Dear Friends and Neighbors,
We are supporting Martha Coakley for Governor on Tuesday, November 4. We hope you will too.
Martha has been a dogged and courageous force for fairness and progressive values throughout her public service career in Massachusetts. She has consistently protected women’s access to reproductive health services and fought for equal pay for equal work. She challenged the Defense of Marriage Act and won and she went after predatory lenders and kept over 30,000 families in their homes.
However even beyond her clearly progressive record, there is another critical issue facing us now: the growing inequality of wealth in our Commonwealth and across America. How we deal with this now will impact us all, rich and poor, for many years to come. The growing gap between haves and have-nots is an urgent moral and political issue, but there is also a growing chorus of economists who contend that the accelerating hollowing-out of the middle class in America will have a severe negative impact on the long term health of our economy and our society. Policies that support the growing concentration of wealth actually weaken our economy.
It is in this arena that Martha Coakley sets herself far apart from Charlie Baker. Martha’s commitment to early education, equal pay for equal work, a decent minimum wage, and earned sick time are a few of the positions that speaks to her deeply held values of justice, fairness, and opportunity that will help to foster the long-term economic health of our Commonwealth. She is an able and effective manager who knows how to get things done and is guided by a passionate and unrelenting commitment to the wellbeing of ordinary people.
We need someone who can look beyond the short term. Charlie Baker is not a bad man and may be an effective manager. But he does not have the grit, the values, or the focus on the critical issue of growing and supporting the middle class. We hope you will vote for Martha Coakley for Governor on Tuesday, November 4th.
Roberta Miller and Alan Medville