In one of several rounds of musical chairs in the State House, representative Erika Uyterhoeven’s quest for the state Senate opened her seat representing the 27th Middlesex District.
Competing for her seat are Ben-Ewen Campen, councilor from Somerville’s Ward 3, and Olivia Gilligan-Corsetti, a former political aide and campaign worker who currently is a substitute teacher in Somerville.
Housing, surveillance priorities for Ewen-Campen
Both Ewen-Campen and Gilligan-Corsetti told Cambridge Day they think change is possible for the issues they care about at the state level.
A Cambridge native, Ewen-Campen was elected to the City Council in 2017. He also works as a genetics researcher at Harvard Medical School.
“To make the kind of changes that Somerville wants to have — the fundamental changes in affordability, in funding public schools, in standing up to Trump and blocking the surveillance state — most of that work happens at the state level,” Ewen-Campen said. “There are just fundamental limitations to municipal power in Massachusetts, and building statewide coalitions is ultimately the only way to make this kind of change.”
For example, Somerville has pushed to institute transfer fees —to be levied on most housing transactions and allocated to affordable housing — but needs approval from the state legislature. Somerville first submitted a Home Rule petition on the matter in 2018.
Ewen-Campen also cited surveillance. In 2019, the Somerville Council passed a ban on facial recognition software that also set guidelines for the city’s use of surveillance technology, a move sponsored by Ewen-Campen.
Ewen-Campen thinks that the state house can mirror this work. “Data protection, data privacy, ensuring that we are not letting AI make critical decisions around who gets a mortgage, who gets access to benefits, and making sure that we are not letting surveillance capitalism run amok without regulations in our state” are all priorities, he said.
Gilligan-Corsetti emphasizes the environment and women’s health
Gilligan-Corsetti’s key policy focuses come from personal experiences. Growing up in Somerville, Gilligan-Corsetti watched her sister struggle with endometriosis (a condition where uterine-like tissue grows in other areas of the body, causing sometimes severe pain and other issues) and her father battle cancer, which doctors said was a result of the pesticide RoundUp. Women’s health and the environment are now her priority issues.
“My focus on pesticides and women’s health is personal. I was eight when I watched the healthcare system dismiss my 13-year-old sister’s pain for years before diagnosing severe endometriosis. My father’s doctors believe his fatal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was caused by Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide still used in Massachusetts today,” Gilligan-Corsetti told Cambridge Day. In the state house, one of the first things she’d do is push for pesticide restrictions, she said.
She said her experience caring for her father makes her well suited to act as state representative, as does her political experience, which started as an intern in the Massachusetts House Gilligan-Corsetti was an organizer and then a senior constituent services aide for Governor Healey and served as campaign manager for former Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne’s last re-election run.
“I decided to run when I learned the open seat in my home district was uncontested, and I felt it was urgent to give voters a choice — especially now, when state legislators are the last line of defense against a federal administration actively working against our residents’ rights to abortion, immigrant protections, and food, fuel, and housing benefits,” Gilligan-Corsetti said.
If elected, both Ewen-Campen and Gilligan-Corsetti said that working as state representative would be their full-time job.
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