Housing for All

Housing is a human right. Mike believes resolving the housing emergency requires a comprehensive approach: building at least 220,000 more homes across Massachusetts while ensuring that people of all incomes can afford to live in their communities. That means ending exclusionary zoning and other unnecessary barriers to multifamily housing production; making major public investments in affordable housing, public housing, social housing, and community land trusts; protecting tenants from displacement; supporting homeowners, first-time homebuyers, and those looking to downsize; and investing in Housing First programs and wraparound services to end homelessness.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Guaranteed Housing for All, making decent, stable housing a right rather than a privilege.
• Reasonable rent controls and stronger eviction protections to prevent displacement.
• Ending exclusionary zoning statewide and pushing for more multifamily housing, especially near transit.
• At least $1 billion in additional state investment for housing programs, including affordable housing, public housing, social housing, and community land trusts.
• A local-option real estate transfer fee on high-end sales to fund local affordable housing efforts.
• A tax on vacant units in large residential buildings to discourage speculation and land banking.
• Final passage of Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA) in this fall's economic development bill conference report.
• A full right to counsel in eviction proceedings, building on the existing access to counsel program that Mike supported. 
• HDIP reform so public subsidies support both housing production and meaningful affordability.
• Ending environmentally unsustainable parking minimums that stand in the way of new housing.
• Making it easier for communities to adopt inclusionary zoning ordinances, by simple-majority vote of local government.
• Strong enforcement of the MBTA Communities Law and continued statewide zoning reform, including duplexes by right.
• Housing First and wraparound services to help end chronic homelessness.
• Support for small landlords, especially those who provide below-market rentals.
• More pathways to homeownership, including support for first-time buyers and homeowners seeking to downsize within their communities.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Led passage of the nation’s strongest eviction and foreclosure moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic, credited with saving lives, and later helped make a key provision of the moratorium permanent (M.G.L. Ch. 239, Sec. 15(b)), pausing eviction cases while eligible tenants await decisions on rental-assistance applications.
• Advanced social housing from an idea to official state policy, working with the Healey-Driscoll Administration and legislative leaders to authorize a social housing pilot program in the Affordable Homes Act and to include social housing in the state's housing plan. Now, Mike is working with Cambridge and Somerville officials to make good on this opportunity locally.
• Early sponsor of the MBTA Communities Act, co-sponsoring an early version of the law, then filing of an even stronger proposal to require multifamily housing near transit, and ultimately co-sponsoring the legislation that became law. Mike has since repeatedly opposed efforts to weaken or delay the law.
• Helped lead the successful fight for ADUs by right statewide, organizing the House Progressive Caucus to prioritize and defend this reform in the Affordable Homes Act.
• Helped double the affordable housing commitment at the former Sullivan Courthouse site, identifying the City's control over a required parking lease as leverage and organizing the grassroots campaign that ultimately doubled the number of affordable homes in the redevelopment. According to Cambridge Day, Mike "led the housing fight" at the site.
• Helped win nearly 1,000 new beds of MIT graduate-student housing, organizing with graduate students and pushing the university to do more to house its population on campus.
• Put rent stabilization back on the legislative agenda by introducing the Tenant Protection Act and helping lead the statewide fight to lift the ban on local rent-control policies.
• Advanced Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA) as a co-sponsor and voted to pass it in the House economic development bill this summer. TOPA has now passed both the House and Senate and is expected to be included in the final economic development conference report this fall.
• Passed the YIGBY Act streamlined site-plan review in the House economic development bill. Mike is now advocating for these and other production reforms in the final conference report this October.
• Defended Massachusetts' nation-leading Right to Shelter program from right-wing attacks while working constructively to address neighborhood concerns when shelters were located in the community.
• Founded the Housing for All Legislative Caucus to bring legislators and advocates together around comprehensive solutions to the housing emergency.

Invest in Transit Infrastructure

Everyone deserves a world-class transportation system that is safe, reliable, accessible, affordable, and connected. The 26th Middlesex District is served by the Red, Orange, and Green Lines and numerous MBTA bus routes, and Mike has been a relentless advocate for the riders and workers who depend on the system. He also believes Massachusetts must move beyond outdated, car-centric transportation planning and make it safe and convenient to travel by train, bus, bike, car, or walking. You'll regularly see Mike taking the Red Line to get to the State House and walking, biking, and (gasp!) jogging around the district.

After years of dysfunction and underinvestment, the MBTA is finally making real progress. Mike has fought against fare hikes, pushed for increased funding and better management, advocated for station improvements, defended union jobs, supported the hiring of hundreds of new workers, showed up personally when riders reported problems, and worked for bus improvements that respond to the needs of our neighborhoods. Now, with Fair Share revenue providing major new resources, slow zones have been eliminated, service is finally improving, and long-delayed infrastructure projects are moving forward.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• A world-class MBTA, with frequent and reliable subway and bus service, modern trains and signals, well-maintained stations, working elevators and escalators, and full accessibility throughout the system.
• Sustained Fair Share investment in public transportation, putting revenue from the millionaires tax to work improving service, expanding capacity, and supporting a strong public sector workforce.
• Fare-free public transportation, treating transit as an essential public good and building on the success of fare-free transit programs across Massachusetts.
• An all-electric MBTA by 2035, while continuing the broader shift away from automobile dependence toward public transportation and other sustainable modes.
• Shovels in the ground on McGrath Boulevard by 2028, replacing the elevated McCarthy Overpass and the urban-renewal-era highway with a green, at-grade boulevard featuring trees, open space, safer crossings, and separated bicycle infrastructure.
• A complete Grand Junction corridor, including a continuous multi-use path while exploring new light-scale passenger-rail possibilities and preserving this right-of-way for future transportation uses.
• Completing the Mystic River bicycle and pedestrian bridge and the second Orange Line entrance at Assembly, creating better connections between East Somerville, Assembly Row, Everett, and the regional transit and trail networks.
• Safer streets and Vision Zero, including protected bicycle infrastructure, safer intersections and crossings, truck side guards and other protections for vulnerable road users, and automated traffic enforcement.
• Better bus service, including dedicated lanes and signal priority, while ensuring that major service changes are shaped by the neighborhoods and riders who depend on them.
• Modernizing state-owned roads and bridges around people rather than traffic, including Memorial Drive, the Reid Overpass, McGrath, and other MassDOT and DCR corridors throughout Cambridge and Somerville.
• Reducing vehicle miles traveled through real alternatives to driving, pairing meaningful mode-shift goals with the transit, bicycle, pedestrian, and housing investments needed to make them achievable.
• Better coordination and accountability among the MBTA, MassDOT, DCR, cities, and communities, so fragmented state jurisdiction doesn't stand in the way of safe streets and good transportation projects.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped deliver the Green Line Extension and save the Community Path Extension. When Mike was first elected, Governor Baker had put the GLX on hold and moved to eliminate the Community Path from the project. Mike immediately went to work on Beacon Hill, at the Transportation Building, and in the community to help deliver both — reconnecting East Cambridge and East Somerville with light rail and a multi-use path.
• Fought relentlessly to improve the MBTA, resulting in real progress. Mike pushed for more funding and better management, fought fare hikes, advocated for station improvements and better service, defended union jobs, and supported major workforce expansion. With Fair Share investments, new management, and hundreds of new workers, subway slow zones have been eliminated, service has improved, and bus service is expanding. For the first time in generations, we now have real hope for the T.
• Helped deliver historic new investment in public transportation through the Fair Share Amendment, and during the current term has voted to direct hundreds of millions of additional dollars to the MBTA to sustain its recovery and improve service.
• Advocated for better, neighborhood-centered bus service in Cambridge and Somerville, supporting the Bus Network Redesign and expanded service while working to ensure changes reflect the needs of the riders and neighborhoods they affect.
• Helped move McGrath Boulevard through design and toward construction, working throughout his tenure to advance the project, improve its design, and secure funding. The project will replace the intrusive elevated highway with a green urban boulevard featuring safer crossings, separated bicycle lanes, trees, and acres of new open space.
• Advanced the Grand Junction Multi-use Path project, securing bond authorizations and legislative directives for feasibility, design, and public engagement around future uses including potential EMU passenger service and completion of the shared-use path.
• Helped advance the Mystic River bike-pedestrian bridge and a new Orange Line entrance at Assembly, working toward better connections from Assembly and Draw Seven Park to Everett and points north, including the regional trail network.
• Helped write and pass the Omnibike law, establishing new protections for vulnerable road users and requiring side guards on publicly procured trucks. Mike is now pushing to broaden those protections and pass nation-leading truck-safety standards.
• Won safer designs for state-controlled roads and bridges, including protected bicycle lanes and crosswalks on Charles River Dam Road, preserving bicycle lanes at the GLX Washington Street crossing, separated bicycle infrastructure on McGrath, raised crosswalks on state roads in East Somerville, and safety improvements at Inman Square.
• Helped secure state investment in safer local streets, including $12 million for Shared Streets through the Chapter 90 program and increased support for Complete Streets.
• Championed people-centered improvements to Memorial Drive and the Reid Overpass, bringing residents, advocates, and state officials together to improve designs and recently securing a DCR commitment for a wider shared-use path connecting Magazine Beach toward River Street, expected to be completed this fall.
• Uses the office to make state transportation agencies answer to the neighborhoods they serve, convening site visits with residents, advocates, municipal officials, and agency leaders; securing budget and bond funding; working directly with state agencies and publicly demanding action alongside activists when necessary.

A Livable Planet

There is no greater responsibility than leaving a livable planet to future generations. Massachusetts is a coastal state already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and Environmental Justice communities like those in Cambridge and East Somerville have too often borne a disproportionate share of pollution and environmental harm. Mike believes Massachusetts must meet its climate commitments, rapidly transition away from fossil fuels, and build an economy powered by clean and renewable energy.

We cannot pit climate action against affordability — we need both. Residents should not be forced to choose between paying unaffordable utility bills today and preventing climate catastrophe tomorrow. Doing both requires confronting investor-owned utilities, fossil-fuel interests, and corporate polluters; dramatically expanding renewable energy and energy efficiency; and ensuring that the transition creates good jobs while lowering costs for working people. That's the agenda Mike has fought for in the legislature.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• 100% clean and renewable energy, accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels while expanding solar, offshore wind, and energy storage.
• No expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure, ending unnecessary investments in new gas infrastructure and wasteful spending on the aging gas system.
• Saving and strengthening Mass Save, preserving energy-efficiency programs and expanding support for solar, non-emitting heating, storage, and other technologies that lower emissions and household energy costs, while pursuing common-sense reforms to improve the program.
• Taking on the investor-owned utilities, restricting excessive profits, executive compensation, advertising, and other costs charged to ratepayers while moving toward democratically controlled public ownership of public utilities.
• Banning predatory third-party electricity suppliers, which have extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from Massachusetts consumers.
• Making corporate polluters pay, holding fossil-fuel companies financially responsible for the climate damages their products have helped cause.
• Environmental justice in every climate decision, ensuring communities historically burdened by pollution have meaningful power over the policies and projects that affect them.
• Strong regulation of data centers, including a moratorium on data centers at least until comprehensive standards are developed, renewable-energy requirements, public disclosure of energy and water use, and an end to special tax breaks for an industry that could dramatically increase electricity demand.
• Responsible solar development, creating permanent incentives for siting solar on rooftops, parking lots, brownfields, and other already-developed land while protecting forests and other critical natural resources.
• Cleaner air in our neighborhoods, including stronger monitoring and regulation of ultrafine particulates near highways and sound walls along I-93 in East Somerville.
• A statewide ban on single-use plastic bags and stronger policies to reduce unnecessary plastic waste.
• Ending environmentally harmful tax breaks and subsidies, including the sales-tax exemption for private aircraft and subsidies for dirty energy sources such as woody biomass.
• A just transition for workers (a.k.a. the Green New Deal), ensuring that the clean-energy economy creates high-quality union jobs, apprenticeship opportunities, and pathways for workers and communities affected by the transition away from fossil fuels.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped pass major climate and clean-energy legislation throughout his time in office, strengthening Massachusetts' emissions requirements, accelerating renewable-energy development, reforming clean-energy siting and permitting, expanding environmental-justice protections, and moving the Commonwealth toward its legally mandated climate goals.
• Helped establish Environmental Justice protections in state law, supporting landmark legislation that strengthened the Commonwealth's climate commitments while giving greater recognition and protection to communities disproportionately burdened by pollution.
• Led the effort to bring Cambridge into the state's Fossil Fuel Free Demonstration Program, sponsoring and passing home-rule legislation on Beacon Hill that allows Cambridge to require fossil-fuel-free construction in most new buildings and major renovations; now working to add Somerville to the program.
• Helped lead Cambridge's groundbreaking Net Zero Action Plan, organizing at the local level for a comprehensive strategy to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from buildings — and is now advancing those goals on Beacon Hill through the Fossil Fuel Free Demonstration Program.
• Successfully pushed to increase Massachusetts' Renewable Portfolio Standard, filing legislation that helped shape an eventual clean-energy law requiring utilities to obtain an increasing share of electricity from renewable sources.
• Was one of just 17 House members who voted to save Mass Save from $1 billion in proposed cuts, opposing an effort that would have undermined energy efficiency, clean-energy jobs, and long-term savings for ratepayers.
• Opposed legislation that would expand fossil-fuel infrastructure and undermine Massachusetts' climate goals, voting against provisions promoting new gas infrastructure, erecting new barriers to clean-energy projects, weakening vehicle-emissions standards, and blocking stronger offshore-wind and solar targets.
• Helped stop efforts to abandon Massachusetts' climate commitments, working with climate advocates against proposals that would have weakened the Commonwealth's legally required emissions targets in last fall's bill proposed by the House Committee on Transportation, Utilities, and Energy.
• Led a successful effort to protect utility customers from interest charges on deferred payments, standing up to investor-owned utilities while demonstrating that climate and energy policy must also protect household affordability.
• Introduced legislation to protect communities from the environmental and public-health impacts of sand mining, winning a favorable committee recommendation this session and advancing stronger protections for drinking water and neighboring communities.
• Advanced environmental improvements throughout Cambridge and Somerville, including a new, living shoreline at Draw Seven Park, restoration and improvements at Magazine Beach, funding commitments for the future McGrath Boulevard, and numerous investments in walking, biking, transit, and cleaner air.

World-Class Public Education

Mike believes every child deserves a world-class education regardless of their family's income or ZIP code. That means investing in public education from early childhood through college, trusting educators as professionals, rejecting privatization and excessive standardized testing, and ensuring our schools prepare young people not only for work and further education, but for citizenship and participation in a democratic society.

Fully funded public education from pre-kindergarten through college is the foundation of our democracy. Public education must be protected and “cherished,” as our state Constitution demands, not commodified by private interests to the detriment of our students. Schools must be places where community and relationships are valued and nourished; where educators are respected and supported; where we name, confront, and undo racism; where we actively work to counter the school-to-prison pipeline and close achievement gaps; and where our immigrant and refugee neighbors are welcome.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Universal Pre-K and affordable child care, making high-quality early education available to every family.
• Keeping the cap on charter schools and protecting public education from privatization.
• Closing the Chapter 70 funding-formula inflation gap and ensuring every district receives the resources its students need.
• Ending state receivership through the THRIVE Act, restoring democratic control of public schools to local communities.
• Guaranteeing meaningful educational access, including for students with disabilities and IEPs, as well as incarcerated youth.
• Comprehensive, age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education, including education about consent.
• Racially and LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula that reflect the history and diversity of the Commonwealth.
• Tuition-free public higher education, building toward a system where students can attend our public colleges, universities, and trade schools without taking on crushing debt.
• Student expression, academic freedom, and the freedom to read, defending schools and universities from censorship and political interference.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped pass the landmark Student Opportunity Act, making a historic commitment to more equitable K–12 education funding.
• Supported creation of a new Foundation Budget Review Commission in the FY27 state budget, taking the next step toward identifying and addressing gaps in the Commonwealth's education-funding system.
• Consistent advocate for Massachusetts' public colleges and universities, supporting increased investment and expanded access to public higher education.
• Passed an amendment to the House literacy bill protecting educator flexibility in the classroom, working with parents, educators, and a local literacy specialist to ensure teachers could continue using pictures as a supplement to updated literacy curricula.
• Helped organize with public-school educators to defeat Question 2 in 2016, successfully stopping a major expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts.
• Helped organize with Raise Up Massachusetts to win the Fair Share Amendment, and voted in the legislature to advance Fair Share to the ballot, creating major new resources for public education that have helped fund universal free school meals and expanded free community college.
• Supported a ban on cellphones during the school day, helping educators create classrooms where students can focus on learning and one another.
• Helped lead passage of the Freedom to Read Act, protecting Massachusetts libraries and schools from MAGA-style book bans and defending the freedom to read.
• Helped lead the fight to end high-stakes testing as a graduation requirement, supporting the successful effort to end the MCAS graduation requirement and continuing to oppose attempts to replace it with another high-stakes standardized testing mandate.

Fight for Economic Justice

One job should be enough. No one working full time should be living in poverty, and every worker deserves dignity, economic security, and a real voice on the job. Yet even as our economy has grown, too much of the wealth created by working people has flowed to those already at the top, while wages have struggled to keep pace with the soaring costs of housing, health care, child care, utilities, and other necessities.

Mike supports workers everywhere and believes strong unions are essential to a fair economy. That means raising wages, protecting the right to organize and collectively bargain, guaranteeing paid leave and other basic benefits, cracking down on wage theft and worker misclassification, and ensuring AI improves people's lives rather than becoming another tool to exploit or displace workers. Mike has stood on picket lines, organized alongside workers, intervened directly with employers, and helped turn progressive economic demands into Massachusetts law.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• A $20 minimum wage, phased in over time and indexed to inflation, so wages don't fall behind the cost of living again.
• Affordable child care for every family, including free child care for low-income families and limiting child-care costs to no more than 7% of household income.
• Expanding Paid Family and Medical Leave, including coverage for municipal employees and graduate student workers who were excluded from the original law.
• The right to strike for public employees, after prolonged collective-bargaining negotiations fail.
• Stronger protections for workers organizing unions, including meaningful enforcement against union busting, retaliation, wage theft, misclassification, and other labor-law violations.
• Collective-bargaining rights for State House employees, so the people who work for the Legislature have the same fundamental labor rights legislators champion for workers elsewhere.
• Strong prevailing-wage and project-labor protections, ensuring public investment creates good, family-sustaining union jobs.
• Worker protections in the AI era, ensuring new technologies benefit workers rather than displacing them, surveilling them, or undermining their wages and collective-bargaining rights.
• Tax fairness, alleviating the tax burden on working people and small businesses by requiring the very wealthy and large corporations to pay more.
• A public bank for Massachusetts, providing cost-effective financing for small businesses, municipalities, cooperatives, community land trusts, affordable housing, and climate and infrastructure projects.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped win the Fight for $15, organizing alongside grassroots activists and labor allies and then helping pass legislation that gradually raised the Massachusetts minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2023.
• Helped win Paid Family and Medical Leave, supporting the grassroots campaign and legislative effort that established one of the nation's strongest statewide paid-leave programs, giving workers the ability to care for themselves and their families without sacrificing their economic security. The program has helped many of Mike's constituents stay afloat during challenging circumstances.
• Supported smart incentives for local jobs, including the state's recent commitment to bring TransMedics to Assembly Row. Mike supports incentives for new business development when they are paired with real commitments to good jobs and community benefits (and clawback provisions if employers fail to meet those commitments).
• Introduced AFL-CIO-backed legislation protecting workers from unfair wage clawbacks, an effort that ultimately helped produce Attorney General regulations and an enforcement framework limiting employers' ability to seize wages after accidental overpayments.
• Has been a consistent champion of organized labor and the right to organize, standing with workers on picket lines, intervening directly with employers, and using his office to support workers seeking union recognition and fair contracts. Mike stood with graduate workers at Harvard and MIT in their fights to organize and has supported organizing workers across Cambridge and Somerville, including Cambridge Public School paraprofessionals, workers at Lesley University and Lamplighter Brewing, Harvard custodians, and health care workers at Mass General Brigham and Cambridge Health Alliance.
• Stood with striking workers throughout our communities, including educators and Harvard and Boston University graduate workers, supporting union members exercising their collective power to win fair contracts, better wages, and improved working conditions.
• Led the fight against MBTA privatization, standing with Machinists and other transit workers against efforts to outsource public-sector jobs and weaken the T's union workforce.
• Has championed the right to strike for public employees, serving as the House lead sponsor of legislation to legalize strikes after prolonged failed contract negotiations.
• Helped win the Fair Share Amendment, organizing with Raise Up Massachusetts and voting in the Legislature to put the millionaires tax before voters, creating billions in new resources for public education and transportation.

Healthcare as a Human Right

In our society, health care should be a human right, not a privilege or a commodity. As premiums, deductibles, prescription-drug prices, and other costs continue to rise, Mike believes transitioning to a single-payer, Medicare for All system is the most ethical, logical, and affordable way to guarantee health care for all people. The United States should catch up with the rest of the developed world in guaranteeing universal health care — and Massachusetts should continue to lead the way.

Health also extends far beyond what happens at the hospital. Mike supports expanding access to dental care, reproductive and gender-affirming health care, mental-health services, healthy food, and the conditions that allow people to live healthy lives. He believes the opioid epidemic demands a compassionate public-health response centered on prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and wraparound care rather than criminalization. Too often, people experiencing a mental-health crisis end up in the criminal legal system because the appropriate care and support were not available.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Single-payer health care in Massachusetts, guaranteeing comprehensive coverage to every resident while eliminating the waste and profiteering of our profit-driven insurance system.
• Lower prescription-drug prices, using the power of state government to take on pharmaceutical companies and make essential medications affordable.
• Full-spectrum reproductive health care, including abortion, contraception, fertility care, prenatal and postpartum care, and other pregnancy-related services.
• Protecting gender-affirming health care, defending patients, families, and providers from efforts by the Trump administration and other states to interfere with medically necessary care.
• Expanded access to dental care, particularly for low-income residents and communities with inadequate access to providers.
• An end to parental-consent requirements for minors seeking abortion care, removing this unnecessary barrier to reproductive health care.
• Supervised consumption sites and expanded harm reduction, treating substance-use disorder as a public-health issue and preventing overdose deaths.
• Ending the non-medical vaccine exemption, protecting children and communities from preventable infectious diseases.
• Eliminating medical debt and protecting patients from financially devastating health-care costs.
• Addressing the social determinants of health, including access to healthy food, safe housing, clean air, walkable neighborhoods, recreation, and other conditions that support healthier lives.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Was one of just three House members to oppose weakening major prescription-drug price controls, voting against an amendment that stripped key provisions from a proposal intended to rein in pharmaceutical costs.
• Helped expand access to affordable health insurance through ConnectorCare, voting in the FY27 state budget to extend the ConnectorCare expansion pilot through 2027. Since 2024, the pilot has helped more than 115,000 residents obtain more affordable coverage through lower premiums, no deductibles, and reduced copays.
• Successfully fought Governor Baker's effort to move hundreds of thousands of patients out of MassHealth, organizing opposition to protect patients from a disruptive restructuring of their health coverage.
• Helped expand and protect abortion rights in Massachusetts, co-sponsoring and passing the ROE Act, the ACCESS Act, and Shield Laws protecting patients and providers, establishing Massachusetts as a national leader in reproductive freedom.
• Helped end Massachusetts' restriction on abortion care after 24 weeks, voting this year to remove an arbitrary statutory barrier and protect decisions that should be made by patients and their doctors.
• Worked to end parental consent as a barrier to abortion care, sponsoring NARAL-backed legislation to protect young people's access to reproductive health care and helping advance reforms that ultimately became law.
• Helped protect Massachusetts patients and providers from attacks on reproductive and gender-affirming health care, supporting shield protections and state investments designed to preserve access as the Trump administration and other states attack this care.
• Has championed harm reduction and a public-health response to substance use, supporting supervised consumption sites and policies focused on preventing overdose deaths, expanding treatment, and connecting people with care rather than incarceration.
• Has supported major investments in community health and the social determinants of health, including food access, housing stability, environmental health, and active transportation.

Community Safety

Massachusetts has shown that we can dramatically reduce incarceration while making our communities safer. When Mike first took office, he promised to help move the Commonwealth away from mass incarceration, mandatory minimum sentences, cash bail, and the failed War on Drugs. In his first term, he helped pass landmark comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation. Since then, the incarcerated population in Massachusetts has fallen by 45%, while overall crime has also declined.

Mike believes we should build on that progress, not return to the failed tough-on-crime policies of the past. Massachusetts still faces troubling racial disparities in incarceration, and too many people cycle through the criminal legal system because of poverty, substance use, mental-health needs, and a lack of opportunity. Real community safety requires investing in prevention, treatment, education, housing, reentry, and restorative justice — not simply incarceration.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Eliminating qualified immunity for state and local police.
• Eliminating mandatory minimums for all drug offenses, restoring greater judicial discretion and continuing to reduce unnecessary incarceration.
• Ending cash bail, building on the substantial bail reforms included in the 2018 criminal justice reform law.
• Independent accountability when law enforcement kills someone, including meaningful outside investigation and public transparency.
• Strong protections governing police use of facial-recognition technology, implementing privacy, civil-rights, and due-process safeguards recommended by the Legislature's special commission and privacy advocates.
• Raising the age of criminal majority from 18 to 21, recognizing research showing young people are more likely to successfully transition to adulthood when served by a rehabilitative juvenile system.
• Reforming life without parole and providing meaningful opportunities for rehabilitation and release.
• Establishing an independent inspector general for the Department of Correction.
• Universal access to productive out-of-cell time, including education, vocational training, treatment, recreation, and rehabilitative programming.
• No new women's prison and a moratorium on new prison and jail construction, investing instead in community-based alternatives, treatment, housing, education, and reentry.
• Ending arbitrary restrictions on prison and jail visitation, recognizing the importance of family and community connections to successful reentry.
• Automatically sealing eligible criminal and juvenile records after the applicable waiting periods.
• Increasing investment in reentry programs, including housing, employment, education, and treatment.
• Protecting Massachusetts' landmark 2024 gun-safety law from repeal by voting Yes on Question 9 this November to keep the law on the books.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Passed comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation. When Mike was first elected, Massachusetts was lagging behind other progressive states in its approach to criminal justice, and he promised we could do better. In his first term, he co-sponsored legislation to end mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenses and supported reforms to bail, compassionate release, restorative justice, diversion, and other alternatives to incarceration.
• Helped establish real police accountability. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Mike worked with the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and progressive colleagues to pass landmark police reform legislation. The law created the independent POST Commission with authority to suspend or revoke certification for serious misconduct. It also banned chokeholds, restricted no-knock warrants, established a duty to intervene, and strengthened use-of-force and de-escalation standards.
• Voted to end qualified immunity for police misconduct during the police-reform debate, pushing for stronger accountability than ultimately survived the legislative process.
• Helped make phone calls free for incarcerated people and their families, eliminating an exploitative financial burden and helping people maintain important family and community connections.
• Has pushed Massachusetts toward fewer prisons, not newer prisons, supporting decarceration as the state prison population has declined and MCI-Concord has closed, while co-sponsoring a statewide prison and jail construction moratorium and opposing construction of a new women's prison.
• Secured state funding for Cambridge HEART, supporting an unarmed, community-led alternative response for people experiencing mental-health and other crises.
• Has conducted direct legislative oversight of Massachusetts prisons, including using his statutory authority to conduct an unannounced visit to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center after receiving allegations of mistreatment and regularly visiting prisons and jails to hear directly from incarcerated people and assess conditions and programming.
• Has pushed to end the use of tear gas by law enforcement, including calling for a recorded vote during the police-reform debate and filing legislation to prohibit its use.
• Gun Sense Candidate distinction. Rep. Connolly is proud to have earned the 2026 Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate distinction for his work to prevent gun violence.

Immigrant Justice

We are a nation of immigrants, and that is truly what makes America great. Mike is proud to represent Cambridge and Somerville — two Sanctuary Cities with long traditions of welcoming people from around the world — and he believes every person in Massachusetts deserves dignity, due process, and equal protection under the law, regardless of immigration status. Trump's ICE crackdown has terrorized families, undermined public safety, and threatened the constitutional rights of immigrants and citizens alike.

The federal government has authority over immigration, and there is no state law Massachusetts can pass that simply makes ICE disappear. But federal supremacy does not require us to volunteer our police, public buildings, information, or state resources to carry out federal civil immigration enforcement. Massachusetts can refuse to participate where the law allows, protect access to schools, hospitals and courts, fund legal defense, and hold federal officers accountable when they violate people's rights. Mike believes we should use every lawful power available to protect our immigrant neighbors and defend everyone's constitutional rights.

As ICE activity has escalated, Mike has actively consulted with immigrant advocates, constitutional-law experts, organizers, legislative leaders, and law enforcement. This led to his widely-read statement, “9 things the legislature should do in response to the ICE crackdown.” Many of those priorities are now law. This summer, Massachusetts enacted the landmark PROTECT Act and increased state funding for immigrant legal services. These victories build on driver's licenses for all, in-state tuition for undocumented students, and years of work to keep our local government separate from federal immigration enforcement.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Full implementation and vigorous enforcement of the PROTECT Act, making sure that state agencies, schools, health-care providers, courts, correctional facilities, and local law enforcement understand and follow the law.
• Ending the Department of Correction's remaining 287(g) administrative agreement with ICE. Mike opposes all 287(g) agreements as a matter of principle and will continue pushing to end the one agreement that remains, while listening carefully to immigrant advocates about how to minimize harm as federal enforcement tactics change.
• Making immigrant legal defense permanent, with increased funding, building on the legal-services program created in the FY26 budget and expanded to $8 million in FY27.
• Expanding protections for sensitive community spaces, building on the new protections for schools, child care, health-care facilities, and courthouses and examining additional protections for libraries, higher-education campuses, shelters, houses of worship, and other places people should be able to use without fear. The PROTECT Act itself directs further study of additional safe spaces.
• Protecting personal data from becoming an immigration-enforcement tool, including strong limits on the sale of sensitive location and biometric information and unnecessary data-sharing with federal authorities.
• Requiring accountability and identification from federal immigration agents, including continuing to co-sponsor legislation to prohibit masked agents and other tactics that make it impossible for residents to know who is exercising government authority.
• Expanding language access throughout state government, so residents can meaningfully exercise their rights and obtain public services regardless of the language they speak.
• Barring former ICE agents from positions of public trust in Massachusetts, including service as police officers, teachers, and other public employees.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Passed the landmark PROTECT Act. Mike joined the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus as a co-sponsor and advocated for the bill as it moved through the Legislature. The final conference report passed the House and Senate on July 30, and Governor Healey invited Mike to stand with her as she signed the bill into law on August 5. It incorporates core elements of the Safe Communities Act, Dignity Not Deportations, and many of the priorities Mike identified at the height of the ICE crackdown in January.
• Separated state and local law enforcement from federal civil immigration enforcement. The new law sharply limits questioning about immigration status, bars stops or detention based on immigration status, codifies the Lunn protections against holding someone solely on an ICE civil detainer, restricts the sharing of nonpublic information and advance release information, and prohibits state and local agencies from entering the street-level 287(g) arrangements that deputize local officers to perform civil immigration enforcement.
• Made schools, child care centers, health-care facilities, and courthouses safer from ICE enforcement. The PROTECT Act restricts civil immigration arrests without judicial warrants or orders in these sensitive locations and requires policies and multilingual guidance so workers and residents know how to respond when federal immigration agents appear.
• Expanded due-process protections and accountability for federal immigration enforcement. The law creates a state civil-rights cause of action for constitutional violations by federal officials, establishes new rights and legal-access protections for people held in correctional facilities — including written notice of rights, confidential attorney calls, language access, and timely information about transfers — and gives the State Auditor authority to examine immigration detention arrangements involving public resources.
• Protected immigrant families, workers, and victims of crime. The PROTECT Act allows parents facing detention or deportation to pre-arrange guardianship for their children, requires employers to notify workers when ICE demands an inspection of employment records, and reforms the U- and T-visa certification process so immigrant victims of crime and human trafficking can obtain decisions more quickly and without unnecessary barriers.
• Created and expanded state funding for immigrant legal defense. Mike voted to establish Massachusetts' first dedicated immigration legal-services program in the FY26 budget, initially funded at $5 million. In the FY27 budget signed this summer, the legislature increased that investment to $8 million to support legal representation for immigrants and refugees.
• Co-sponsored and passed driver's licenses for all residents regardless of immigration status, voted to override Governor Baker's veto, and then helped organize the successful campaign to defend the law when opponents tried to repeal it at the ballot box in 2022.
• Voted to make in-state tuition available to undocumented Massachusetts high-school graduates, achieving another longtime priority of immigrant-rights advocates.
• Has put the idea of a “sanctuary community” into practice. When ICE seized East Somerville resident Magdaleno Pineda Avelar in 2025, Mike worked with neighbors, local organizers, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley's office to identify him, locate him in federal custody, raise money for his legal defense, connect his family with counsel, and ultimately help support the effort that won his release. Robert Reich later shared Mike's account nationally, calling it a “good road map” for how a sanctuary community should operate.
• Has fought for immigrant protections since first taking office in 2017. Mike co-sponsored the Safe Communities Act, repeatedly voted against efforts to undo the Lunn decision or punish sanctuary cities, opposed state participation in 287(g), and in 2018 voted against the final state budget because legislative leaders had stripped out basic immigrant protections supported by advocates.

LGBTQ+ Rights and Equality

Our Commonwealth is stronger when everyone can live openly, safely, and with dignity. Massachusetts has led the nation on LGBTQ+ equality — from marriage equality and civil-rights protections for transgender people to banning conversion therapy, expanding legal recognition for LGBTQ+ families, and protecting access to gender-affirming care. But those hard-won gains are under attack as the Trump administration targets transgender and nonbinary people, restricts access to health care, dismantles LGBTQ+ public-health protections, and uses federal power to roll back civil rights. Mike believe Massachusetts must defend LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, protect gender-affirming care, support LGBTQ+ youth and families, expand access to HIV prevention and culturally competent care, and safeguard personal privacy.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Protecting and expanding access to gender-affirming health care, including vigorously enforcing Massachusetts' shield laws, defending patients and providers from hostile federal and out-of-state actions, and advancing legislation to remove unnecessary insurance barriers to medically appropriate care. Mike co-sponsored the Trans-Inclusive Health Care Access Act this term.
• Protecting LGBTQ+ youth and ensuring they have safe, affirming places to learn and grow, including maintaining protections for LGBTQ+ children in foster and adoptive care, advancing the recommendations of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Youth Commission, and passing medically accurate, age-appropriate, LGBTQ+-inclusive sex education.
• Safeguarding privacy and sensitive personal data, including banning the sale and misuse of location, biometric, and health information that can be used to target people seeking gender-affirming or reproductive care, and ensuring people have meaningful legal remedies when companies violate their privacy rights.
• Defending the freedom to read and learn, including protecting public and school libraries from politically motivated book removals and ensuring LGBTQ+ young people can see themselves, their families, and their experiences represented in books and educational materials. Mike made the Freedom to Read Act one of his top priorities this term.
• Advancing dignity, safety, and equal treatment for transgender and nonbinary people, including gender-neutral bathrooms, ending the requirement that people seeking legal name changes publish them in newspapers, improving state agency database systems to make it easier to avoid deadnaming, and fighting profiling and discriminatory treatment in policing and other public systems.
• Reducing LGBTQ+ health disparities and ending the HIV epidemic, including expanding access to PrEP and other HIV prevention and treatment, improving voluntary and confidential data collection to identify disparities, and ensuring culturally competent care for LGBTQ+ people throughout their lives.
• Protecting LGBTQ+ people in the criminal legal system, including stronger health, safety, and anti-discrimination protections for incarcerated LGBTQ+ people and finally repealing archaic laws rooted in the criminalization of gay and transgender people.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Protected access to reproductive and gender-affirming health care. Mike voted for Massachusetts' landmark 2022 Shield Law and its 2025 expansion, which strengthened protections against federal and out-of-state investigations, protected sensitive patient and provider information, and reinforced Massachusetts' refusal to help other jurisdictions punish health care that is legal here.
• Expanded state support for gender-affirming care. Mike voted for budgets investing in gender-affirming health care at Massachusetts community health centers, including $1 million in FY26 and $4 million in FY27.
• Co-sponsored and voted to ban conversion therapy for minors. Mike backed the legislation from his first term and voted to prohibit licensed professionals from subjecting minors to the harmful practice of attempting to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
• Passed the Massachusetts Parentage Act, modernizing state law so LGBTQ+ families and families formed through assisted reproduction and surrogacy have clear and equal paths to legal parentage. The law guarantees children equal protections regardless of the gender identity, sexual orientation, or marital status of their parents.
• Passed the Freedom to Read Act, co-sponsoring the bill, pressing legislative leaders for action, working with students, librarians, booksellers, and advocates, and voting for House passage of this new law that prevents politically motivated book removals and protects library professionals.
• Advanced LGBTQ+ health and inclusion, supporting expanded access to PrEP for young people, first-in-the-nation LGBTQ+ cultural-competency training for elder-service providers, and advocacy that secured a nonbinary gender marker option on Massachusetts licenses and IDs.
• Fought to protect LGBTQ+ foster youth. When DCF began moving away from its longstanding requirement that prospective foster and adoptive parents affirm a child's gender identity and sexual orientation, Mike joined MassEquality, GLAD, and other advocates in pressing the Department to reverse course. He argued that Massachusetts has a special obligation to ensure children in state care are placed in safe and affirming homes.
• Defended transgender students’ right to participate in school sports. When MAGA-backed legislators sought to use the 2025 budget process to pass an anti-trans budget amendment, Mike worked with colleagues to ensure those efforts did not become law and that the Commonwealth’s existing protections for transgender youth remained intact.
• Helped protect transgender civil rights at the ballot box. In 2018, when opponents attempted to repeal Massachusetts' protections against discrimination based on gender identity in public accommodations, Mike was a strong supporter of the Freedom for All Massachusetts/Yes on 3 campaign — helping launch canvasses, participating in local forums, and supporting get-out-the-vote efforts in his district.
• Stood with LGBTQ+ advocates when a popular social-media proposal threatened to create new harms. Mike voted against the House youth social-media bill after concerns raised by the LGBTQ+ community went unaddressed. He opposed age-verification systems that would require more collection of sensitive personal information and could make it harder for LGBTQ+ youth — particularly those who are not safely out at home — to access supportive communities, mental-health resources, and peer networks online. He then joined MassEquality and more than 50 civil-rights and technology organizations in pushing for a better approach.

 Data Privacy

In the digital age, privacy is a fundamental civil right. Our phones, computers, apps, cars, and other technologies can generate extraordinarily sensitive information about where we go, what we read, who we associate with, our health, our finances, and nearly every aspect of our lives. Yet our laws have failed to keep pace, allowing Big Tech and data brokers to collect, retain, and profit from enormous amounts of personal information with too little accountability. With a degree in computer science from Duke University, Mike brings both a technical understanding of these issues and a longstanding commitment to civil liberties. He believes government has a responsibility to protect people from corporate and government surveillance.

Mike believes our personal data should belong to us — not Big Tech, data brokers, or the government. Location, biometric, health, immigration, and other sensitive information can be used to expose or target immigrants, protesters, survivors of abuse, LGBTQ+ people, and people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming health care. Massachusetts should lead the nation by establishing strong rights to control our own information, limiting unnecessary data collection and surveillance, and giving people meaningful legal remedies when their privacy rights are violated.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Enacting comprehensive consumer data privacy protections, including the right to know what information companies collect about us, correct inaccurate information, delete our data, and opt out of targeted advertising and other uses of our personal information.
• Making data minimization the law, requiring companies to collect only the information reasonably necessary to provide a product or service, retain it only as long as necessary, and securely delete it when it is no longer needed.
• Banning the sale and misuse of sensitive personal data, including precise location, biometric and genetic information, health and reproductive information, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other information that could expose people to surveillance, discrimination, harassment, or prosecution.
• Giving people the power to enforce their privacy rights, including a strong private right of action so consumers can go to court when major companies unlawfully collect, sell, or misuse their personal information.
• Protecting kids online without building a new surveillance infrastructure. Mike supports regulating addictive design features, targeted advertising, excessive data collection, and other practices that harm young people, while opposing age-verification systems that require people to surrender additional identification, facial scans, or other sensitive information simply to access the internet.
• Limiting government surveillance and the use of biometric technologies, including strong safeguards around facial recognition and other emerging surveillance tools and preventing government agencies from circumventing constitutional protections by purchasing sensitive information from commercial data brokers.
• Protecting health and location data from hostile federal and out-of-state authorities, so information about people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care in Massachusetts cannot become a roadmap for federal officials or officials from states seeking to punish conduct that is legal here.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped advance the strongest comprehensive data privacy legislation in Massachusetts history. Mike made passage of the Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act one of his top priorities this term, repeatedly urging House leaders to bring the legislation forward. He voted for the House bill, which passed 146–0 and included data minimization requirements, rights to access, correct, and delete personal information, stronger protections for minors and sensitive data, a ban on the sale of precise geolocation information, and a private right of action against major data holders.
• Co-sponsored and helped pass the Location Shield Act in the House, prohibiting the sale of cellphone-location information associated with visits to facilities providing reproductive or gender-affirming health care. Mike has consistently argued that no one should be subject to surveillance or harassment simply because of where they seek medical care.
• Protected sensitive health information from hostile federal and out-of-state investigations. Mike supported Massachusetts' Shield Law and its expansion, including stronger limits on government cooperation and new protections against disclosure of sensitive information involving reproductive and gender-affirming care.
• Took a principled stand against invasive online age verification. Mike was one of only two House Democrats to vote against the 2026 House youth social-media legislation after privacy, LGBTQ+, civil-liberties, and technology advocates warned that its age-verification approach could require greater collection of sensitive personal information and create new risks for millions of internet users.
• Helped organize more than 50 civil-rights and technology organizations around a better approach to online safety. Following the House social-media vote, Mike stood with MassEquality, Fight for the Future, Protect Trans Futures, Act on Mass, Progressive Massachusetts, and other advocates to push for regulation that holds Big Tech accountable while protecting privacy, free expression, and access to information.
• Helped limit facial-recognition surveillance by law enforcement. Mike supported the 2020 police-reform law, which sharply restricted law-enforcement access to facial-recognition searches, while also supporting stronger amendments sought by civil-rights advocates and continuing to call for greater safeguards around biometric surveillance.
• Strengthened consumer protections following major data breaches. During his first term, Mike voted for legislation responding to the Equifax breach that expanded Massachusetts consumers' ability to freeze their credit, strengthened breach-notification requirements, and increased protections against identity theft and fraud.

Tax the Rich and Big Corporations

Massachusetts is the wealthiest state in the country, but wealth and income are increasingly concentrated at the very top. For decades, the Commonwealth cut taxes on investment income and corporations while struggling to adequately fund public transportation, housing, schools, parks, health care, and other essential services. Mike rejects the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy make Massachusetts more competitive. A strong economy depends on world-class infrastructure, excellent public services, and a tax system that asks those with the greatest ability to pay to contribute their fair share.

Tax the rich. The Fair Share Amendment was a historic victory — one Mike worked for years to advance — and its revenues are now delivering billions of dollars for public education and transportation. But Fair Share was a beginning, not an endpoint. Mike supports raising additional progressive revenue while delivering targeted tax relief to working families, seniors, and lower-income residents.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Taxing extreme wealth, including a Massachusetts wealth tax on fortunes above $100 million, so billionaires and other ultra-wealthy households contribute more toward the society and public infrastructure that made their prosperity possible.
• Making big corporations pay their fair share, including a tiered corporate minimum tax so large corporations cannot use accounting strategies to reduce their Massachusetts corporate tax bill to the same minimum paid by a small business. Mike will also fight to tax a larger share of multinational corporations' offshore profits and decouple Massachusetts from federal corporate tax giveaways so Trump's tax cuts for large corporations do not automatically drain revenue from our own state budget.
• Ending ineffective corporate tax breaks, including automatic sunset and periodic review of tax expenditures, repeal of tax breaks that do not deliver meaningful economic benefits, and public disclosure of large corporations' Massachusetts sales, profits, taxable income, and taxes paid.
• Repealing Chapter 62F, the arbitrary Reagan-era tax cap that can force Massachusetts to give up billions in revenue precisely when public needs are greatest. Until it is repealed, Mike will defend the reforms that made its refund formula more equitable and oppose corporate-backed efforts to make the cap easier to trigger.
• Making the largest tax-exempt institutions contribute fairly to their communities, including meaningful PILOT reform for institutions with extremely valuable tax-exempt property and a carefully structured tax on very large private university endowments to help fund public higher education. These policies should recognize the important role of colleges and universities while ensuring institutions with extraordinary wealth contribute fairly to their local communities.
• Taxing high-value and speculative real-estate activity to fund affordable housing, including a local-option real-estate transfer fee, taxes on persistently vacant investment properties, and policies that address large-scale and international real-estate speculation. Mike is the House lead sponsor of legislation allowing municipalities to establish real-estate transfer fees for affordable housing.
• Making tax policy work for working families and seniors, including strong Earned Income Tax Credits, child and dependent tax credits, Senior Circuit Breaker protections, and other targeted relief rather than broad tax cuts whose largest benefits flow to people who need them least.
• Making Big Tech pay more for profiting from our personal information, including exploring taxes on data mining and digital advertising so large companies that profit from mass data collection pay more.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped win the Fair Share Amendment — and is now putting that revenue to work. Mike supported and voted to advance the constitutional amendment imposing an additional tax on annual income above $1 million, worked alongside the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition in support of its passage, and celebrated its approval by voters in 2022. Fair Share revenues are now making major investments in the MBTA, public higher education, school infrastructure, early education, and other transportation and education priorities.
• Was the only House member to oppose final passage of a billion-dollar tax package that disproportionately benefited the wealthy and big corporations. In 2023, Mike was the only House member to vote No on both engrossment and final enactment of the more than $1 billion-per-year tax package. He supported its expanded child and dependent credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, Senior Circuit Breaker, and other benefits for working people, but objected to pairing them with large tax cuts benefiting short-term investors, wealthy households, and major corporations. Mike's position was simple: we can help working families and seniors without giving additional tax breaks to people and corporations that need them least.
• Led the fight to make Chapter 62F more equitable — and saw the central concept of his proposal become law. When Chapter 62F triggered nearly $3 billion in tax rebates in 2022, Mike sounded the alarm that its formula would send enormous checks to millionaires while providing almost nothing to many low-income residents. He introduced legislation capping the largest refunds and redistributing the difference more evenly, an effort the Boston Globe Editorial Board endorsed. Legislative leaders initially declined to act, but the 2023 tax law subsequently changed Chapter 62F so future excess revenue is distributed in equal amounts per taxpayer rather than in proportion to income-tax liability — advancing the central equity principle Mike originally championed.
• Led repeated House floor fights to tax investment income more fairly. In 2019, Mike offered a budget amendment to raise the tax rate on long-term capital gains and generate roughly $1 billion for public investment. In 2020, he returned with a broader proposal to increase taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest while creating new protections for low- and moderate-income seniors and people with disabilities. He forced a roll-call vote on the proposal even as House leaders opposed it.
• Won House passage of a tiered corporate minimum tax. Mike developed legislation to replace Massachusetts' one-size-fits-all corporate minimum tax with a progressive structure requiring the largest corporations to pay more while preserving the existing minimum for smaller businesses. He successfully worked to include the proposal in the House's 2020 transportation-revenue legislation; although the Senate did not take up that bill after the pandemic began, Mike has continued filing and advocating for the policy.
• Has long fought to raise progressive revenue for housing. Mike has led legislation allowing cities and towns to enact real-estate transfer fees dedicated to affordable housing, proposed a local-option tax on vacant investment properties, and advanced proposals to tax the largest corporations to finance social housing and a universal right to housing.

Transparency and Democratic Reform

Democracy works best when people can see how decisions are made, participate meaningfully, and hold their elected officials accountable. Transparency is not process for process's sake: it gives constituents power. When committee votes, testimony, hearing schedules, bill summaries, and major legislative negotiations are visible to the public, constituents can organize more effectively, lawmakers can be held accountable, and lobbyists and insiders have less ability to dominate policymaking behind closed doors.

Democracy should also make it easier for people to vote, run for office, organize campaigns, and challenge entrenched power. Mike is happy to work with legislative leaders, the Governor, advocates, and colleagues to make government work better, but he has also consistently been willing to stand up to anyone, no matter how powerful, when transparency, democratic participation, constitutional principles, or the will of the voters are at stake.

Mike will continue to fight for:

• Bringing the Legislature and Governor under the public records law. Mike supports Question 1 on the November 2026 ballot, which would extend the state's public records law to the Legislature and Governor's Office, and he is a co-sponsor of legislation pursuing the same goal. He believes transparency reforms should be implemented in a manner consistent with the state Constitution and judicial review — not used as an excuse to avoid public accountability.
• Building on the major legislative rules reforms won in 2025, including public committee votes, public written testimony, bill summaries, longer notice of hearings, remote participation, greater conference-committee transparency, and meaningful time for legislators and the public to review major agreements before votes. Mike will continue working with advocates to make the legislative process more open, accessible, timely, and accountable.
• Reforming the Legislature's unequal leadership-stipend system and reducing the concentration of power on Beacon Hill. Mike supports a fairer compensation structure that does not allow legislative leaders to use paid assignments as a tool of political reward or punishment, along with stronger expectations for committee transparency, productivity, and accountability. The 2026 ballot proposal seeking these reforms was blocked from proceeding after an SJC opinion, but Mike continues to support its underlying reform goals.
• Creating a professional, nonpartisan Legislative Research Bureau to give legislators and the public independent research and fiscal analysis.
• Making remote participation in public meetings permanent so residents can participate without traveling to a hearing room. The Legislature has already made remote participation a regular part of legislative committee hearings, and Mike supports extending this principle more broadly.
• Winning Election Day voter registration. Mike supports Question 4 on the November ballot, eliminating the arbitrary advance-registration cutoff and allowing eligible residents to register or update their registration and vote on Election Day. Mike previously voted for Same-Day Voter Registration when it came before the House in 2022.
• Getting big money out of politics and expanding public financing of elections. One of the issues that first drew Mike into political activism was the fight against Citizens United. He supports expanding public financing so candidates can build viable grassroots campaigns without becoming dependent on wealthy donors and special interests.
• Removing unnecessary barriers to voting and political participation, including eliminating the inactive-voter-list system, allowing municipalities to adopt ranked-choice voting, and giving cities and towns the ability to extend voting rights in municipal elections to non-citizen residents. Mike is the lead House sponsor of legislation enabling non-citizen municipal voting and has long sponsored ranked-choice voting legislation.
• Restoring voting rights to people incarcerated for felony convictions. Massachusetts took this right away by constitutional amendment in 2000. Mike supports restoring the franchise so citizenship and political voice are not extinguished by incarceration.

Mike's record and accomplishments:

• Helped win major legislative transparency reforms after years of advocacy. Mike has long made public access to committee votes and testimony top priorities, and he worked with constituents, colleagues, and reform advocates to push them forward in 2025. The final Joint Rules made committee votes public, required written testimony and bill summaries to be posted online, increased notice for public hearings from 72 hours to 10 days, preserved remote participation, opened the first meeting of conference committees to the public, and generally required conference reports to be available at least 24 hours before a vote.
• Stood on principle to defend the voter-approved legislative audit law. Mike voted Yes on Question 1 in 2024, while also publicly identifying separation-of-powers questions and arguing that the Supreme Judicial Court should ultimately determine the constitutional boundaries of the Auditor's authority. He simultaneously rejected suggestions that the Legislature should simply nullify the voter-approved law. When House leaders abruptly moved in June 2026 to rewrite that law, narrow future audits, and permanently prevent the Auditor from asking a court to resolve audit disputes, Mike was the only House Democrat to speak out publicly; he charged the House was improperly changing the rules just as the Auditor had finally gained access to judicial review. He was one of only three House Democrats to vote No on limiting the scope of the voter-approved audit law.
• Spoke out against passing a supposed transparency bill through an opaque process. House leaders unveiled the 2026 audit legislation roughly a day before the vote, without a public hearing on its new audit provisions. Mike objected both to the substance and the process, telling reporters that the headline practically wrote itself: the Legislature was passing a transparency measure “out of the cover of darkness.” The Boston Globe Editorial Board subsequently cited his criticism in its own editorial condemning the House approach.
• Opposed further concentration of legislative leadership power from his very first House vote. In 2017, Mike voted against the legislative pay and stipend package that dramatically increased compensation attached to leadership positions, and he has consistently supported reforms aimed at reducing the ability of leadership to use committee assignments and stipends as instruments of institutional control.
• Passed legislation allowing candidates to use campaign funds for childcare. After Somerville advocate and former School Committee candidate Lee Erica Palmer identified childcare costs as a barrier to running for office, Mike filed legislation with Rep. Joan Meschino and Senator Pat Jehlen in 2017. After years of advocacy, hearings, and a legislative commission, the proposal was enacted in 2024 — removing a significant barrier for parents and caregivers who want to seek public office.
• Expanded access to voting. Mike supported Automatic Voter Registration and helped pass the VOTES Act, which made vote-by-mail and expanded early voting permanent. When Same-Day Voter Registration was left out of the House version of the VOTES Act, Mike joined 60 other House Democrats in voting to restore it through a contested floor amendment.
• Has consistently advanced democratic reforms beyond legislative transparency, including sponsoring ranked-choice voting legislation, leading legislation to allow non-citizen voting in municipal elections, working with Cambridge colleagues to advance public financing of campaigns, and supporting restoration of voting rights for incarcerated people.
• Maintained a 100% voting attendance record. In his nine and a half years of service on Beacon Hill, Mike has never missed a roll call vote in the House.