Alex Morse released this announcement video this morning. He's the 30 year old mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, who originally won that office when he was 22 and beat an establishment politician who was very much like current MA-01 Congressman Richard Neal. "There's an urgency to this moment in Massachusetts’ First District and our country, and that urgency is not matched by our current representative in Congress. We need new leadership that understands that we can no longer settle for small, incremental, and compromising progress. We need to be on offense. We need to be fighting for something, not just against."Neal, a Pelosi and Hoyer ally, isn't a Blue Dog or New Dem, but he's far from a progressive. ProgressivePunch grades him a "C." His western Massachusetts district, which includes Springfield, Pittsfield, Great Barrington, Easthampton and North Adams, has a strong D+12 PVI and went for Obama with 64% of the vote both times he ran. In 2016 Bernie edged Hillary in 2016 and in the general Hillary beat Trump 57.2% to 36.5%. Last year, the district went overwhelmingly for Elizabeth Warren in her Senate reelection. The Republicans didn't bother running a candidate against Neal. In fact, the GOP in the region has withered away so badly that the last time a Republican ran for Congress there was in 2010. Based on the district, Neal could easily be supporting the progressive agenda-- but he's 70 and satisfied, not the kind of guy who is backing impeachment-- in fact he's helping to hold it up-- nor Medicare-for-All. And 10 of Massachusetts' 11 member congressional delegation are cosponsors of the Green New Deal. The outlier? Richard Neal-- something his constituents have noticed... and something Morse is running on.There is always a whiff of corruption around Neal, at least in part because more than half of his massive campaign contributions have been coming from political action committees. So far this year he has raised $1,420,369. Last cycle, with no opponent, he raised $3,554,755. The biggest sectors were all with business before the House Ways and Means Committee, that he chairs:Holyoke's Valley Advocate reported this morning that "after months of speculation about his political plans," Morse had made it official, giving voters a real choice when they vote in the September 2020 primary.
When Morse was first sworn in as mayor of Holyoke in 2012, he was both the youngest mayor in the city at 22 and its first openly gay mayor. On his campaign website, he touted his efforts leading an “economic rebirth” in Holyoke, his work on the issue of affordable housing, his defense of reproductive rights, community policing initiatives and a needle exchange program he helped implement in the city....Neal has been a target both of progressive groups and of rural members of his district, who have long complained that he has been absent from their communities.Neal is also under renewed scrutiny regarding his campaign spending at swanky, high-end Boston locales for donors, as well as his role in what critics have said is a sabotage of the free tax file system, which plays into the desires of Neal donors TurboTax and H&R Block. In his campaign release video, Morse vowed to eschew corporate PAC money, which makes up the vast majority of Neal’s campaign haul.
Tonight at 6, Morse will host a kick-off event at the Unicorn Inn at 126 High Street in Holyoke. During Morse's activist, progressive mayoralty, Holyoke has undergone something of a rebirth-- with private investment at an all-time high, unemployment at a 25-year low, crime down 40%, and the high school graduation rate having increased from 49% when Morse took office to 72% today... [H]e was among the first mayors in the country to declare his city a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants. If you'd like to contribute to his campaign-- and help him replace Richard Neal in Congress-- please click on the 2020 DownWithTyranny thermometer on the right. It's time for vigorous new leadership across the country and, despite Cheri Bustos, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi, that doesn't just mean replacing Republicans with more corporate Democrats. It also means tired old Democratic hacks with vigorous progressives with a vision and the will to see that vision through.
