As the governor’s race heats up, prepare for the various campaigns to begin making the requisite token gestures toward us forgotten folks out here in the western part of the commonwealth. (Note to the Patrick/Murray ticket: Worcester is not Western Mass. And owning a vacation home in the Berkshires does not make you a western Mass. guy. It kinda makes you a New Yorker.)
But when it comes to a sincere effort at Western Mass. inclusion, the Green-Rainbow party is far and away in the lead: last week, Green gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein introduced a Holyoke resident as her running mate—Rick Purcell, a local activist and one-time candidate for the Holyoke City Council.
“I want a Lieutenant Governor who will be absolutely dedicated to the things that we need to accomplish in the next four years—good-wage jobs, affordable health care, strong public education, an end to needless home foreclosures, and fair taxes,” Stein, a Lexington physician and expert in environmental health who also ran as the Green candidate in 2002, said in announcing her selection. “I’ve found that person. Together we’re going to get Beacon Hill back to work for the ordinary people of the Commonwealth.”
Purcell is an Albuquerque native who’s lived in Holyoke since 1974. An Army veteran who served as a medic in Operation Desert Storm, he works in an administrative position at Baystate Medical Center and is active in organizations including the American Legion and Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Hampden County.
A former Democrat, Purcell joined the Green-Rainbow party in 2000. In 2006, he served as the chairman of a citizens’ campaign opposed to the privatization of Holyoke’s wastewater treatment facility—an issue that spurred him toward an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the City Council’s Ward 3 seat in 2007. “I am running for City Council because I am tired of seeing the citizens of Holyoke vote one way while the politicians vote the other way on important questions facing the city,” Purcell wrote in a Springfield Republican candidate’s questionnaire at the time.
