Congressman Ed Markey came to my attention this
past election season when redistricting caused him to be running for the
House of Representatives for my district. I researched and liked what I read,
voted for him, and was pleased to see that he won easily. When I heard
he was running for John Kerry's Senate seat in the special election, I
resolved to dig deeper. I'd been thinking for awhile about getting more
involved in local politics. I wanted to hear Markey speak and see if he
was someone who's campaign I might want to get involved in. I went to
see him speak in Belmont.
The event was on a Sunday morning in a local Thai restaurant that had been emptied of tables and chairs. For the first half hour, about a hundred folks milled around drinking the provided coffee and tea, chatting, and being solicited to sign up as a campaign volunteer. I didn't know anyone, so I wandered around eavesdropping on others' conversations. Many were discussing current events, Markey's chances of winning, and their own political involvement. There were about 100 people then when Markey and his entourage arrived. After introductions from State Representative Will Brownsberger and Sheriff Peter Koutoujian, who amusingly kept referring to the much-older Markey as "the kid from Malden", Markey got up to speak.
The event was on a Sunday morning in a local Thai restaurant that had been emptied of tables and chairs. For the first half hour, about a hundred folks milled around drinking the provided coffee and tea, chatting, and being solicited to sign up as a campaign volunteer. I didn't know anyone, so I wandered around eavesdropping on others' conversations. Many were discussing current events, Markey's chances of winning, and their own political involvement. There were about 100 people then when Markey and his entourage arrived. After introductions from State Representative Will Brownsberger and Sheriff Peter Koutoujian, who amusingly kept referring to the much-older Markey as "the kid from Malden", Markey got up to speak.
He laid out his reasons for running for Senate. These were his top issues:
Items 4 and 5 are the reasons I'm excited about Ed Markey. This is a guy with an eye to the nation's future. We seem to have more than enough short-sighted politicians willing to sacrifice the long-term welfare of our country of our country for some political points today. Not Markey. He's focused on investing in science and technology, in clean energy and combating climate change. In short, he's working to create a country and a world that we and our children will actually want to live in. "The challenge for this generation is to ensure it has the wisdom to invest in the science and technology of the next generation, in clean energy technology, biotechnology, in telecom and cybertechnologies that gives us the lead," he said. I couldn't agree more.
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