The Insight: Holyoke's Morse Code...

Mayor-elect Morse (© RD Photography 2011)

HOLYOKE--One year ago, Alex Morse was preparing for the penultimate finals of his college career.  Like many seniors, he was already looking past that last pesky semester to a career and post-college life.  Like many of those students he was planning to head home and possibly find a job in the community where he grew up.  Morse, however, was not going to be facing a small hiring committee at a consulting firm or office.  His hiring committee would be made up of thousands of his fellow Holyoke residents.

Morse shocked Holyoke’s political establishment by upsetting incumbent mayor Elaine Pluto and setting himself up to become Massachusetts’ youngest mayor.  Since his November 8 victory, Morse has received a glut of invitations, honors, and accolades and faced a “whirlwind” of events, meetings, press interviews and interviews for potential staff in preparation for the January inauguration. “I haven’t really taken a break, yet,” Morse said in an interview with WMassP&I at his campaign headquarters on Route 5 in Holyoke.

Morse is no stranger to politics local or otherwise.  Ten years ago he joined the city’s Youth Commission and served as a student member of the School Committee.  While in high school, he was an organizing member of a high school gay-straight alliance.  While at Brown University, Morse interned in the office of then-mayor David Cicilline working on neighborhood services.  

Holyoke City Hall (wikipedia)

Providence also provided a template for Morse’s ambitions for Holyoke.  Rhode Island’s capital city has faced industrial decline similar to Holyoke, but has managed to resuscitate its urban core in a way most New England cities have not.  However, before Providence's redevelopment, that city had the benefit of being the state capital and, considering its condition at the time, a state embarrassment, which could spur state and civic leaders to action.

The strength of Morse’s bid for the mayor’s had to come as something of a surprise to the Pluta camp.  Early on, Pluta mocked Morse for his age, saying to the Republican that she would debate his education plan when he “graduates from college.”  Other voters simply said, “He didn’t have a chance in hell.”

Morse says his campaign began not only before graduation, but before this year.  During his junior year of college, he spent a semester in the Dominican Republic, during which, in addition to becoming fluent in Spanish, he began seriously thinking about running right out of college.  When he got back to the States was when he began planning in earnest.  He began meeting with people to line up support and raise money.  By the time he announced in January, still not quite a college graduate, it was clear that his opponents would zero in on his age.  

Morse is not the first just-out-of-college graduate to seek political office.  Springfield Ward 2 City Councilor Mike Fenton ran for his seat right of out college against a well-connected scion of a political family who was favored to win early on.

To Morse, his campaign, and apparently the residents of Holyoke, however, his age was not a problem.  “Instead of buying into my opposition’s language” about age, the mayor-elect said he sold his youth as an asset.  Morse, wearing his ever-present colorful “I love Holyoke” button said his campaign portrayed him as somebody with the energy, enthusiasm, digital savvy and new ideas that Holyoke needs to turn itself around.


A candidate declaring his love for the community which he hopes will elect him is probably a campaign tactic older than some centuries-old New England towns.  However, Morse put his whole shoulder into that strategy and instead of coming off tacked on and predictable it translated into a sincerity that resonated with voters of all stripes.

The Insight: Setti Warren and the Brown-out facing the Unemployed...

 **UPDATE** Editor's Note: In response to a comment, we wanted to add a clarification on the post itself.  The comparison between Scott Brown's and Setti Warren's service is NOT intended to cast aspersions on National Guard service.  There is a difference between touting one's own service retrospectively as opposed to prospectively securing that service so as to retrospectively tout it.  The comparison below is intended to suggest the Mass GOP perceives Warren as a threat, not speak to an individual's service or how that service qualifies a candidate.

Mayor Warren with Rexene Picard (WMassP&I)

Yesterday in Springfield Newton Mayor and candidate for the Democratic nomination in next year's Senate race toured Futureworks, the jobs training and labor exchange based at the STCC Technology Park opposite the college  Rexene Picard, the organization's executive director showed the mayor around the facility and explained the importance of funds form the Workforce Enhancement Act, especially at a time when so many are looking for jobs.

Warren met with both job seekers and the people whose job it is to take the less out of the jobless.  Futureworks programs cater to a wide range of people from all skill levels, education and age group.  Picard noted that the organization often helps people, who are looking for work for the first time in twenty years, navigate the more complex and often electronic aspects of modern recruiting.

WMassP&I spoke with Mayor Warren at the conclusion of his tour about a range of subjects affecting both the Springfield area and the commonwealth at large.  On a local level, Warren was asked about the Environmental Protection Agency and how it relates to the controversial biomass plant proposed for Page Boulevard in Springfield.  Specifically, the question related to Sen. Scott Brown's vote to gut the EPA's rule-making ability, just as the agency began a 3 year evaluation on the impact of biomass plants and Springfield was locked in a high-stakes fight with a developer over the same issue.

The Newton mayor said he was "deeply concerned" about Brown's positions on the environment, particularly his vote on the EPA and the senator's questioning of the science of global climate change.  Warren encouraged a movement toward renewable energy, but remained cautious about biomass.  Energy produced by burning dead plant matter needs "deeper study," he said.  Fundamentally for Warren, the concern is that the health and environmental effects of these plants were unknown.  When asked, Warren did say he had met many residents of Western Massachusetts who also expressed concerns about the unknowns of biomass plants' health and ecological impact.

The Old Seal of FEMA (wikipedia)

Under President Bill Clinton, Setti Warren was the New England Director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  As a result Warren was asked about the fiscal impact that reckless budget cutting could do to imperil federal disaster relief from which Springfield and its neighbors have recently benefited.  Warren, who has visited with tornado victims at the MassMutual Center, took a moment to point out that FEMA, under Pres. Barack Obama's leadership, has vastly improved itself since Hurricane Katrina.  The president "values this agency," Warren said adding that the Bush administration had "dismantled" the work of James Lee Witt, the Agency Director under whom Warren served.  As a result, the current talk in Washington over the debt and deficit has thus far been "irresponsible." It is neither focused on investing  in our workforce nor maintaining adequate preparedness for disasters to the benefit, Warren suggests, of tax cuts for the wealthy.  Warren was unequivocal, "We need to invest in recovery."

WMassP&I mentioned that Senator Brown was in Springfield recently.  At Brown's appearance, this blog posed a question to Brown as to whether he was telling his colleagues, namely the anti-government ones, about the good work being done in Springfield by government.  Brown deflected and did not answer.  So a similar question was posed to Warren.  As Senator, would Warren go to Washington and inform his colleagues there about the good work public service and servants are doing in Massachusetts in order to counter the anti-government sentiment prevailing there?  Warren spoke more broadly.  Yes, he would bring those positive observations back to Washington, but he would also be telling his colleagues about what his constituents are most concerned about.  Having held 24 town hall meetings across his own city of Newton, Warren says that his constituents are more interested in jobs and how budget cuts will affect them, not vapid demagoguery about government.

The Insight: "Amaad" About You?...

Today we start a new series on WMassP&I called "The Insight" consisting of interviews of politicians, officials and other newsmakers within the Greater Springfield universe.

Councilor Rivera (Facebook)

Springfield, like many cities, has long been a place where politics is a contact sport.  Campaigns can be “messy,” especially as candidates scramble for elusive votes amidst low turnout.  Still, as the city stares into the abyss of a new budget problem (partly the work of rising costs and foreclosures) and suffers a weekend of homicides, the biggest political news this year has been the situation in Ward 6.  Keith Wright resigned his office citing family issues leaving Amaad Rivera, who lost the race (or placed second under municipal law) to ascend to his position.

While the volume of the uproar may be in dispute, its existence is undeniable.  Angry residents grumbled over the outcome brought on by a quirk in the law while others made more strident (and unsubstantiated) accusations that Rivera was not even a resident of Springfield.  Even as that furor died down, Rivera, however unintentionally, reignited it when he invoked a parliamentary maneuver intended to delay a vote for eminent domain as part of the renovation project at Forest Park Middle School.  That move prompted accusations in both directions and a torrent of criticism directed at Rivera from this and other blogs and several mainstream media outlets.

This blog sought comment from Rivera for some of these stories, but due to a desire for expediency, we did not hold off publication pending his reply.  An exchange of emails followed, which may be characterized as contentious, and ultimately culminated in an interview with the Ward 6 Councilor.  Western Mass Politics & Insight is based in Ward 6.

During the interview, Rivera appeared eager to cool temperatures walking back some of his complaints directed at WMassP&I, but not others.  Still, he and this blog were interested more in clearing the air then engaging in a dispute.  Rivera was fairly at ease and appeared less upset than concerned that a media institution, however self-important and self-appointed like WMassP&I (our tongue-in-cheek description), would fail, in his view, to relate the whole truth.

Forest Park Middle School (School Dept. Site)

By far this was among Rivera’s biggest concerns politically.  Media should work, Rivera said “to ensure people can make [informed] decisions for themselves.” He gave examples, which he felt failed to meet this standard: the omission of certain details of his stance on Forest Park Middle School; an allegation that public opposition to his council-designation in December was overblown (the election commission only received a few letters and councilors‘ constituent correspondences are not public record) and the Valley Advocate’s depiction of some of his endorsements as being largely from out-of-town.

Rivera also spoke about a source of friction between himself and the Forest Park Civic Association.  While he claims that he was added to the agenda of the civic association without his knowledge and on short notice, Rivera acknowledges the group’s complaint given his use of Rule 20, the delaying tactic.  That said, Rivera claimed while he had canceled other trips, the event in Boston on February 13, the tweets from which WMassP&I published, had been planned months in advance.

That friction, Rivera notes, is part of the divisions that run deep in Ward 6 and Forest Park generally, arguably among the city’s most diverse neighborhoods by any measure.  Rivera noted that these divisions are older than he.  While the civic association is by no means the sole voice of displeasure, they and their members have become his most outspoken critics not otherwise elected to something at 36 Court Street.  Still, Rivera maintains that “building bridges,” rather than burning them, is his mantra as he insists that he wants to engage all of his constituents.