SOUTH END NEWS: Chang for change again

By Linda Rodriguez | Thursday Aug 14, 2008

It’s raining. Not just raining, but pouring - as in the heavens have opened, you can barely see two feet in front of you, and umbrellas are all but useless.

And Sonia Chang-Díaz, clad in a tan suit and very practical mesh walking shoes, armed with a clipboard full of the names of potential voters and an umbrella, is roaming the streets.

"It’s harder to canvas in the rain, but you typically find more people at home," she says brightly, as the top sheet of her clipboard, a Google print-out map of Concord Square with target houses highlighted in yellow marker, crinkles from the rain drops. "It really makes you appreciate people who put an awning over the door," she laughed.

Chang-Díaz, a 29-year-old former schoolteacher, aide to former state Senator Cheryl Jacques and Jamaica Plain resident, is out during a veritable monsoon because she’s making her second bid for the state senate seat currently held by Sen. Dianne Wilkerson. In 2006, she came within 700 votes of unseating the incumbent, who has held the 2nd Suffolk seat since 1993. She’s running again, she says, for the same reasons she ran the first time: "I see a lot of challenges that we’re facing in the city and in the neighborhoods in this district and I believe that we need new leadership in order to tackle those issues," she said at a July 24 editorial board meeting.

How’s she’s going to tackle those issues, however, doesn’t differ all that much from how the incumbent has said she wants to do so. For the most part, Chang-Díaz and Wilkerson’s policy positions are remarkably similar: Both consider themselves progressive Democrats, working towards more affordable housing, better education, universal healthcare, and reducing youth violence in the district. Both support Gov. Deval Patrick, but not his recent failed casino proposal. And both believe that Barack Obama will and should become the next president of the United States. The two differ on just a few issues: Chang-Díaz disagrees with Wilkerson’s support of the Columbus Center and her attempts to gain public subsidy for the project; where Wilkerson has historically supported the Boston University BioLab, Chang-Díaz says she’s more cautious and wants to see further safety review of the project. Chang-Diaz says she’s worked for "clean" elections, better known as publicly funded elections, whereas Wilkerson has voted against bills that would make that possible.

Ultimately, however, it’s not about policy differences, says Chang-Díaz. "People don’t expect there to be or need there to be a huge policy difference, because this is a very heavily Democratic district and it’s a progressive district," she said.

This campaign, she says, is about "ethics and accountability." The touchstone of her campaign and a phrase almost as oft-repeated as "it’s time for a change," "ethics and accountability" is a not so oblique reference to Wilkerson’s numerous personal and political stumbles in the past decade: in 1997, Wilkerson was convicted of tax evasion after failing to pay $51,000 in back taxes and placed under house arrest for six months; she wore an electronic ankle bracelet monitor for two months in 1998 after violating that court-ordered house arrest’s curfew; she’s settled twice with the Attorney General’s Office and the Office of Campaign and Political Finance over campaign finance violations incurred in the mid-1990s and 2000 until 2007, the most recent $10,000 fine coming to light on Aug. 8; in November 2000, she faced foreclosure proceedings for failing to pay her mortgage; in 2005, a Roxbury judge ordered her to pay more than $13,000 she owed in back condo fees for her Douglass Park apartment; and in the 2006 race, she failed to file the requisite 300 signatures, a blunder that meant her name didn’t appear on the primary ballot and opened the race up to challengers, including Chang-Díaz.

"I think people feel that it’s hard to be as much of an advocate for the very serious things that we need and the very urgent changes that we need, when you also have to be worried about your own issues,"Chang-Díaz said.

While that was something she heard frequently in 2006, she said, she’s heard it even more this time around, knocking on doors in the district.

"After Senator Wilkerson’s win in 2006, I think a lot of people were hoping for a change,"said Chang-Díaz from under her umbrella. But the months after Wilkerson’s re-election were marred by other missteps, including what Wilkerson aides called a "glitch" in January 2007, when 26 of Wilkerson’s 27 bills were filed after the legislative deadline. "For people who voted for Sen. Wilkerson in 2006, it felt like a let down," Chang-Díaz said during the editorial board meeting.

Right now, Chang-Díaz believes that district voters feel as though they’re being forced to choose between "good issues positions on progressive issues and high standards for ethics and accountability."

Though Chang-Díaz and her campaign staff say they don’t want to run a negative campaign against the incumbent, much of what comes through is that Wilkerson is the candidate who had her chance and squandered it, while Chang-Díaz is fresh and new. That also comes through out on the campaign trail, where voters routinely echoed Chang-Díaz with the phrase, "It’s time for a change." (She swears she didn’t plant them, she laughed at one point.)

On the rainy Friday South End News spent canvassing the neighborhood with Chang-Díaz, nearly every person who came to the door not only knew the candidate but also said they’d likely be voting for her. Only one man was unwilling to pledge his support, saying that he needed more information before making his decision.

Mostly, though, the candidate heard encouraging words. One man, leaving his apartment to venture out into the rain, spotted Chang-Díaz on the sidewalk, smiled and offered, "You have our votes, don’t worry."

"I think this time around you’ll get my vote because we’re sick of Dianne Wilkerson," said a woman who came to the door of a garden level Concord Square apartment.

Michael Bono, a South End resident and a recently retired City Hall employee, said that Chang-Díaz would definitely have his vote and offered her an umbrella. "I think it’s time for a change, you always need a change," he said, adding that people he met through his work spoke well of Chang-Díaz. "I love Dianne [Wilkerson] and I know her, I’ve worked with Dianne. But I still think it’s time for change."

District-wide polling conducted by an independent political consulting company for Chang-Díaz’s campaign also suggests that Chang-Díaz may well be in a position to unseat Wilkerson. The polling, conducted in January of this year, indicated that 28 percent of those polled felt that Wilkerson deserved to be re-elected while nearly 50 percent said that it was time to elect someone new. By comparison, in 2006, when pollsters asked the same questions, 34.7 percent said that Wilkerson deserved reelection, while only 35.7 percent said it was time to elect someone new.

That polling, however, took place long before Wilkerson mobilized her institutional support. At Wilkerson’s campaign kick off in early June, a parade of pols, including longtime South End state Representative Byron Rushing, testified to Wilkerson’s effectiveness as a leader, as did a number of representatives of community organizations. More than 200 people turned out, dwarfing Chang-Díaz’s kick-off party in May, which drew about 40 people.

It was also before Wilkerson’s name became attached to several high-profile pieces of LGBT rights-related legislation that were signed into law, including the repeal of the 1913 law, which opened the door for out-of-state same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts. Supporters of the senator have used those bills to highlight Wilkerson’s effectiveness in the legislature.

Still, Chang-Díaz is undaunted. Regarding the institutional support, she said that it was there for Wilkerson in 2006, when she came within five percentage points of winning the Democratic primary. She calls her campaign "very grassroots," "no big mucky-mucks, no marquee names," and highlights the fact that it’s based on her one-on-one, personal contact with voters in the district. She agrees that Wilkerson has done very important work during her tenure in the legislature, but adds, "That’s exactly what we should expect from the senator who represents the Second Suffolk."

Chang-Díaz is also not concerned about the issue of experience. "I think the national conversation that has happened around experience, there’s a lot of different kinds of experience, that will help," she said at a July 22 fundraising event at 28 Degrees, referring to the respective presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. "At the polls, it’s not a roadblock for people... And I do have experience."

Deciding to run again was a roughly two-year process, not something she jumped to immediately after the 2006 returns. "Campaigning really puts you through the ringer emotionally and you shouldn’t make any big decisions after," she laughed.

In the two years since the last campaign, Chang-Díaz worked at the Mass Budget and Policy Center, an independent research and policy analysis group that works on how economic issues effect poor to moderate-income individuals. While the group does important work, she said, "[there are] so many systematic problems you can’t solve from the trenches."

"I think there’s a real potential for good in the State House, as much as there are unsatisfying things that happen, but that good public policy can come out of that building and I’ve seen it happen and I’ve been inspired by that," she said.

Ultimately, her decision to run again came down to numbers; her impressive showing last time convinced her that not only could she do it again but that she should. "Just looking at the numbers from a very practical standpoint, we went from to zero to 44 percent of the vote in three months on a tiny little budget," she said. "[That] says an enormous amount about the possibility for change and how much people really did want to choose someone else."

This time around, too, circumstances are very different. While Wilkerson may not be in as vulnerable a position as she was during the 2006 sticker campaigns, neither is Chang-Díaz. With more time, a larger group of volunteers (a dedicated corps of which are known as the Delta Force the delta symbol being a scientific term referring to "change"), and without having to also deal with the cumbersome voter education aspect of the 2006 sticker campaigns, Chang-Díaz feels she’s well positioned to prevail.

Still, she said, "I’m not taking anything for granted. I’m fighting for every vote in every neighborhood."

This summer, she’s also fighting the elements. After more than two hours of walking from door to door, dodging rapidly growing puddles on the South End’s brick sidewalks, the South End News called it quits and this reporter went home to find some dry shoes. Chang-Díaz, one entire sleeve of her suit soaked with rain, kept going.

With the primary election just about a month away, the candidate isn’t wasting any time slowing down to find dry clothes. As she said, waiting at one South End door for a potential voter, "I’m in it to win it."

Linda Rodriguez can be reached at lrodriguez@southendnews.com

http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=78847

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