The race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren is garnering most of the attention in Massachusetts this election season, but the race for the 4th Congressional district seat is also heating up.
The job is currently held by Rep. Barney Frank, who’s retiring this year. The newly redrawn district runs from Brookline and Newton to Raynham in the east and Bellingham in the west, and includes parts of Fall River. The candidates for the seat came together — first the Democrats as a group, then Republicans in a second conversation — the night of Aug. 14 for a forum held at Stonehill College and co-sponsored by WGBH.
From the Democrats’ forum
This race has something unique: a celebrity. Joseph P. Kennedy III, grandson of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is one of the Democrats running to replace Frank. Kennedy gave a polished performance at the forum … except for one slip: He criticized the role of money in politics even as his campaign is pulling in millions.
“I think that there’s a lot of money being poured into elections at every level around the country. And … the amount of money that’s being brought in I do believe is distorting the process,” he said.
Kennedy collected $1.3 million just in the last quarter, which is a large amount for a Congressional race. He has donors from all over the country. And he’s getting help from his family. Later in August, Ethel Kennedy is planning to hold a fundraiser for her grandson in Hyannis Port.
The view from the right
At the forum, Republican candidate Sean Bielat said money isn’t everything. And he took a dig at Kennedy:
“I think for whomever the Republican nominee is, we’re going to be looking more at building actual support in the field. We’re not going to have a bunch of paid sign-holders. We’re not going to have a bunch of people who are under the voting age out there doing the work,” he said.
Bielat ran a surprisingly strong campaign against Frank two years ago. This time around, Bielat has said, his strategy is to woo independent voters in the conservative communities just added to the newly redrawn district.
But polling suggests a landslide victory for Kennedy, despite redistricting.*
The Republican and Democratic primaries in this race are on Thursday, Sept. 6. The other candidates running for the seat are Democrats Rachel Brown and Herb Robinson, and Republicans Elizabeth Childs and David Steinhof.
More quotes from the forum ...
Brown: “I would say that health care is not something based on cost. Health care is something that humans deserve.”
Bielat: “I actually don’t think that constitutionally, that federal government has much of a role in education. I support locally all sorts of reforms. I like the idea of portable funding, vouchers, to increase competition between schools. I like the idea of getting rid of teachers’ unions. My mother was a public school teacher for 20-some years ... she left, she went to a Catholic high school ... she was much happier because it was a performance-based culture. So locally I think there’s a lot of things. But as a federal representative, I think there’s a very small role to impact education policy.”
Childs: “I don’t think Paul Ryan’s plan is at all crazy. Actually, a voucher program is a reasonable solution to put on the table. ... Saving Medicare should not be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. It should be a nonpartisan issue that we are committed to saving Medicare. That’s not how I would’ve started — I would’ve started with means-testing premiums. That would have been my approach. But I think you’ve got to hand it to Paul Ryan: he put something out there and then he was willing to work with Democrats on the other side of the aisle to come up with a solution that might be better.”
Steinhof: “I do want federal spending to cut way back and get back to what our country’s designed to do: federal spending is to protect our country and manage oversea trade.”
* Note: The original version of this story stated “But recent polls are predicting.” In fact there was a single poll, done by UMass Lowell-Boston Herald. From the* UML summary: “In a new University of Massachusetts Lowell-Boston Herald poll, the first 'fourth-generation’ Kennedy to consider running for Congress leads by 2-to-1 — 60% to 28% — in a trial heat against Sean Bielat.” Bielat’s campaign also conducted a poll that showed him approximately 12 points behind Kennedy.
