On Feb. 17, I launched my campaign for U.S. Senate. I was fed up with professional politicians and their infighting, handwringing, petty partisanship and self-serving conflict. I thought Massachusetts deserved better than a senator who is just content to hold the title or one simply seeking to ascend the political ladder.
Days earlier, the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued nominating papers that all candidates must circulate in order to acquire a certain number of voters’ signatures to be placed on the primary ballot. Candidates for U.S. Senate require 10,000 valid signatures. Given that many signatures are disqualified for one technical reason or another, my campaign set a goal of 20,000 signatures in order to be confident we would meet the legal threshold.
This is a herculean effort for any campaign, and especially so for a political outsider without the benefit of a big staff, volunteer organization or bank account. So, we developed an aggressive plan with weekly volunteer recruitment targets and signature goals, and a list of large events and highly trafficked businesses where we would find lots of voters to approach. We were confident our plan would ensure we would meet our goal by the May 5 deadline.
Then on March 10, just three weeks after I launched my campaign, Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in response to the coronavirus outbreak. In order to mitigate the spread of the disease, the commonwealth was recommending people avoid large crowds and practice social distancing. Soon, we were being told to stay at home.
The entire process of petition collection, which requires approaching thousands of people, and swapping clipboards and pens is exactly the sort of behavior that the state and federal government was telling us would result in spreading this dangerous and potentially fatal disease. Campaigns were being given conflicting messages: The law told us we had to continue aggressively collecting signatures, but the guidance from government officials said to strictly limit person-to-person interactions.
Then my 86-year-old father got the coronavirus. I was obviously scared about how he’d handle it, but a chill went down my spine when I thought about how my mother was one of my top signature gatherers. It is entirely possible that the virus was introduced into my family as a result of petition gathering, and that campaign volunteers were unwittingly spreading the disease.
I could not in good conscience continue to ask my campaign supporters to engage in this process, so barely a month after it started, I ordered my campaign to immediately shut down our petition gathering program to protect the health of my supporters and the general public.
On March 18, I announced my father’s condition and urged the state Legislature to take immediate action to align ballot access law with public health guidance. It was a no-brainer. They were already considering all kinds of changes to elections to accommodate the new circumstances that were far more burdensome than simply modifying the signature requirements. And yet, they did nothing.
Weeks have gone by, and I have repeatedly drawn attention to this disastrous situation, which pits public health against democracy itself. I couldn’t believe that our elected leaders were insisting that petition gathering continue unchanged despite rapidly escalating illness and death from person-to-person contacts.
I got to thinking about why I got in this race in the first place, and it was then that it occurred to me. The people writing the laws are all incumbents, but it is challengers who will have the hardest time achieving the signature thresholds given their relative lack of established political networks and money. Our legislative leaders were leveraging this crisis to their personal political benefit in hopes of avoiding challenges to their power.
Faced with continued inaction by the Legislature, last week I joined with two other challenger candidates — including one who is an infectious disease doctor — to sue and force the Legislature to do the right thing.
It’s shameful and infuriating that it takes a lawsuit to get the politicians to put self-interest aside and act in the best interests of the people they represent, but I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, that’s exactly why I am running.
Kevin O’Connor, of Dover, is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.