State Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven has joined the race to replace retiring state Sen. Patricia Jehlen.
“I’m running because I walk the same streets you do, and every door on those streets belongs to someone who deserves to know who is making decisions about their life,” Uyterhoeven said Monday morning at a press conference at the Medford/Tufts MBTA stop. Uyterhoeven first told Cambridge Day that she was considering a run in January.
An avowed progressive, at her event she said “We are going to open every door on Beacon Hill … not to ask for permission, but to take back what was always ours.”
The 2nd Middlesex District senate seat has drawn much attention since Jehlen announced in December that she would not seek re-election after 20 years. State Rep. Christine Barber, Cambridge Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem, Somerville city councilor Matt McLaughlin and Winchester school committee member Tom Hopcroft have also declared.
Uyterhoeven was elected to represent the 27th Middlesex District in 2020. Her district neighbors Barber’s 34th Middlesex District.
She told the crowd assembled at her event that she would not back down on the issues, noting her calls for transparency around the contract recently unveiled between Gov. Maura Healey and OpenAI to provide ChatGPT services to Massachusetts executive branch employees. The legislature “could have required transparency before a contract committed 40,000 state employees to a single company, but they didn’t,” she said.
Healey’s team said in a press release announcing the contract that the services used by state employees would remain secure. But, the contract remains worrying given OpenAI’s pursuit of federal defense contracts, Uyterhoeven said in a February newsletter. OpenAI and the Pentagon made a deal late last week.
She has also called for more openness with consumers. “When I stood on the House floor to record a vote on whether families deserve to see how their electricity bills are calculated, I looked around the chamber and four legislators stood, out of 150.” And she called on Tufts to “pay its fair share” to Somerville and Medford, and also on Harvard in Cambridge, as well. The universities don’t pay property taxes but make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT).
She also told the crowd “The legislature could have passed laws to protect immigrants from ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and bills have been filed every session for nearly a decade and it hasn’t become law. But we will make that happen this year.” Uyterhoeven has elsewhere advocated for the passage of the Safe Communities Act, which would limit local cooperation with ICE.
Uyterhoeven told Cambridge Day she has been endorsed by the Massachusetts Teachers Association; local 2222 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union; Cambridge city councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler; and Somerville city councilors J.T. Scott and Jon Link.
Sobrinho-Wheeler also spoke at the event. He told Cambridge Day afterward he’s known Uyterhoeven since she was a community organizer, and the two of them fight for the same issues.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.