Advertisement
Commentary
What Mass. legislators can learn from Tim Walz
I remember exactly what I was doing when Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would be recruiting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to the 2024 presidential ticket. I was in the middle of the White Mountain National Forest, searching the back of the car for my last clean pair of clean hiking socks when my phone lit up with a text message from a friend, exclaiming, “---- YEAH,” followed by about 15 beer emojis
Like many of our friends and colleagues, we had gotten happily wrapped up in the speculative vice presidential primary that Harris and her team managed to orchestrate in just a matter of days.
The resurgence of hope and excitement that I’ve felt among Democrats since President Joe Biden ended his candidacy and passed the torch to Harris brings to mind the most ecstatic days of Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign in 2008. In less than two weeks, the Harris campaign raised well over $200 million, much of it thanks to Spartacus-sized phone banking events organized by voters. By recruiting Walz — a governor with the voice of a progressive populist and the legislative track record of an effective leader — beating Trump and doing good things for people feels achievable.
It’s been simultaneously thrilling and maddening to witness these seismic political events from Massachusetts. Just last week, a very different sequence of political events took place in the commonwealth — a showcase of dysfunctional governance that was demoralizing as it was infuriating to witness.
Why is the Massachusetts Legislature allowed to operate this way and let us down, year after year?
Like a college student cramming a semester’s worth of neglected homework into a long caffeine and Cheeto-fueled night, the Massachusetts Legislature spent the nocturnal hours of July 31st through August 1st frantically negotiating and passing only a handful of the bills that had piled up over the course of the legislative session. As usual, there were winners and losers. The House and Senate leaders reached compromises on a $5.2 billion housing bond package and a law that will change the definition of who legally qualifies as a parent (a long-overdue expansion of protections for LGBTQ+ parents). But the legislature failed to approve a new round of liquor licenses for Boston, a $2.9 billion economic development bill, legalization of the right to medically assisted dying for terminally ill patients, and perhaps most egregious of all, a climate bill that would have spurred renewable energy development.
All of these torpedoed policy proposals enjoyed substantial support from Massachusetts residents. The bills made it to Beacon Hill thanks to countless hours of volunteer advocacy and labor; the kind of civic engagement that a state government should welcome.
And yet, because this is how the Massachusetts Legislature does business — sitting on bills for months, passing a few of them at the 11th hour, after most of us have gone to bed, and then pointing fingers at each other the morning after — the voices of millions of residents have effectively been silenced. Add to this indignity the concentration of power in the Legislature, with the House speaker and Senate president essentially playing God, and the unusual secrecy with which both chambers conduct their affairs, and you have the ingredients for an electoral revolution on Beacon Hill.
Why is the Massachusetts Legislature allowed to operate this way and let us down, year after year? Because we fail to hold our local leaders to account when presented with the opportunity.
In 1948, 86.74% of Massachusetts residents voted in state elections. By 2022, the turnout had plummeted to 51.42%. The metrics for state primaries are even worse, ranging from 44% to 6%. But in almost every case, turnout is highest in election years that also feature a presidential contest. So as we stomach the latest failure of our state legislature — at a moment when an unusual series of twists and turns on the presidential trail is surpassing the summer blockbusters for collective thrills — it’s worth asking what we can do to rekindle that sense of possibility here in Massachusetts, for the betterment of our communities and our shared future.
Advertisement
Identifying the root of a problem is the first step, and due to the concentration of power in our Legislature, that’s fairly easy. House Speaker Ron Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka, and any of their top lieutenants who’ve upheld these terrible norms and presided over such abysmal lawmaking sessions should be primaried at the soonest opportunity. This may sound obvious, but in a state with some of the least competitive elections in the country, it bears underscoring. Primary challengers could run on a shared platform that included reforming the legislature culture and its worst practices — like keeping the base pay of legislators low and offering fat stipends for committee appointments that are decided by the all-powerful leadership.
“You don’t win elections to bank political capital. You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
Gov. Tim Walz
We should also make sure that State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, a former state representative and prolific critic of the Legislature’s secrecy, is given a public mandate to audit the Legislature and unveil its inner workings. This November, Massachusetts residents will have the chance to vote "yes" on this recently-approved ballot question. If an audit is held, and if any of the leadership are successfully primaried, it could signal a new chapter of accountability in Massachusetts politics.
But for any of this to happen, we must resist becoming too distracted by the breakneck madness of national politics, and instead take inspiration from it.
The grotesque spectacle of Trump’s zombie run for the White House and the late-stage rise of Harris are fun to get engrossed in. At the same time, the national news can offer states like Massachusetts the false impression that we’re in a comparatively stable place. Anyone who has experienced the impacts of our affordable housing crisis, our worsening traffic and public transit erosion, and our increasingly dangerous weather events knows better. We deserve a legislature that’s willing to listen to the public and put in the work to address these major problems at scale.
Tim Walz himself put it best last year, when commenting on some of Minnesota’s legislative accomplishments such as protecting access to abortion services and expanding background checks for aspiring gun owners. “You don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz said. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.” At a national level, it appears that the Democratic Party is finally absorbing this idea.
It’s time for Massachusetts to wake up.
