Meet All Candidates for State Rep. of Middlesex 15th District
CALex hosted a face-to-face meeting with all candidates for State Representative of the 15th Middlesex District (Lexington and part of Woburn) 9:15am-12pm on Saturday morning, June 9th, 2018 at Lexington Community Center. As a promotion of civic engagement among Chinese Americans, the meeting provided opportunity for the community to learn about the candidates and make informed decision in the upcoming election.
Candidate information, in alphabetical order of last name:
Michelle Ciccolo
http://www.michelleciccolo.com/
https://mobile.twitter.com/mciccolo
Michelle Ciccolo is the Vice-Chair of the Lexington Board of Selectman. She has a background in local government, including serving as the President of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.
Matthew Cohen
https://www.cohenforstaterep.com/
https://mobile.twitter.com/Cohen4StateRep
Matthew Cohen is an instructor at Northeastern University, where he just received his PhD in Political Science. He previously worked as the Research Director for the legislature’s Committee on Mental Health and Substance Use.
Joe Lahiff
https://www.joelahiff.com/
https://mobile.twitter.com/josephglahiff
Joseph “Joe” Lahiff is the Director of Asset Management for NuPath, a Woburn organization that works with members of the community with disabilities. He is a retired Lexington police officer and the former school resource officer for Lexington High School.
Mary Ann Stewart
https://maryannstewart.org/
https://mobile.twitter.com/MAStewartMA
Mary Ann Stewart is currently the Parent Representative on the statewide Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. She is actively involved with the Raise Up Coalition and has served on the Lexington School Committee.
William Sweeney
https://www.instagram.com/sweeney4staterep/
https://www.facebook.com/sweeney4staterep/
https://twitter.com/Sweeney4Rep
William Sweeney has worked on Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill for former Representative Larkin and for the last 22 years he has worked in the private sector in healthcare technology.
A forum presenting all state representative candidates of Massachusetts Middlesex 15th District was proposed and organized by CALex (Chinese Americans of Lexington) at Lexington Community Center from 9am to 12pm on June 9th. All five candidates, Michelle Ciccolo, Matthew Cohen, Joseph Lahiff, Mary Ann Stewart, and William Sweeney, were invited and warmly welcomed. Helen Yang, then member of Lexington Appropriation Committee, hosted this event.
The vice president of CALex briefly introduced CALex at the beginning of the forum. As a recently-formed local non-profit organization of Lexington, Massachusetts, CALex aims to promote participation in public services, educational, cultural, and other local community affairs in Lexington. It also aims to represent Chinese American interests and promote civic engagement. Since its foundation in late 2017, CALex has organized and participated a number of local and statewide events, including Debt Exclusion seminar, anti-H3361 movement, CALex Spring Festival pot-luck party, Patriots’ Day parade, school volunteer promotion, etc.
The candidates forum started with a fifteen minutes warmup and delicious breakfast catered by CALex. During the two-hour Q&A, the candidates introduced their backgrounds and campaign focuses. They also answered the questions on various highly interested topics, including educations, MA Bill H4408, racial quota, state tax, transportation, marijuana, sanctuary state, etc. The forum was very well coordinated and received really positive feedback from every participant! In particular, the invited candidates were most impressed by the well executed details in registration, site decoration, food preparation, question collection and prioritization, time control, photography and video recording and, last but not least, the wonderful and professional hosting of Mrs. Helen Yang!
Close to 100 Lexington Chinese residents attended this event. During the forum, theses residents raised their concerns on some critical issues such as H4408. All the candidates responded and expressed their objection to or doubts about H4408. After the main Q&A session, the participants continued with a thirty-minute offline discussions. The forum clearly reduced the gap and opened the communication channel between candidates and Chinese American community. Many follow-up interactions are going on including email exchanges, issue/information sharing, coffee hours and other activities.
Here is the video recording from the event along with Q&A timeline.
Q&A Timeline:
00:50
CALex introduction.
3:50
Meeting format introduction.
5:30
Candidate self introduction and opening statement.
21:00
1. Why are you running for this position?
31:00
2. What are the issues you most care about? If you were elected, what initiative would you take on? Why do you think you are uniquely qualified to take it on?
41:30
3. Now we have MA Bill H4408 as a re-drafted version of H3361 to continue evaluating data disaggregation for Asian Americans and Latinos (see Census-2020 here).
(3a) What’s your opinion about H4408 and, more broadly, data-disaggregation based on race and ethnicity in general?
(3b) Are you concerned that such bills would threaten the equal rights of certain groups of People of Color?
51:00
4. What are your favorite things to do outside of work? How would you celebrate if you were elected? How would you expect your daily life and family life change if you were elected?
1:00:00
5. There have been a lot of discussion about racial disparity such that a race is under-represented or over-represented in different socioeconomic context such as college admissions, school discipline and in the criminal justice system. Racial disparities could be a result of many factors, such as discrimination, cultural preferences when it comes to making choices, as well as other factors.
(5a) What does racial equality mean to you? Equal opportunity or equal results?
(5b) What would you do, as a state representative, to address racial disparities?
1:11:15
6. What are your thoughts on tax burden as well as public transportation?
1:22:00
7. What are your thoughts on the balance between protecting the environment and economic development?
8. What would you do to improve the education system?
9. What’s your opinion on recreational marijuana sale?
10. What’s your opinion on undocumented immigrants and sanctuary city? http://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/24/mass-senate-safe-communities-amendment
1:33:20
Candidate closing statement.