Commonwealth Journal; Interview with Gubernatorial Candidate Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy on Voter Concerns in Massachusetts

This is the award winning Commonwealth Journal a weekly magazine a feature news and information brought to you as a public service all of the University of Massachusetts at Boston. I am WNBA FM today part of our continuing series of special programs as we extend a cordial welcome to the present lieutenant governor of the state Island Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the September primary Evelyn Murphy. Please join me for a Commonwealth Journal. This is Bill Mockbee speaking. Continuing our series on Commonwealth journal it gives me a great deal of personal pleasure to introduce the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth Ellen Murphy who is also a gubernatorial candidate for the Commonwealth highest office and first of all welcome to the program. Thank you very much thanks for the opportunity to be here. Well it's nice to have you and I think one of the things that people are always interested to hear because we will obviously get in and talk about the issues but a couple of personal things how do you find the campaign how do you find being out on the trail 29 hours a day 13 days a week. Well it's been a long

campaign. Clearly the governor announced a year and a half ago that he was going to run for re-election. So from that time on those of us who thought we wanted to run for the governor's office have clearly been thinking looking and planning this. I like campaigning because I get to see people throughout the state and talk to them and I find it's always fascinating. I learn from people. I enjoy the contact. And now with about 50 days left you can see an end in sight. And now also one gets a much more raw genuine sense of what are the issues that are facing this state in the 1990s how do you bring them into focus. And people have much smarter than than the politicians and in the state house quite often know what's of concern to them and clearly that's the economy and jobs in the state where we had in the 1990s so I enjoy campaigning. I like it a lot in the last 50 days I am out. It seems like twenty nine hours a day. The question I've always wanted to ask a candidate I think more than anything else. What do you do at the end of the day when you just want to go in

retreat for an hour and be alone and be by yourself and put your head all together again. What is it you like to do as a person. Curl up with a book be with a friend at dinner or go out. So in the room just somewhere quietly by yourself and think what is it. I take an hour off in the late afternoon and go jog. Good run four miles to six miles depending on what I'm doing that night and how much time I have but it is for me the time to sort of regroup get my energy back and I do that or last night I had a night off and I went to a Red Sox game and sat out in the bleachers and enjoyed it. People in the bleachers where I said leave me alone. That's nice and understanding this is my day off I'm sure. And so I enjoyed it we won so that's all the better. Makes it nice getting into some of the questions and some of the issues that obviously why you are here with us today. We talk about the fiscal crisis we talk about the problems that are incumbent to the state and the things that we seem to be facing. How do you going to address those when you become governor of the state in dealing with this fiscal thing we find ourselves in right now that the average voter can understand. Governor Murphy is there she's going to be able to do this for me.

It's going to affect me on the street right now I can feel what she's doing. Well I think you affected from the first day I walked in the governor's office and take charge and it means to me that I send the signals to people in the state that I am truly in charge and going to cut more of the waste and inefficiency of state government very quickly. Despite all of the efforts right now in balancing the budget and giving the governor a balanced budget I still know where I would save some or I would sell the convention authority. That's 20 25 million dollars a year we waste in the operating budget of the state. We could be putting in the childcare and some support for people who need protection right now which we can't do. So I want quickly to take charge and sell the Convention Authority look at some of the state's resources and make them into revenue generators money makers for us. Take a look at the over regulation over reporting in the state show people very quickly that I can get even more efficiency without hurting people or cutting back on service. Think that's the best signal you can send to Wall Street as well that a new governor is going to take

charge and get things stable off the fiscal rollercoaster. Keep us paying as we go. And that's the best signal also to the larger business community that there's a climate here that that is under control that can keep a steady in a tax sense and in the early 1990s and kick in a store a steady probably not as big a growth as we had the 1990s to 1900. But certainly growth in the economy. So for me it's that first week on the job in which you do the symbolic moves and of cuts and like taking back state cars that maybe being driven in ways that they don't need to be taken home by various state workers and the bigger cuts that show that there's still more efficiency you can get and that you have things moving in a way that restores confidence that we respect people's tax dollars that middle class working class people have a tough time meeting all the bills in the state and the governor has got to show that she respects those tax dollars when you take a look at it.

I'm not going to give you a new headline. But obviously you're out in the street like I am and you feel the frustration. And I I kin frustration almost anger and I don't want people to be angry and I'm tired of hearing the frustration. But when you sense it what what are you really hearing I mean we cut away from all the wheat in the chaff What do you really get a down to what are the two or three things they seem to be really saying to you on the stump on your right to say hey would you please look at this or would you please address this point for me because I'm vitally concerned about it. What two or three things you really hear more than anything else when you get through all the other. When I get through all the other off theory of what happened we feel misled what happened in his Massachusetts miracle. What I really hear is a lot of fear. I hear a worry about where the state's economy is going in the 1990s whether people can afford to stay and live here. But it's more anxiety about. The logic is it's the big picture that you read nationally that the state that the federal government is in trouble right now in the present is looking at taxes nationally we see the stories about international

competition and this and America is losing its competitive edge. And in this state the kind of decline of manufacturing jobs the softening the state's economy and downturn and the fiscal mess all of that adds up I think to almost everybody in the state as a genuine concern for how well am I going to be in that in the mid 80s mid 90s and how do I possibly meet the bills for kids to go to school and for to take care of my parents or grandparents in nursing homes. That's a very scary situation for lots of working and middle class people. That's what I hear. That's what I want to respond to. And I don't think you respond to it by playing to the fears and the anger and feeling it. I think the challenge and lifestyle of political leadership is to turn that energy back to being positive and start and changing the direction of this. What interests me about the difference between me and my opponents want to part of us restructure everything and reorganize and that can take years. The other opponent is so angry that he makes these charge statements like put the Boston schools in receivership Let us just tear things down.

I want to talk about how we get every school off to being world class in a plan for them to meet that goal. But in a constructive solid way what does this day do to take care of ourselves and to ensure a level of economic activity in the 1990s that means we can afford to live here and in a decent way. I'm going to kind of just I happen to believe that the state's economic base is more diverse and vital than we now see but that the growth of small growth won't happen unless all these anxieties are eased and people begin to feel you can be proud of Massachusetts and ourselves again we can see our way into affording life here. But I'm going to move to New Hampshire I'm going to Maine I'm going to go to Rhode Island I'm going to go to Connecticut I'm going to leave. I just can't I just can't take it anymore. You keep on hearing that. Yeah I thought well I heard it last night I was the night before last I was in my terms dialing for dollars and raising some money. And I talked to different people in Western

Massachusetts who said that they were literally moving to California in the next month. Now I made 30 phone calls and to get two out of 30 type percentage. Whoa. It's stunning. You know now it seems to me that part of this is about the cost of living it's not just taxes. But it's automobile insurance. It's health care it's energy it's food it's transportation. This is a state that is expensive to live in. It's cold. And a governor has got to be sensitive to all the costs of living and try and get all of them under control. Interestingly enough it's not just Texas but it is a lot of regulated industries that the state can control. It will be on surance health care insurance. Energy He told us that's the larger family budget that somebody's got to attend to right now and leading the state and getting getting some control over it I hope. And one of the things I'd like to talk to people about in this state is to stay here and

to not lose population. For the first time in years we have actually lost a labor force in a workforce that's a bad sign. We don't have the massive in-migration that California Florida has. We need a workforce here that is growing to sustain a level of quality of life that we have so we can't afford to lose anyone and we can't afford to and not use every adult who's here in a way that helps them to be productive and helps all of us sustain this quality of life. So I am I want to make a strong case to people about the pride and the sense of Massachusetts the roots that are here the wonderful quality of life that can be here and to turn a corner right now so that people are not afraid to stay here. Do take a pride to see us on the upswing again. My guest is the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth Evelyn Murphy who is also one of the gubernatorial candidates appearing on this special edition of Commonwealth Journal. Take off a couple of quickies one right after the other because of the fight I think your positions are well known

but I want to make sure that you have the time to respond in kind to see altie position is one I oppose the CLP petition. And one of the important exercises for all of us running for governor and I think for the media is to inform the public about what would happen if the petition were passed. What that would mean. Terms of taking a billion dollars out of a tax base right now that if you did it on the 4 to 5 billion dollars of discretionary money it would literally mean at close to 20 percent cut in services. There's no doubt that people are angry and feel they can still be some savings. But the turbulence that the CLP petition would inflict and the problems with the bond ratings in New York would be even worse for us. And one of the taxes I hate the most is this the surtax to Wall Street firms the bond rating is that we've lost literally the money we take it out of care for battered women for abused kids the care and protection money that we've taken out because we've had to pay interest to Wall Street. We will jeopardize our bond ratings even more if that SEAL team petition passes. So

I want to make sure nobody understands makes an informed reasoned decision when they go into the ballot box to vote yea or nay on the CLP petition. I believe that if people understand the consequences people won't vote for it no matter how angry we may be that that that informed decision will go the other way and will find the opportunity to get a stable base once again. The abortion issue. I am pro-choice have been pro-choice for for as long as it has been in front of us and it is in part because. I feel this is a very private matter. I don't want the Massachusetts legislature or the courts making a decision for any woman in the state whether and when to bear a child. And I believe that it's a matter of privacy. It's an awful decision. It's an anguishing decision. But that woman based on her own religious beliefs and her own sense of what pressures she has her own values the advice from her physician and her family advice she ought to be able to make that decision without

it becoming a political issue or without the limitations or strictures of the courts or the or government. So this is a matter of privacy to me I feel very strongly I will do everything I can as the governor with personal leadership with a sense of judicial appointments that ought to reflect a quality and integrity of judicial appointment and my values around pro-choice that that's the way in which I want every woman in the state to feel. They will be protected to make this decision in the privacy of their own home or physician's office. Do you regret as a person and also as a candidate for governor that that issue has become such a central focal point of all of our attention. Do I ever I mean what I regret and because it has become a central point because. The Supreme Court. In the Webster decision is giving the first signal that it is backing away from the protections that have been established as 1073 at the at the national level. And now we're going to see in every state is that each state is going to carve out its own sense of whether women have this right or

not. And so as it gets turned back to the states the governor's races are going to be very crucial to protection of that right to privacy and choice or not. And certainly as the as Supreme Court Justice Brennan's retirement shows us I don't like to be alarmist about it but I think one sees here that the realism that the court under former President Reagan and now President Bush is headed in the other direction. So I see nothing but increased pressure and attention given to the states to be the front lines of protecting a woman's right to choice. Since we're talking about those issues like that then there for you as a candidate must also be very mightily concerned with the time money and effort you must devote to dealing with the drug issue. Oh I am indeed. The drug issue is one that that this state and society is seeing increasing. Other social problems like violence like crime in the cities.

And it's an issue in which a president's declared a war on drugs but most of the money is almost all the money is going to interdiction and not into the cities and into the communities where drugs are being Delta openly and aggressively. For me the answer on this is is as complex as it's growing as the growing of the phenomenal drugs. This is not a new issue it's an issue that's been with us and growing over many years and quite a few decades now. And I guess there's a knee jerk reaction which says OK if we're going to be going to deal with drugs and you have to be tough on law enforcement and I agree with that. And I believe the only way to handle part of this problem is to have more police on the streets in communities that that know the kids that know the dealers and know where that those drugs are being dealt. So more cops on the beat but they are only as good as the courts and the court facilities and their capacity right now the courts to process and put drug dealers away is very weak. So we need more judicial support and we need more prison beds

because we can't let dealers back on the street to within 24 hours if we're going to be serious about punishment. That's only one part of the issue and it's an essential part but it's not the total. The other side for me is that the only way to prevent and start to turn the corner on the use of drugs is that in every school. A drug education program for every age youngster has got to be pursued aggressively. And then we've got to get a much more complicated issue of how we rebuild hope in our cities and in our communities to deal with drugs and that is around families and it's around community based institutions that have also got to deal with values and talk about which stories of values for youngsters that so they can feel their own self worth respect other people's property and other people's lives and that those values are not now well and calculated into youngsters because families are in many instances a you know single family single parent had a family.

So this is an issue in which we've got to go back and talk about values and respect and self-worth. In schools in families and in community based institutions and the enforcement side of it if we do all of that then I think the state still has the capacity for it. Turning around the drug issues and related crime violence we're not like some of the major cities of the country where it's out of control. But certainly if we don't get out it soon and in this complicated complex systematic incompetent way then we're not going to be able to keep control. Interesting thing for me is when I ask mayors of various cities about the drug problem in their cities it is still defined in certain geographic ways. You can talk about it in Boston around a certain number of square blocks in New Bedford. The mayor will tell you there are two housing projects where drugs are dealt in Wester. The mayor will tell you there's a certain block where you can see the houses in which known drug dealers are.

So you still have it contained. And there's a capacity right now for dealing with the drug problems of the state getting them under control which I think we have to take advantage of and do it very aggressively in the 1990s. My guest is the present lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth Evelyn Murphy who is also one of the gubernatorial candidates for the highest office of our state in dealing with the drug question. You mention mares and so forth I have seen Baltimore come on and talk about legalization and so forth is that an answer is that is that I'm almost a poor the word but is it a viable alternative to consider. I don't think it is. I mean I I try to I've tried to think this through and reason with people who have sort of thrown the the the alternative out for public debate. And you try and understand if you legalized the use of crack or crack cocaine or heroin what that would mean and you know we're really going to sanction that kind of use and dysfunction because of its use. Yes. I don't think it solves any of the problems we will still have

the illicit trade we will still have the kind of dealing that will destroy a lot a lot of lives. So I don't think there's any substitute right now for some tough enforcement and for some basic repair and rebuilding community values and family values in some communities that just what kids need to see an alternative to the drug dealing as as a way of life and some hope for what kind of jobs and and family life and future that they don't now see as Governor can you see. Working on a gubernatorial taskforce in an effort to relate to the White House some sort of international economic pressures to bear on these countries that are supplying these drugs is are not advised through foreign affairs foreign aid foreign intervention and so for them not necessarily suggesting blockades and so forth but could you as a governor for example sit down with Bennett and Bush and the rest and say we know Colombia is one of the dealing points we know that this is one of the problems we've got coming in. Is there not some way on a foreign relations policy that we can bring some pressure to bear to make these states

these member states of all call of the OAS and so forth accountable as to what's going on. Yes I think it's a good point and I think you know I've been to many National Governors Association meetings over the years. I believe very strongly that the agenda of the National Governors Association will change and has to change in the next several years that we're no longer talking about the these are the bits and pieces of governmental management. We're talking with a very large themes of how this nation remains competitive in the 1900s. Two of them in particular. One as you've mentioned has to do with interdiction and the larger consequences of international drug dealing. And that certainly the National Governors Association and its relationship with the administration and the Congress has got to be a focal point of some additional law. Policies and some activity that truly gets to the administration a much more serious about this than they are right now. The second issue has to do with finance. The National Governors Association has never talked about the financial parts of

America much less States. I made up a proposal a couple weeks ago about a Massachusetts first investment corporation as an economist what I worry about is not only do we need jobs here that are both manufacturing and service but we have historically been a center for money for venture capital for investment capital. Now the capital is so fluid and now that much of it is outside of America. How is it that Massachusetts and New England retain that sense of having enough money around here to invest in new jobs and new technology. Well we have no inherent right to this money and we have no nothing going for success at this historic precedent that we've always been the base for money in America from the earliest industrial revolution. So for me thinking about retaining that base of capital patient capital for a long term investment as well as venture capital is a very important part of what Massachusetts has to do and a very important part of what a nation has got to wrestle with if we're going to remain competitive.

I want to see the National Governors Association talking about those kinds of things. It's an issue which has never been part of the the agenda before but certainly has to be you know and I'm going to and that's part of my agenda for what I will do with the National Governors. Good. We've got some brief time remaining and I want to touch on a couple of other things as well. Briefly as best we possibly can travels throughout the western part of the state where we have a lot of fine stations who carry this program a lot of fine listeners. We feel alienated from Boston we're we're out here we might as well secede and become the Republic of someplace else not the Commonwealth of Massachusetts how do you how do we get all these 5 million people here all thinking the same way and moving in the same direction. Well I think Western Massachusetts does feel it's a long way to go to Boston. Sometimes that's an advantage some kind of a disadvantage but. You know I have I for a long time when I first became the secretary of environmental affairs I went to Springfield and I talked about blacking the diversion of the Connecticut

River. And at the time it was more out of common sense that the Connecticut River is a great resource for the Pioneer Valley not just a recreational environmental resource but it is the industrial resource as well. And that Boston and the in the engineers the NBC system kept looking westward for more for more water we went from the white side by to the watchers of the Quabbin Reservoir and they were going to look to the Connecticut River and then when you run up against a state border so you'd cycle back and go back to the Merrimack web seems sort of crazy. And besides the kind of profligate use of water in Boston said to me we can get a lot more conservation or you know before you have to divert the Connecticut we ought not do that for equity sake as well. What I Found Out of that. Effort in blocking the Connecticut River was that it was also as important symbolically for saying yes here somebody who really does understand that Western Massachusetts has some rights has some resources has a different way of looking at things. And

I have found the Pioneer Valley to be the place where there was more cooperation and collaboration among everyone than you ever get in metropolitan Boston. So I always go out there when I'm trying to find my consensus crowd whether it's environmentalist industrialists utility companies the homebuilders the unions. I can build in western Massachusetts and bring it eastward the Berkshires or even Gloria towards New York. And with the quality of life out there in which the Environmental Protection parts of the public agenda are so important to keeping the economy of the Berkshires going. So I think the way you bring a state together so that there are five to six million people who understand and appreciate each other is that a governor has got to to know first hand about each one of these communities the people that are there. I've spent 15 years in the viral affairs economic affairs with the governor's office and other public work and I know the people of the state I've been in almost every community not just once but many many times.

And it's that sense of continuity that comes through a governor's eyes who spent the time getting to know people. I also have a great sense of confidence when you talk to people throughout the state because I was just in the Berkshires and tearing Hammon in Holyoke and shipping people the state a very decent very hardworking. They have a sense of family values and family orientation in a community or public responsibility that is very deep. And if you tap that that's for me the greatest potential in the state. You can tap the anger and lead with the negative and the kind of very negative leadership or you can take this more positive sense. Think you can do that unless you know the people the state as well as I do and that makes me confident about the quality of leadership I can bring to the state. Because I just have seen the potential here from a lot of hardworking decent people. And in 30 seconds remaining that is your vision. That is my vision and my vision of the greatest legacy that I can give people as a as a governor would be a quality of public education in which every youngster in the state has the chance to be

whatever she or he wants to be. We hope in the days remaining there may be at least one more time to sit in the bleacher seats to get your read. We thank you most generously for your time wish you and your family by the way your dad I trust as well. Yes thank you and best and we send best to him and and wish you very well and thank you for the time you spent with us today it was our pleasure. Thank you very much I appreciate it thank you. I'd like to thank Evelyn Murphy Democratic candidate for governor in the September primary for appearing with me today on Commonwealth Journal. The views and opinions expressed by the gubernatorial candidates on these special editions of Commonwealth Journal are their own. I do not necessarily reflect the views of radio station WUOM BFM the University of Massachusetts supporting groups or stations of Commonwealth Journal Democratic candidate John Silber or through his staff has failed to respond to numerous requests to also appear in this gubernatorial series featuring one on one conversations with each of the other

candidates. You've been listening to the award winning Commonwealth Journal a weekly magazine news and information public service. The University of Massachusetts at Boston. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Executive producer Tom Callahan your letters are important to us. Commonwealth Journal radio the University of Massachusetts Boston Massachusetts 0 2 1 2 5 3 3 9 3. Thank you for joining us this speaking. Join us this week on this nation and for the award winning Commonwealth journal will feature

an informal half hours special program featuring Democratic gubernatorial candidate the present lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth Evelyn Murphy. That's on Commonwealth Journal this week on this station. This is Bill Mockbee speaking inviting you to join us.