Dem candidate for MA attorney general Maura Healey bears the mark of the progressive — she wants to go to the root of big problems and solve them. Click below to hear how she’d tackle two complex, interrelated areas of criminal-justice reform and gun violence.
Because of the recent dust-ups, in debates on BlueMassGroup and in local media, we did deal with what I see as distractions. Granted she and almost certain Dem primary opponent Warren Tolman do share a lot of lefty values and ideas. They clearly diverge on some, such as he favors casinos and she is against them. Yet, they are in that odd vortex of swirling mini-issues. There are:
- Dueling People’s Pledge proposals. She offered a more restrictive version with no direct mail included. He countered with one allowing direct mail. Neither excluded robo-calls. She thinks they’ll compromise. Meanwhile it looks a little egocentric all around.
- Online gambling connection. Tolman has an interest in gambling software. He stepped back from active involvement and says he’ll divest if he wins AG. She sees that as a real issue and conflict.
- Possible ethics issue for Healey’s partner. Her partner is an Appeals Court judge. Healey used their house, owned on paper by the partner, as campaign HQ for several months. While this possible ethics conflict was checked out in advance by Healey and her partner, we can be sure this will come up in debates and ads.
I had to laugh at myself because I used to complain that the Boston Globewas firing local reporters and not covering politics well. Now they are much heavier into political coverage, but seem to concentrate on getting something, anything, salacious, questionable or scandalous on any statewide candidate for office. Of course, she took it all as just part of seeking office. Here’s hoping these lightweight topics go away so we can stick to big issues.
In that vein, Healey has big visions for what’d she aim to do as AG. You can read them on her site. You can also get more of her background and goals in a ringing endorsement at BlueMassGroup by Sen. Jamie Eldridge.
Today at Left Ahead, we focused on two interrelated areas, criminal-justice and guns.
Healey is decidedly not a throw-away-the-key person. While she has been a prosecutor and has many affiliations with law enforcement, she seems appalled by the devastation to individuals and families by the current court/prison systems, as well as the huge costs to the taxpayer. She says we need to invest instead in:
- Not unnecessarily going for long, mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses for example
- Recognizing the large percentage of inmates who are substance abusers, and providing them treatment in prison and afterward
- Enabling high-school and even college online education in prison to help prepare inmates for reentry
- Similarly, when reasonable, sentences served in lower security facilities nearly inmates homes to get them ready for post-prison life
- Mental health screening and treatment
Her whole program is on her site.
Gun violence has as similar approach and is of great importance to her. While MA has pretty strict gun laws, there are still about 200 gun-related deaths a year here and many ways guns and bullets arrive legally and illegally. Healey does not see this simply as an issue of gun sales.
Many of these root causes of gun violence overlap with criminal-justice reform. (Her issues page on it with details is here.) Perhaps most obviously, she’d go to mental health and addiction treatment and prevention. Breaking cycles of violence relates to drug trafficking as well as limiting gun sales and smuggling.
Some of her proposals are simpler and in some ways easier to implement. She wants legislation mandating tracking of every gun, and every bullet, sold. As she noted, the bullet stays at the crime scene in many cases.
These two areas are big deals Healey said she’d concentrate on as AG. Each requires considerable investment. She figures she can convince legislators and others fairly easily. Basically, it would be cheaper to do the right things and attack the root causes than continue tossing people in prison without treating the underlying problems. “What we have going on right now isn’t working,” she said.
~Mike
…has to be the stupidest ethics bruhaha I can imagine. Being an AG and connected to a judge may be more of the concern.
I am saddened that some people would prefer to attack a progressive like Warren Tolman rather than extol the virtues of their own preferred candidate.
It has been mentioned many times, in many places, even here on BlueMassGroup, that Warren is no longer involved with and has divested from the aforementioned company, yet still a front page post claims he has not.
Please folks, I know it’s primary season, but lets remember who our allies are and who the real bad guys are. I don’t see how posts like this help the party or the cause.
A significant number of us apparently think Leland Cheung is still a Republican and that Warren clearly should never have had a private sector job between running for office. I hope, as mass marrier does, that these distractions end once and for all and we can discuss the issues. I hope more questions can be asked about civil liberties/terrorism which is a big concern neither candidate has adequately addressed thus far. I’m a Tolman supporter, but I don’t care that she is living with her partner or that her partner is a judge-so long as she refuses herself where appropriate which I’m sure she’ll do.
No one thinks either of those things, JC, and you know it.
I will say that I prefer Warren Tolman’s private sector career to Scott Brown’s.
people have come pretty close to suggesting Warren Tolman is suspect because he was in the private sector the past few years.
I don’t think anyone thinks Leland Cheung is “still” a Republican, but I do think it’s legitimate to wonder about the depths of someone’s progressive convictions when that person ran in the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2005. That’s very different to me from a change of party because your original party’s dominant ideology shifted away from you (like Elizabeth Warren becoming a Democrat or Southern Dixiecrats becoming Republicans.) By 2005 it was pretty clear to me, and just about every current Democrat I know, that the Republican Party was a cesspool.
People have objected to specific things he did, like the online gambling company, yes. Not that he was in the private sector.
I assume in your last sentence you hope that she recuses herself rather than refuses herself.
I meant something very legalistic and technical and not something more unsavory. Very bad autocorrect there.
The issue is that she does not own the premises and did not pay rent for its use as a campaign office. The owner is a sitting judge. The result can readily be construed as donation (of the rent the Healey campaign did not need to spend) on the part of her partner. It is completely inappropriate for a sitting judge to create the appearance of favoring one AG candidate over another. This was detailed in Globe report.
Ms. Healey is running for Attorney General. The AG is charged with enforcing the very law (and others like it) that this practice may have violated. She is running to replace a predecessor who, if nothing else, was very adept at looking the other way regarding apparent violations committed by well-connected Democratic officials.
This issue is all too reminiscent of the cavalier way Ms. Healey’s predecessor treated such campaign finance regulations — especially regarding her own compliance with them.
The optics of this make it less likely for me to support Ms. Healey. I’m particularly disappointed that she still says nothing about the various privacy and police behavior issues I’ve mentioned so often here.
Although I remain attracted to Ms. Healey’s stated opposition to gambling, I am leaning more and more towards supporting Mr. Tolman in this race.