NORTHAMPTON — While they agreed with each other on nearly every point during a candidate forum Wednesday night, the three Democrats reserved their sharpest barbs for the state’s popular Republican governor who wasn’t even there.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with the other two candidates and they’re both awesome human beings,” Jay Gonzalez said at the forum in the Northampton High School auditorium. “Either one of them would be a hell of a lot better than Charlie Baker.”
Gonzalez and fellow gubernatorial candidates Bob Massie and Setti Warren answered questions about how they would address key issues in the state, such as the opioid crisis, transportation and food insecurity. They also took turns directing critiques toward Baker.
“When did the measure of a good governor become, ‘nice and not crazy?’” Gonzalez asked, saying that on individual issues Baker does not have especially high approval ratings, but polls well overall because people think he is “nice” and “not a crazy Republican.”
Despite Baker’s high approval ratings, Massie said people he meets are hungry for change.
“All over where I go I hear people are ready for change,” Massie said. “We need to take on deep structural problems.”
Warren criticized Baker’s track record on transportation, particularly when it comes to western Massachusetts.
“If you create good, accessible transportation, people will use it,” he said.
Moderator Clare Higgins, director of Community Action Pioneer Valley and former Northampton mayor, told the crowd there were 250, maybe even 300 people at the forum and said she had received 38 questions from the public and local organizations, including Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and the Northampton Survival Center.
While answering questions such as how they would handle debate over sanctuary cities, whether the public school funding model is broken and what makes their candidacies a threat to Baker despite his high approval ratings in a recent poll, the candidates expounded on their backgrounds to explain their approaches to issues.
Gonzalez served as secretary of administration and finance under former Gov. Deval Patrick and is a former health insurance CEO and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Early Education.
Massie is an activist and author who served as the executive director of Ceres, a coalition of environmental groups and institutional investors.
Warren is an Iraq war veteran and former two-term mayor of Newton.
Gonzalez said he has experience getting things done, adding that it’s not enough to simply pass legislation, but that the governor must also work to implement it. He referred to his experience working on Patrick’s gubernatorial campaign and his budget, finance and health care experience in the Patrick administration.
Massie said that while he “may look like a retired investment banker,” his “heart burns with fiery social justice” and said his work outside Massachusetts and internationally gives him a global point of view.
He also said he looks at the world through a structural view of systems and, when answering questions, often mentioned the interconnectedness of other issues, such as the effects of rising health care costs on school funding.
Warren said he has been a lifelong public servant who has won three elections and that Massachusetts needs new, fresh executive leadership, which he said he would provide.
All three candidates spoke at length about transportation problems in the commonwealth and expressed their support for connecting the state through east-west rail. Gonzalez said Baker’s failures on transportation are “dragging Massachusetts backwards” and Massie said that the state of transportation, particularly rail, in Massachusetts is “absolutely unbelievable,” especially in comparison to other countries like China.
Another issue the candidates addressed was food insecurity in Massachusetts. Massie said it’s an integrated problem that can be addressed in part by raising wages.
Gonzalez said it’s not a problem of having enough food, but that there are too many people living in poverty who can’t afford it. He supports raising the minimum wage.
In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the candidates spoke about their positions on gun reform. All three said they support extreme risk protective order legislation currently in the Statehouse.
“As someone who carried an M-16 in Iraq, these guns do not belong in our schools or neighborhoods,” Warren said.
He said he would work with the National Governors Association, if elected, to put pressure on Congress and said he would work with other governors to trace guns.
Gonzalez said he was disturbed to find that the weapon used in the Parkland shooting, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, was manufactured “just down the street” in Springfield and proposed banning the manufacture of assault weapons in Massachusetts.
“We should be doing everything we possibly can as a state,” he said.
All three said they support campaign finance reform and the millionaire tax, an amendment that would add a 4 percent surtax on all taxable income above $1 million. They also addressed how they would unite a fractured Democratic Party and unenrolled voters. The three also said they oppose expanding natural gas pipelines in Massachusetts and support renewable energy growth.
The candidates also said the state needs to invest more in treatment for opioid addiction, and both Gonzalez and Massie said they support safe injection sites.
Though the candidates had few critiques aimed at each other, they did bring up different issues of importance to their campaigns.
Gonzalez listed criminal justice reform and providing high-quality, affordable child care for children up to age 5 as priorities of his campaign. He said there needs to be more investment in stopping the underlying causes of crime and in diversionary programs.
Warren listed transportation, public education and affordable housing as particularly important issues to his campaign.
“This race for me is about adjusting income inequality,” he said.
For Massie, climate change and health care were two key issues, and in his closing statement he said more needs to be done to focus on the specific needs of women as they pertain to many other issues, such as medical care and family leave.
The forum was hosted by the Democratic committees of Amherst, Easthampton, Holyoke, Northampton, South Hadley and Southampton and was filmed by Northampton Community Television.
The candidates were questioned by a panel made up of Stan Moulton, opinion editor of the Daily Hampshire Gazette; Natalia Munoz, radio host of Vaya con Munoz; Kari Njiri, New England Public Radio host and reporter; and Jennifer Taub, a law professor at Vermont Law School.
The Massachusetts state primary is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 4.
M.J. Tidwell can be reached at mjtidwell@gazettenet.com.