Why I don’t support Sonia Chang-Diaz

(Full disclosure: I’m a college student and I’m abroad for the semester, so I’ve already voted in the primary via absentee ballot. I voted for Dianne Wilkerson, but I am not in any way affiliated with her campaign. Like most, I am quite displeased with her seemingly continuous public blunders. But she has served our district and served it well, pushing through many valuable bills and remaining a lonely but tireless advocate for urban and poor issues like environmental justice and METCO.  She listens to constituents and is always responsive to our concerns. Dianne knows the voters in the district well, and despite her mistakes has been incredibly successful in advocating for us; dare I say she has been above average. Without her various problems she surely would have been an even more successful advocate for the 2nd Suffolk. I’d have welcomed to the race with open arms, wallet, and schedule a truly good candidate to support over Dianne. But I do have some standards, and Sonia Chang-Diaz has failed to meet them. I do not mean this as a personal attack; she is a nice person with progressive views that align with most of mine and I’m sure she has been a pleasure to work with for those of you who have served on her Ward Committee or encountered her in other forums. But this is a discussion of her candidacy that simply has not been had due to the overwhelming focus on Dianne Wilkerson’s many personal issues.)

When Sonia introduced herself at the convention, I was genuinely intrigued. With Dianne sitting just a few yards away from our conversation, I asked Sonia about a few issues when she could not offer me any sort of platform. I know she had just recently gotten into the race, but her ignorance on key issues was alarming. She had no opinion when I questioned her about her stance on the restoration of the E-line to Forrest Hills, a route that lies directly within the district and that she lives on. In fact, she seemed unaware that this was even an issue at all! You can hardly walk down Centre Street in JP without seeing the signs in business windows, and yet I had to provide her with a rundown of the major points of contention and the URLs of the groups for and against the restoration. Even now, when I check her website, her transportation blurb mentions nothing specific about the whole issue except the no-brainer declaration against the fare increase.

(Yes, I’m aware that Dianne’s website does not have an issues section. It is extremely disappointing, but I know that her office is readily available to answer any questions, and she’s got her impressive track record of advocacy and legislation posted for all to see. Voters are familiar with the senator who has served us since 1993; it is her challengers who must introduce their stances and prove their competency. Back to Sonia at the convention.)

We moved on after the unimpressive transportation discussion. She was a teacher! Excellent, because education is an issue near and dear to me, and one I know a lot about. Probably more than the average voter, but I expect anyone holding this office to know a lot more about all of the issues than the average voter. I asked her about the MCAS as a graduation requirement and about the state frameworks upon which the various subject tests are based. She had very little familiarity with the debate over whether the MCAS should be a graduation requirement, providing only the stock conservative talking point in favor of high-stakes standardized tests: “We’ve got to enforce standards somehow.” (and standardized tests are the easy way to do it, the cop-out.) What about the standards themselves? The creation and passing of standards in many topics created quite a controversy among teachers, students, and parents, who were ultimately more successful than not in broadening the curriculum. For example, when the history one group (say, the West) is included in the frameworks over another, and the frameworks become the basis of a high-stakes test, teachers end up with very little allowance for including other histories and perspectives. Sonia taught middle school social studies at a Boston Public School, which I assume incorporates the history frameworks over which there was much discussion about five years ago. Anyway, when I asked her about the standards themselves, she said she only knew about the standards she had read for the class she had taught. Fine, knowledge of specific standards is a bit particular, but she could not even discuss anything surrounding the standards: the process by which the Board creates and approves them or the controversy surrounding their implementation, or just what it is like for teachers under the high-stakes system. I know this is a pet issue of mine, but she was a teacher and is a politically inclined person in a district where students struggle to pass tests based on these frameworks and teachers struggle to hold classes that are now based only around these frameworks.

Now, I doubt I’m the only voter on this site or in my district who wants my elected representatives to be knowledgeable as well as simply progressive. For me, knowledge of the issues is not any lose requirement; I believe it is the duty of any elected representative to be thoroughly versed in all sides of the issues facing their constituents and region. Oh, you say, Sonia had just started her campaign? This is no excuse. If she is not just running on a whim, she should have had opinions or at least knowledge of and passion for the issues well before she jumped into the race. If she was that ignorant on two issues that she has (or should have had) personal experience with and that are widely discussed, how tuned-in can she be to her neighbors? How tuned-in can she be to the other parts of the diverse district that ranges from Chinatown to Back Bay to Roxbury? How can I trust her to have the interest and capability to master every issue facing the district and state so that she can serve us well?

And if I’d discussed any of the issues above with Dianne, I’d expect her to come out of the conversation having taught me something new. In fact, Dianne was nearby at the convention, and in the interest of making a solid comparison upon which I might base my vote, I approached her with the same questions I had asked Sonia and received in-depth answers. Her opinion on the restoration of the E-line was that residents were promised the restoration years ago (actually, she went into more detail than this) and that it has gone unfulfilled without any sort of voter approval. Because of this, she said that she must support the restoration, but obviously some sort of local ballot initiative to the contrary would change her mind. I actually have so many conflicting opinions on the issue that I am simply undecided, but Dianne’s position is a respectable one considering the facts and controversy. On education, Dianne is against the graduation requirement, which continues to hurt disadvantaged students in her district and the Boston Public Schools they attend. She knew of the frameworks controversies to which I referred and I believe we could have talked for hours about how to create and enforce standards in education without restricting local control and creativity. But alas, we were there to gather Deval Patrick votes, not to write a policy paper.

I’ll admit that knowledge isn’t enough. Integrity is of course a necessary quality in an elected leader, which is why I would love to have seen a better challenger enter this race. And I will admit that Dianne has done many things to poke huge holes in the integrity she once had. But these holes are in her personal integrity, not in her integrity on the issues. She still serves as an effective advocate of a diverse urban district. I don’t think I (or anyone else in the district) was personally or publicly embarrassed by the mistakes that have embarrassed Dianne.  They have eliminated her prospects for career advancement, but they have not significantly harmed her actual job performance. (Except when she was under house arrest; it was probabl
y hard to keep it up from there.)

Over simplified triumverate of voting requirements, if I were to make a chart:

  Diane Sonia

Integrity  –   +  

Knowledge  +   –

Progressive  +  ?

Again, I’d welcome a challenger more competent than Chang-Diaz, more progressive than Samiya Diaz, and more timely than whoever that new guy is. (The new guy who actually got into the race after I’d sent my ballot in!) Wilkerson is by no means ideal, having only two of the qualities in my over-simplified triumvirate of voting requirements. Chang-Diaz may be progressive, but she lacks knowledge and is entirely unproven on the integrity front. Though the choices were not ideal, I stuck with the candidate who has and will advocate for my district most effectively.

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