As state Representative Christine Barber competes in a five-way race for an open state Senate seat, three hopefuls seek to take her role representing the 34th Middlesex District.
The district covers parts of Somerville and Medford. Barber was elected to the seat in 2014.
Candidates hail from both cities in the district. Paul Ruseau lives in Medford and has served on the Medford School Committee since 2018. Chris Oates is a Somerville resident with a background in electoral reform, technology and geopolitical analysis. Will Mbah was elected to the Somerville City Council in 2017, where he has served as councilor at large since, barring the 2021 term, when he lost the mayoral election to then-mayor Katjana Ballantyne.
Cambridge Day spoke to the candidates about their campaigns and priorities if elected.
Mbah cites Council credentials
When asked why he’s running, Mbah said he wants to bring his experience in city government, and also his experience of feeling limits to local power.
“Almost everything that we’ve been trying to do at the city level is all stuck at the State House,” he said. He cited Somerville’s efforts to give tenants first right to purchase their units when sold, implement transfer fees, and institute rent control: actions that all require state approval, which has not yet been granted.
As state rep, Mbah would want to reassess those limits to local power. “It’s almost like we need to work on this rent stabilization, rent control, however you want to put it, and give communities the choice also to do what works for them,” he said.
Mbah called housing affordability his “number one issue.” He cited his experience in Somerville, including the creation of the city’s Office of Housing Stability, which was established in 2018. But, there are limits to what he’s been able to do in local office, he said.
Mbah said his priorities are shaped by both his lived and legislative experience. “My entire life story is shaped by the issues everybody’s organizing around,” Mbah said. “I grew up in Cameroon, you know, came to the United States believing in the promise of opportunity and democracy … it’s not always been an easy journey.”
Healthcare is an example. When Mbah moved to Massachusetts 15 years ago, he fell outside of MassHealth’s eligibility criteria and wasn’t able to receive coverage. He was then penalized for not having health insurance, he said.
“I feel like it should be a human right. I think we can do this stuff. It’s just the political will,” he said.
He also cited immigration, transportation and education. He wants to advocate for expanded language and legal services and protections for immigrants, as well as see increased investment in the MBTA and in public schools. In schools, that includes increasing mental health resources and doing integrity checks on school buildings.
If elected, Mbah would step down from his role on the City Council. His message to voter: “I’m the best person that is ready on day one.”
Oates talks election reform, YIMBY bill
Oates, a first-time office-seeker, said he’s running because “the issues I cared about, I didn’t think were being addressed well enough. I didn’t think Beacon Hill was moving with the urgency on a lot of issues,” he said.
When Barber decided not to run for re-election, he saw an opportunity. “Given how uncompetitive these [elections] are, this is maybe the only time in my working life that this seat might be open,” he said.
Oates said competitive elections can force legislative action. Without competition, “there isn’t that pressure from the public to move,” he said.
Though it will be his first time running for public office, Oates’ professional background is in politics. He has worked in geopolitical risk analysis and consulting and from 2018-2020 worked on a ballot initiative led by Voter Choice Massachusetts to to convert Massachusetts to ranked choice voting. The measure, which would have had voters rank candidates by order of preference in state elections, appeared on the ballot in 2020 but failed to pass, with 55 percent of votes cast against it.
He then founded Legislata, a startup trying to increase transparency in government. Legislata’s services include tracking state bills and using AI to produce transcripts of public meetings.
He hopes that there is “appetite in the legislature” for ranked choice voting, he said. If elected, Oates says that he would stop consulting and hand over Legislata operations to someone else.
Housing is “the single most important policy right now,” Oates said. If he could pass any policy on his first day in office, he said he’d pick the “YIMBY Bill” currently in front of the legislature (House version Senate version). The legislation, championed by the “Yes In My Back Yard” movement, includes several provisions aiming to increase housing production, including removing parking minimums for new residential construction near transit, removing minimum lot sizes and allowing some multifamily housing by right in residential areas: up to five units on sites connected to water and sewer and up to three units for those that aren’t. A version of the bill in front of the Senate also includes provisions for building housing on sites owned by religious institutions. It is part of the economic development bill passed by the House.
Oates said that building market-rate homes should be made easier and more cost-effective, including by reforming permitting. Market-rate construction can generate revenue for affordable or social housing, he said.
Ruseau aims at state education aid, social housing
Like Mbah, Ruseau is running because he wants to leverage the state’s power to tackle issues local governments don’t have the power to address.
“A lot of the things that I want to do in the schools are just not allowed at the state level,” Ruseau said. “I feel like a lot of the progress we’ve made will continue. But those things at the state level that are holding us back are not going to change on their own.”
He also wants to bring more progressive politics to Beacon Hill.
“I think I’m the most left of all of the candidates in this race,” Ruseau said, noting that he is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), “and I’m not hiding that.”
Ruseau endorsed Barber in her run for state Senate, though he “[looks] forward to working with whoever is elected,” he said.
Healthcare, housing, and education were among the issues Ruseau called his most important. He wants Medicare for all and envisions a transformational shift of the state’s healthcare industry. “I don’t think health care delivery should be for profit,” he said, adding that Massachusetts’ workforce in the insurance industry could be leveraged to build a new system.
On housing, he wants construction of new units and mixed income social housing: housing owned and operated without a profit by the government, a nonprofit, or tenants.
If elected, he said the first action he would take would be creating a “whole new formula” for state education aid. State aid to public elementary and secondary schools is governed by Chapter 70 of the Massachusetts General Laws, which caps annual inflationary adjustments to the budget to at 4.5 percent. Ruseau wants to remove that cap.
Ruseau was elected to the Medford school committee in 2017. Outside of the committee, he works as a software engineer at Dana Farber. He would continue working at Dana Farber if elected, he said, which he said was a financial necessity. He said his job has flexible hours and autonomy, so he did not feel that continuing to work would conflict with serving in the legislature.
The primary election is scheduled for Sept. 1.
This story was updated to clarify that Chris Oates is a political risk consultant.
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