Common Cause Massachusetts asked the ten candidates in the race to fill Ed Markey’s vacated seat for Massachusetts’ fifth Congressional district seven questions covering issues of voting rights, campaign finance, and ethics.
- Would you support legislation like the Voter Empowerment Act (H.R. 12) to create national voting standards to ensure free, fair, and accessible elections nationwide?
- Do you support legislation to reinstate Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act with an updated coverage formula?
- Would you support a constitutional amendment affirming that 1) rights protected under the Constitution are the rights of natural persons and not of incorporated entities and 2) money spent to influence elections may be regulated by Congress and the states?
- Would you support legislation like the DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 148) to ensure that all political spending in federal elections by corporations and independent political groups is publicly disclosed?
- Would you support legislation like the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 269) to enact a citizen funded election model that matches small dollar donations with federal funds?
- Do you support legislation to establish a bright-line test that permits non-profit groups like 501(c)4 to engage only in a de minimis, insubstantial amount of campaign activity?
- Do you support legislation like the Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2013 (H.R. 2902) to require Supreme Court justices to adopt the Code of Ethics?
Six of the candidates – Katherine Clark, Peter Koutoujian, Martin Long, Paul John Maisano, Carl Sciortino, and Karen Spilka – supported Common Cause’s positions on all of these issues.
One candidate – Will Brownsberger – supported Common Cause’s positions on instating national voting standards, fixing Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, ensuring greater campaign finance disclosure, and requiring the Supreme Court to adopt a Code of Ethics. However, contrary to Common Cause, he is not supportive of a constitutional amendment affirming constitutional rights for people, not corporations, and affirming Congress and the States’ power to regulate election spending. He also remained undecided on public financing of elections and regulating the political activity of non-profit groups. See his full responses here.
One candidate – Tom Tierney – supported Common Cause’s positions on greater campaign finance disclosure and regulating political activity of non-profit groups, but diverged from Common Cause’s positions on the other issues. See his full responses here.
And two candidates – Mike Stopa and Frank Addivinola – did not return completed questionnaires.
See a breakdown of all the candidates’ responses here.
I am struck again by the talent, intelligence and depth of the field of five.
According to the Arlington Advocate Will Brownsberger thinks it would be a good idea to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act by 1 year to appease the Republicans. He supposedly said you can’t always get what you want. I just don’t see how this is a progressive position…to allow people to go without health care for a full year…I mean that is a life or death issue for many people! So I sure don’t think Ed Markey’s seat should go to this kind of deal-making ie making deals with people’s lives at stake!
Here’s the link.
I’m not sure which is worse the policy, the politics, or the precedent.
This was at the end of the forum where each of the candidates were asking the others a question. Will’s question was: Would you push the ACA back a year and agree to chained-CPI for SS. He was the only one to say yes.