It's impossible to dissociate the race for Massachusetts' vacant Senate seat with the man who previously occupied it. In the 46 years he held the seat, Ted Kennedy became a Democratic icon whose legacy includes just about every key issue on the progressive agenda: workers' rights, the environment, gun control, reproductive rights.
Those are large shoes to fill for the four Democrats vying for their party's nomination in the Jan. 19 special election to succeed Kennedy. But Mike Capuano, for one, says he welcomes the comparison to Kennedy, whom he calls "the greatest senator in the history of the country."
Conventional wisdom holds that there are more similarities than differences among the four candidates: Capuano, the congressman from Massachusetts' 8th District; Attorney General Martha Coakley; Steve Pagliuca, a managing director at Bain Capital and co-owner of the Boston Celtics; and Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year. Capuano agrees—to a point.
"There's a lot of common ground, but I think there's a lot of common ground among all Democrats in Massachusetts," Capuano said in a recent interview at Northampton's Bluebonnet Diner. But as the Dec. 8 Democratic primary approaches, he's hoping voters will pay attention to the differences between him and his fellow candidates—differences he believes make him the obvious choice.
"I hope and I do believe the average person [will consider] who's the best person to replace Ted Kennedy, and continue us in that vein," Capuano said. "If that's the case, there's no way in the world I can do anything but win, because there's nobody else in this race who comes close to being able to fulfill these two criteria: having the right philosophy, and having the proven ability to get things done."
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Recent polls have shown Coakley with a firm lead in the race, including a Nov. 22 Boston Globe poll in which Coakley led Capuano 43 percent to 22 percent. Capuano said he doesn't put much stock in those numbers, pointing to the large numbers of voters (50 percent of respondents in the Globe poll) who remain undecided. Given the abbreviated campaign season, he believes voters are just beginning to pay attention.
If they do, they'll find Capuano has an unapologetically progressive voting record over his 11 years in Congress. He was one of 62 House Democrats to vote against the Patriot Act (which, in the emotionally charged post-9/11 days, won the support of 145 Democrats). Capuano voted against the war in Iraq, and for the war in Afghanistan.
As the Advocate went to press Tuesday, President Obama was expected to announce plans to send as many as 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan—an effort Capuano said he cannot support, given what's changed in the eight years since the U.S. first sent troops there. (Coakley, too, opposes a troop increase.)
"I supported going to Afghanistan … because al-Qaeda was there, and we all knew it; that's where their base of operations was," Capuano said. "They were being protected by the government at the time, and they had just killed 3,000 of our people. I thought it was an appropriate use of military force."
Today, he noted, even Obama's national security advisor says that fewer than 100 al-Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan. "I say: mission accomplished, come home," Capuano said. He envisions a well thought out withdrawal, perhaps with some troops remaining along the Pakistan border. "But we don't need more troops to do that. I don't mean a new mission of bringing democracy or stabilizing a corrupt government. I'm not interested in that. I never would have sent troops to do those two things. I didn't in Iraq; why would I in Afghanistan?"
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On domestic issues, Capuano's record closely mirrors Kennedy's. He supports, for instance, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions. "I think that actually one of the problems in this country right now is that too few people are organized," said Capuano, noting that the rise in union membership in the U.S. corresponded with the rise of the middle class—and the decline of unions with the decline of the middle class.
"I'm for whatever it takes to allow people their own choice whether to organize or not," he said. In recent decades, labor laws have tilted too far in the direction of anti-union employers. "I'm just trying to level the playing field again."
Capuano is co-sponsor of a marijuana reform bill filed this summer by Rep. Barney Frank that would decriminalize possession of 100 grams of pot or less. "I think it's ridiculous we spend as much money and time as we do on minor infractions," Capuano said, dismissing the notion that pot is a "gateway" to harder drugs as "ridiculous."
"I also don't like the idea of ruining some young people's lives because they decided to smoke a joint," he said.
Capuano's firmly pro-choice record has consistently earned him 100 percent approval ratings from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. It's ironic, then, that he was recently criticized by Coakley supporters for voting for a health care bill that included the Stupak amendment, which would ban the use of federal funds to cover abortions in public health plans and in private plans that accept government-subsidized customers. Coakley has said she would not have voted for the bill because of that amendment—raising the notion that Capuano is less dedicated to reproductive rights than she.
But to Capuano, Coakley's position underscores a key difference between the two candidates. He, too, opposes the Stupak provision (which he describes as a "death sentence" for poor women, who will be driven to illegal, unsafe abortions), and tried to kill it. But when that effort failed, he—and every other member of the Massachusetts House delegation—voted for the health care bill, knowing there would be future opportunities, in the Senate and conference committees, to remove the amendment, he said.
"We did not want to kill the debate about health care. It's been 15 years since we had that debate," Capuano said. "I may or may not vote for the bill in the end"— for instance, he won't back a bill without a strong public option—"but I'm not killing it in the first step."
Coakley's statement, Capuano charges, "tells me either she doesn't understand the process, or she doesn't care, or she's trying to make a political statement. All of those reasons are wrong."
Capuano said it's frustrating to run against opponents with no legislative experience, who can tell voters what they would do in office but who've never engaged in the messy, complicated work of lawmaking. "Ted Kennedy certainly knew how the process works, and certainly used it to his advantage, to our advantage," he said.
"I've proven time and time and time again that I have those skills, and I'm willing to use them to make progress," Capuano continued. "Anybody can say, 'I'm a progressive.' … But what have you done about it? What trenches did you get in to advance the agenda?"
