three.

By

Ryan Higginson has withdrawn his candidacy for the 3rd Suffolk State Rep seat.  Press release (email, no link):

Ryan Higginson, a South End community activist, annouces that he is no longer seeking the democratic nomination for the third Suffolk district seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives…. Higginson endeavors to meet with his former opponents to further discuss his continued concerns and ideas for the community, and will continue to retain a community voice in the race.

That leaves Susan Passoni, Aaron Michlewitz, and Lucy Rivera.  Who’s your candidate?  Why?

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. …because we served together on the board of Young Democrats a few years ago.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a dog in this fight.

  2. Top Prize

    <

    p>Susan Passoni’s site is great.  She has a long and detailed section on “issues” and seems to be a real progressive.  Impressive knowledge on state issues.

    <

    p>Honorable Mention

    <

    p>Lucy Rivera’s site allows you to read the text in english, spanish, or chinese.   Wow.  Unfortunately, the issues section is too vague to get a sense of her public policy issues.

    <

    p>Better luck next time

    <

    p>The website for Aaron Michlewitz is a PDF of a flier.  I am not joking, but this looks like a page from my high school yearbook.   There are no links, nor actual information.    Is this a serious candidate?  

    • I know that Aaron is a serious candidate.  But his website is indeed embarrassing.  I wonder if I have the wrong link?  I don’t think so, but really…

      <

      p>On the plus side, he does have a somewhat more functional Facebook Group going.  Not that you can glean much information about his views on anything on that page.

    • Thanks for sharing your ranking of the candidates websites or shall I say an innacurate and uncalled for hit piece on Aaron? I reviewed each of the websites as well. Susan has proven one thing to me; her treasurer knows how to write a check out of her campaign fund for an expensive website – nothing more.  Now does that make me want to vote for her any more or less? I am not sure when having an impressive (expen$ive) website moved up the priority ladder when it comes to evaluating the quality of progressive candidates. But I digress.

      <

      p>As to your assessment of Aaron’s site – perhaps you should revisit your comment that “There are no links, nor actual information. Is this a serious candidate?” I think you should have said that you were experiencing difficulty in accessing the links and other pages on the site when using Mozilla/Firefox. (Probably won’t happen seeing that your sole purpose of signing up for BMG last week was to do your Website Countdown).  

      <

      p>I find that his website works just fine when I use MS – Internet Explorer but not Mozilla/Firefox (not sure why, but heads up Michlewitz people).  I found a lot of useful information about Aaron and his positions and while his site is probably not as professional (i.e. as expen$ive) as Susan’s – it is certainly not “embarassing”, is indeed informative, and serves its purpose just fine. Aaron is quite he serious candidate.  

      <

      p>I did find at least one thing on Aaron’s website that was more impressive than your own honorable mention prize winner – Aaron apparently knows what neighborhoods are part of the District he is looking to represent. (Sorry Lucy Rivera – the Back Bay is really not part of the District.  The South End and Bay Village are.)  

      • “Probably won’t happen seeing that your sole purpose of signing up for BMG last week was to do your Website Countdown)”

        <

        p>This from a guy who’s entire BMG contribution has been a downrating and a snide comment thus far.  Granted, he had the foresight to sign up February 28th, a mere month after it became clear a special election would be coming up…

      • I’ll take your word for that, I guess — I don’t have IE on my computer.  Still, not working in Firefox is a pretty significant flaw in a website.  That’s more than just deciding not to pay top dollar.  That’s incompetence.  And yes, it’s embarrassing.

        <

        p>And your own “hit piece” on Passoni seems petty to me.  If, as you claim, Michlewitz’s site when viewed with IE provides “a lot of useful information,” surely the same can be said of Passoni’s site — which works in all browsers.

        <

        p>For the record, I don’t live in the 3rd Suffolk, and have not taken a position on this race.  I may do so eventually; I may not.

  3. Great, smart, progressive, and proven ability to win, basically.

    <

    p>This is going to be a two-person race between Aaron Michlewitz who can tap DiMasi’s network, and Susan Passoni who has already run for office in an overlapping city council district.  She dropped out of a career in finance 5 years ago, when it was hot, to go into public service and community organizing.  She’s gotten heavily involved in education.  And her two runs for city council made her a known quanity and an experienced campaigner.  The choice between Michlewitz and Passoni is a very easy one for me, and Susan Passoni is someone I’d love to see in the state house, with her knowledge of finance and education and her commitment to public service.

    <

    p>We progressives have a recurring problem: Our voters just don’t turn out for municipal elections.  Just look at Somerville: In this decade progressives have taken both state rep districts (beating a 16 year incumbent in one) and the state senate seat in a hard-fought special election… and have one seat on the board of aldermen, despite trying several times.  In Allston/Brighton Tim Schofield came within 64 votes of winning the state rep seat, but got eliminated in the preliminary for city council.  This happens again and again.

    <

    p>And yet, when Susan Passoni ran for city council in 2007, the South End turned out for her, and she won every single south end precinct in the district overwhelmingly, with numbers in the 80%-90% range.  Just the votes she got in the south end portion of this state rep district (the portion which overlaps the city council district she ran in) might be more than 3/4 of the votes she needs to win this election, depending on your turnout estimate.  But we know that progressives voters turn out at higher rates, proportional to the overall vote, in state races than in city races.  And we know she’s popular in Chinatown, and is campaigning hard in the North End portion of the district too.

    • I work in Ward 7 Pct 2, so I can verify what Cos says.  Trane wins there because he gets his voters out.  Certain blocks (or pages in my book, more accurately) had higher turn out in the Nov. 2007 election than in Nov. 2008.  Only Sciortino with his massive volunteer operation was able to go toe to toe with this and still only won Ward 7 very narrowly.  (Votes from Medford carried the day for him.)  Frankly the liberal, apartment dwelling, twenty somethings that support candidates like Gewirtz and Sciortino don’t vote in local elections without extreme amounts of prodding.

      • I’ve seen this same pattern all over the city, in several election cycles.  I’ve worked and volunteered on city council races in Cambridge and several parts of Boston in 2005 and 2007 and we always see that it’s much harder to turn out progressive voters for these races than it is for state house/senate primaries and specials.

        <

        p>Another example: Fenway/JP couldn’t elect Gibran Rivera for Boston city council, but they really turned out for the Wilkerson/Chang-Diaz elections.

        <

        p>The South End and Chinatown are both exactly the kinds of places where I’d expect this pattern to hold true.

        • First of all, the Fenway isn’t in District 6. Ross has part of it in D7 and Turner has the rest in D8.

          <

          p>Secondly, the political strength of the D6 is in West Roxbury. West Roxbury has the highest per capita turnout of all neighborhoods in the City. Even if Rivera had mobilized every JP voter who turned out for Chang-Diaz, he still wouldn’t have beaten Tobin. The race just wasn’t that close.

          <

          p>Besides, it’s not like Tobin doesn’t have his share of progressive supporters. He may not be Sam Yoon, but he’s not Steve Murphy, either.

  4. The 3rd Suffolk District is lucky to have so much talent willing to represent them and would be well served by any of these candidates.
    Aaron Michlewitz is special. This is a very bright, talented, young man that loves his community and is connected to the people. When others his age are running around being young, Aaron has dedicated himself to making a difference. He has been a coach and a mentor for kids, an organizer and activist for numerous causes and organizations, and served as Constituent Services Director in the former Speaker’s office. He is the leader that the others gravitate towards and gets things done.
    I helped Jamie Eldridge get elected for the first time when he was about the same age. Like Jamie, he is a committed progressive who believes passionately in making a difference and elected office is just the next step in fulfilling that potential. In Aaron we have that leader we are always hoping for.

    • Susan Passoni will bring the same leadership skill that catapulted her to the heights of Boston’s finance industry, got her elected as president if the Ellis South End Neighborhood Association, and helped her work with others to create Excel Academy (http://www.excelacademy.org/), one of the best performing charter schools in the state in East Boston to her work as the 3rd Suffolk’s next state rep.

      <

      p>Susan’s life and professional experience sets her apart in this field. In these budgetary times, we need progressive legislatures with a firm grasp on the inner working of the finance industry, so both state money can be used for efficiently and so that we can do a better job of regulating financial institutions. In this field, only Susan provides that skill set.

      <

      p>For the progressives among us, Susan is the strongest choice. She’s been endorsed by The Mass Alliance (which includes MassEquality, NARAL pro-choice Mass, Planned Parenthood, the Boston Teachers Union, the Mass Teachers Association, the Sierra club, the National Organization of Women, and many more). She’s also earned the support of the American Federation of Teachers, the Mass Woman’s Political Caucus, the Stonewall Dems of MA, and many, many more.

      <

      p>I’ve known Susan since her first race for the city council against the arch-conservative Jimmy Kelly back in 2005. Susan is a brilliant, progressive, dedicated, no-nonsense professional who would be a terrific voice for the people of the 3rd.  

      • Agreed: That’s exactly when Susan first came to my attention, and I have a special appreciation for progressives who step up to challenge entrenched conservatives that nobody else seems to want to challenge.  That’s one of the things that marks her as bold and committed and ready to take action, something I don’t see in every liberal whose positions I generally like.

      • I volunteered for Susan on a previous campaign. She’s great.

        <

        p>If Aaron wins the primary, come over and meet him. You will love this guy. Aaron is that exceptional candidate and will be the legislator that makes us proud!

        • If Aaron wins the primary, I will absolutely come over and meet him. heck, I’d like to meet him even if Susan wins. I’m sure whatever the outcome of this race he will be a fixture in the community for years to come.

    • Jamie Eldridge — first vote in the legislature was AGAINST the Speaker of the House who later resigned under a cloud of legal and ethical malfeasance.

      <

      p>Aaron Michlewitz — WORKED FOR the Speaker of the House who later resigned under a cloud of legal and ethical malfeasance.

      • Aaron worked in the office of the “Speaker” that Jamie voted for, not the other “Speaker” that Jamie voted against.

        <

        p>Aaron worked as “Constituent Services Director”…helping people. Aaron’s belief that government can be a force in solving problems and creating opportunities is something he has participated in.

      • Not sure what your point is.  By emphasizing WORKED FOR the Speaker of the House are you trying to suggest that Aaron’s work experience, which involved being on the front line of community issues throughout the 3rd Suffolk District makes him less qualified to represent us?

Archives