With statewide elections fast approaching, the race for the Fifth Bristol District state representative between incumbent Patricia Haddad and returning challenger Justin Thurber is well underway.
The fifth district in Bristol County in Massachusetts includes the communities of Swansea , Somerset , Dighton , and Taunton , where a number of issues are front-of-mind: housing shortages, inflated costs of living, offshore energy concerns at the former Brayton Point energy plant, plus initial effects of incoming migrants.
Voting will take place in-person on Nov. 5 at five different precincts throughout the district from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mail-in ballots for early voting are not available until Oct. 19. The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 29. The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 26.
Patricia Haddad has served constituents since 2001
Haddad started out her career as a middle school physical education teacher in Somerset. “That's why I think education naturally sticks out in my mind. I was a public servant,” she said. She worked with her husband helping manage a small business for 16 years, which for Haddad, “proved that small businesses are the backbone of our economy, despite the risks.” A self-described moderate, Haddad said, “I really worry about small businesses.”
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Thurber is an Air Force veteran who served as a supervisor for 20 years and a chief for eight. “You have to learn to bring people together. You can't fail,” he said. Ensuring that no problem goes unsolved is a skill learned alongside “working with people of all different nationalities and backgrounds.” He added that, “I was a maintenance chief. Things break, we fix them. Over time you’re able to quickly diagnose issues and problems. And you don't always have the answers, so listen to your people.”
“People I talk to feel like they're not being heard, and they feel things are just getting worse and worse. I have a lot of ideas,” he said.
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What are three top priorities they wish to get started working on if elected?
Given her background in teaching and serving on the School Committee for the same district, Haddad said, “Education is the gateway to everything.”
But green energy has garnered her attention recently, too. Policies, she said, grow and mature; they evolve. “The environment has become very important” for the long-term, and in the advent of green energy.
And lastly: “We have an aging population,” she said, with "the elderly" rounding out the third item in an alliterative list of her priorities along with education and energy. Making sure elderly populations are taken care of calls up questions about housing, because “nothing exists in a vacuum,” she said. “You have to have a little bit of knowledge about everything, so you can put people in the right direction.”
Thurber said he has concerns that could cultivate a platform, but he’d rather his constituents direct his attention.
“I don't want to be a politician," said Thurber. "I want to be a statesman. As a statesman, you're looking to help your people.”
He said he hears complaints about the migration crisis, high taxes, too-strict businesses regulations, and that medical programs for state employees aren’t comprehensive.
“A lot of people are struggling,” he said. For the past 21 years, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and the elderly are struggling to get prescriptions, food, or to adequately heat their homes, he claimed. “We were able to find money to help with those problems, but in the last two years, we spent billions of dollars to help migrants.”
Thurber disagrees with being called xenophobic, and said ultimately his goal is to “fix the transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility” of state government.
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What is their stance on offshore wind?
“There really needs to be a pause on it,” Thurber said, referencing posts on his Facebook page that depict the death of whales and dolphins. “On Cape Cod, a turbine blade broke and fell into the ocean.”
“Most people don’t understand what’s going on with offshore wind,” he added. “Each of those blades is an ecological disaster” if they are struck down in a storm, he said, citing pollutants like Styrofoam and other chemicals that could potentially leach into the water or clog shorelines.
“I don't care whether you believe climate change is real or not. I think money is affecting people,” Thurber said, going on to say that vested interests often cloud judgment. The political emphasis on green energy, Thurber said, is advertised as “cheap and free and abundant in the future,” he said, “and that’s never going to be the case. Utilities are becoming more and more unaffordable.”
By contrast, Haddad takes credit for the 2014 build that brought offshore wind energy and jobs to the SouthCoast — and the United States.
“If you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” Haddad said.
The summer before, she invited global thinkers and pioneers of clean energy to Somerset Public Library, where she gleaned information about “hydro, tidal, and solar, naturally,” she said. “But offshore wind kept standing out as a real opportunity.”
Only problem is, “We're at the end of every pipeline for gas or oil, and our energy costs are high.” But with wind, “we are the beginning.”
Wind farms, she said, power Rhode Island, Connecticut, and even New York.
“Offshore wind offers us two really important things: being at the beginning of the pipeline, and secondly, we're trying to create an evolving industry,” she said, as green energy evolves in tandem with the gradual diminishing of a reliance on fossil fuels.
What would they do to address the housing crisis?
Thurber wants to attack the systems that are perpetuating high prices. He explained that when wages are elevated, markets follow suit, including monthly expenditures, like rent. The domino effect of this makes it impossible to catch up, Thurber said.
He stipulated that regulations for building a home are different now, too, and tilt toward greener energy initiatives, “like hookups for solar power, and hookups for electric vehicles — what if a person never gets an electric car?”
Another dilemma Thurber wishes to address is the delay in housing citizens instead of housing migrant families. “They’re competing with citizens,” he said.
He contended that state subsidies for qualifying domestic families is exponentially less than what a family who has crossed national lines is eligible for. He upheld the fact that he isn’t “bashing” migrants, admitting that policies and incentives here are especially appealing for those fleeing persecution or seeking asylum.
Haddad agreed that Somerset, Swansea, and Dighton especially need housing options, where those who wish to downsize, or those who wish to become independent — or even those who wish to remain close to relatives in town — may do so affordably.
Haddad wishes to empower her constituents. “We must incentivize people. We have to educate communities,” she said. “In my district, part of what we do is help people find housing.”
Haddad supports drafting a bill every session that initiates the creation of housing stock; not just lower-income units, either, but one that supports market-value rates, too.
Controlling how taxes impact inherited properties is something Haddad hopes to continue. She summarized veteran affairs and child tax credits among more recent legislative wins that all aim to boost affected individuals and in turn, alleviate the burdening costs of living.
“Every good thing that happens down here happens to everybody,” she said.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Haddad, Thurber in state rep rematch. Here's where they stand on the area's biggest issues
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