SUNDERLAND — With more than a month remaining for candidates to file nomination papers, a ninth Democratic candidate has stepped forward to seek the 1st Franklin House seat being vacated at the end of the year by Rep. Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington.
Nathaniel Waring, a 34-year-old Greenfield Community College student from Sunderland, says he is circulating nomination papers for what is his first run for elected office.
Waring, who has lived in Sunderland for 15 years and Shutesbury for 15 years before that, is a former cable company technician who grew increasingly interested in political activism after taking a leadership role to get benefits restored for fellow workers at the contracting company where he worked for seven years.
“One of the things I realized I was good at and passionate about is fighting for other people’s rights and fighting for what’s right and moral,” said Waring, who four or five years ago began representing workers who were being denied accrued benefits. “This is a very blue-collar area, and if this is happening to an entire group of technicians in one of the most liberal states in the country, I realized there’s more work to be done.”
Waring said it’s been growing clearer to him things in this country are not moving in the right direction, and that he feels that with more time in his schedule and with his state legislator stepping aside, it became clear the time was right for him to step forward.
“It’s important for all progressives to say we’re not going to take it; we need to so something,” he said. “The more of us who throw our hats in the race and are elected, the more we send a message to those on the right, who want to take things away from people who need to be protected.”
Waring, who attended the Massachusetts Democratic Convention last summer and intends to do so again, said he also realized that as a white, middle-class male, he’s led a privileged life.
“I realized if I have all this privilege, then there’s really only one thing to do with that: to help people who don’t have that privilege. I can’t sit around and do nothing. It’s important for people like me to do everything we can to try to change things.”
With such a large field of candidates, Waring admits, “I’m not deluding myself into thinking I’m going to just walk into this and win it without a lot of work. I’m very aware there’s a good chance I won’t win this, but I won’t feel it’s time wasted.”
He credits Kulik — a 25-year House veteran — with being a very good legislator.
The 1st Franklin District comprises Ashfield, Buckland, Chester, Chesterfield, Conway, Cummington, Deerfield, Goshen, Huntington, Leverett, Middlefield, Montague, Plainfield, Shelburne, Shutesbury, Sunderland, Whately, Williamsburg and Worthington.