The news of Thursday Feb. 22 was hard to take in. Peter Kocot of Northampton, our state representative for the past 16 years, had died. He was 61. I was stunned.
Hard to take in because I’ve always thought of Peter as young even though we met decades ago when he worked as chief of staff for Rep. Bill Nagle.
Hard to take in because Peter looked young and had enormous energy. My lasting impression of him as young, I still think, is right.
Hard to take in because I didn’t have an inkling, that he had been ill. Later newspaper articles reported that lung cancer had taken him.
Hard to take in because during his tenure as our state rep, he had become a fixture for decency and progressive values on Beacon Hill. In my world view — unrealistic and silly as this may sound — I somehow felt he would always be there. Perhaps in part because I wanted him to be.
We still live in a representative democracy — at least on the state level. And Peter indeed represented us with good instincts and great insights.
He and I talked one day about the qualities it takes to be a good state rep. The truth of the matter, he told me, is that representatives necessarily have to be generalists. A legislator needs to know something about hundreds and hundreds of issues. It’s impossible, beyond the ken of human abilities, to fully appreciate the complexity and nuances of every decision the Legislature must make.
To understand and vote on, not to mention to meaningfully improve, legislation means that an elected official needs to reach out to persons experienced in fields from environmental protection to criminal justice to taxes and social services and many others. And then the elected official needs to be able to distill that knowledge and turn it into concrete proposals. Peter consistently did all that, and I appreciated him for it. I trusted that as my representative, he would indeed represent me.
In a legislative body of 160 members, it’s difficult to stand out, but Peter did. He fought for civil rights, including marriage equality. He shepherded through the ethics reform bill, and he led the successful effort – he was the acknowledged expert on this subject – to modernize the Massachusetts Public Records Law.
There’s more. He fought for budget items to protect the most vulnerable in his district and across the state, and he took good care of Northampton and the other towns he represented. The legislature’s approval of Northampton’s new charter and bonding for projects in Hampshire County are examples of his skill and caring.
More than his legislative accomplishments, what will live on with me is who Peter was as a person. As Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, said, “Chairman Kocot (‘Chairman’ because Peter had been chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing and, formerly, the House Committee on Ethics) was one of the most kind, decent and selfless individuals that I have had the pleasure to know … a consummate gentleman, gracious with his time, energy and intellect.”
It’s funny. I really didn’t know Peter all that well. And yet I felt as if we really were friends. My wife Dale and I would run into Peter and his wife Shauneen at Roberto’s, the restaurant famous for its pizza on Pleasant Street in Northampton, where we would talk about kids and sports and travels. The Kocots were always genuine and warm, down to earth and funny.
On my radio show this week during our “Reverend and the Rabbi” segment, Congregation B’nai Israel Rabbi Justin David expressed a similar sentiment. The rabbi said that when Peter came to the synagogue for events, it didn’t feel as if they were being visited by a politician. It felt as if they were being joined by a member of the family.
The passing of Peter Kocot means a loss of clout for western Massachusetts in the Legislature. We will feel the political loss all the more acutely because of the impending retirements of Democrats John Scibak, of South Hadley, and Stephen Kulik, of Worthington.
Their leaving the House of Representatives compounds the loss created by the retirement last year of Amherst Democrat Ellen Story and her successor, Solomon Goldstein-Rose of Amherst, recently renouncing his Democratic Party membership.
All of this adds to the loss of political influence caused by Stan Rosenberg, D-Amherst, vacating at least temporarily the office of Senate president during the investigation of possible improprieties by his husband.
Soon enough there will be time to fig ure out how our new elected officials can represent us effectively.
For the moment I know this: No one will do it better than Peter Kocot. His passing has created a hole in the fabric of our community. It will take a long time for it to be filled.
Bill Newman, a Northampton lawyer, writes a column published the first Saturday of the month. He is director of the Western Regional Office of the ACLU of Massachusetts. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.