(An excellent chance to turn a red seat blue. Bob, Charley and I are pleased to endorse Cos's call to elect Claire Naughton. - promoted by David)
Claire Naughton is a retired teacher running for state Representative in the 1st Bristol district, in a special election tomorrow: Tuesday, February 7th. As I've blogged here before, I joined the campaign at the very beginning, and I'll be there at the office all day tomorrow.
This district, comprising all of Foxboro and half each of Mansfield and Norton, has been held by Republicans for decades, but it's an open seat now, and Claire is running a great campaign. It's going to be hard, but we can win it. I'm convinced that Claire would be the kind of Representative I most want: Accessible, open, smart, an advocate for progressive reforms, not just another Democratic vote in the house.
Furthermore, Claire has been endorsed by MassEquality because she supports equal marriage rights, and her opponent plans to vote in favor of the amendment rescinding those rights. We're in a close contest to prevent that amendment from getting 50 votes and inviting the entire national religious right into our state for an ugly ballot fight. A victory, or even a surprisingly strong showing in this election, will help us change even more legislators' minds about how voters feel about this amendment.
Claire is an active Democrat - an elected state committeewoman and former chair of the Foxboro town committee - and an active member of her community. She taught in elementary schools in Brookline, Attleboro, and Warwick for over 30 years, and her husband is an assistant principal at Norton High School. She's running on a bread & butter Democratic message: Strong schools, affordable access to health care, and state aid for local services so the financial burden doesn't fall too heavily on property taxes. She understands that the House plan to fund health care for employees of companies that don't provide it, by taxing those companies more than the ones who do, is not only effective, but fair and ethical - something her opponent seems not to get.
As I said above, this will be a difficult election to win. With a strong get out the vote effort, we can win. Please help us elect Claire! See below the fold for more details on how you can help us in these crucial last two days. |
Getting out the Vote for Claire Naughton
Getting out the vote is a simple concept, it just takes a lot of work by a lot of people. This is a special election, and turnout will be very very low - there's not much buzz and not much media coverage. Big newspapers and TV stations don't cover a state house special election. People who aren't very politically active aren't talking about it with their friends the way they would in a presidential election. It's up to us, the campaign, to remind them that there's an election coming, that it's important, and to ask them to vote. The more people working on this, the better a job we'll do, and the more votes we'll get. - If you are in or near the district, or can get to it, please volunteer! We can use you Monday evening and all day Tuesday, the most critical time for winning this kind of election. Directions to the office are on the web site - call ahead to let use know you're coming.
- If you can't easily get to the district, but want to help, and live in metro Boston, we're going to have phone banks all day on both Monday and Tuesday until 8pm, at MassEquality and/or Neighbor to Neighbor. Contact the campaign office and we'll hook you up with a phone bank.
- Wherever you live, you can contribute to the campaign to fund the costs of the election day GOTV effort.
If you sign up to volunteer online, we'll be in touch with you. And if you're in the district on election day, I'll see you there - say hi!
Tell the campaign you saw this post on Blue Mass Group. There's very little that can do more for the influence of a state political blog like this, than people from a winning campaign telling other activists that they got volunteers from the blog! Trust me, that's the way to win respect and influence in politics, when you don't have millions of dollars. |
