BEACON HILL TIMES: State Senate Race: Wilkerson and Chang-Diaz square off at debate

By Dan Salerno | June 24, 2008

Seeking for the second time to unseat incumbent Diane Wilkerson, challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz squared off with the veteran state senator in a debate at Emerson College Wednesday night, covering a range of issues from education to casino gambling.

The debate, moderated by State Representative Martha Walz, demonstrated little substantive difference between the two progressive Democrats on most key issues. Instead, it brought to light the same question that was central to their last electoral contest for the Second Suffolk District seat: do voters want an experienced voice, or fresh perspectives on old problems?

“We need new leadership to tackle some serious problems,” said Chang-Diaz in her opening statement, stressing her experience as a public school teacher and her deep ties to the community.

Wilkerson, who has served the Second Suffolk District since 1992, stressed the importance of her statehouse experience, particularly the value of the seniority she has built up over her 16 years in office. “We don’t want to lose that,” she said, while acknowledging that she and Chang-Diaz differed very little on many key issues. “The difference is I’ve been doing it,” she said.

Both candidates weighed in on one issue that is of particular importance to Beacon Hill and Downtown: the coexistence of residential neighborhoods with ever expanding institutions, particularly universities.

Chang-Diaz pointed to the recent agreement between Suffolk University and the Beacon Hill Civic Association as an excellent example of how public involvement can help shape private and institutional development for the better. The agreement, she said, could help provide a road map for future discussions between institutions and communities.

Wilkerson also stressed the need for communities and institutions to work together, saying that transparency was the most vital part of the process. Ultimately, she said, both the neighborhood and the institution will benefit from working together. “There has never been a project that I’ve seen that has not been made better by the public process,” said Wilkerson.

Both candidates took strong stances against casino gambling, differing only in their willingness to criticize Governor Patrick. Chang-Diaz lamented the regressive nature of casino gambling as a revenue source, as it tends to take money from low income people who can least afford to use it, but praised Patrick for facing the realities of the state’s budget shortfall. Wilkerson, meanwhile, lambasted the Governor and those behind the casino plan for looking for “the easy way out” of the state’s fiscal problems. She cited a recent study that showed up to 20% of Massachusetts residents would wind up with a gambling addiction if the casino were to be built.

Neither candidate would endorse the idea of using an increase in the gas tax to help cover a $20 billion shortfall in the transportation infrastructure budget. “This is not the right time for that,” said Chang-Diaz, a sentiment echoed by Wilkerson, though both said changing gas prices might make the idea more palatable in the future. “I don’t think either of us can give you an answer of where that $20 billion can come from,” admitted Wilkerson.

On the subject of education, both Wilkerson and Chang-Diaz said that adding more charter schools was not the right solution for struggling city schools. Wilkerson said that more accountability was needed from teachers and administrators, and said that the old property tax method of funding education was no longer sufficient or fair. Chang-Diaz, who worked for several years as an urban public school teacher, said that making oppositional distinctions between charter schools and district schools was not a productive part of the conversation. Although Chang-Diaz did not get into the specifics of how she would boost funding for education, she did promise to be a tireless fighter for public schools.

Ultimately, the debate was not one that translates well to written report: purely on the issues, there was little to distinguish the candidates. The choice for voters will come down more to personal instinct about each candidate competence and abilities. In their 2006 contest, Wilkerson barely held on to her seat, beating Chang-Diaz by less than 800 votes after a recount. The eight term senator has long had the support of voters, but she became politically vulnerably after pleading guilty to four counts of income tax evasion in 1997.

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