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The Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H., is one of the Merrimack Valley’s small cultural treasures. Today’s Globe includes a review of an exhibition of watercolors (”From Homer to Hopper: American Watercolor Masterworks”) that sounds like the show would be a good reason to take a ride north next weekend. Read the article by Cate McQuaid here, and subscribe to the Globe if you appreciate it.

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The Friends of the Tewksbury Patriotic Activities Committee is sponsoring a Candidates Breakfast this coming Saturday March 13th from 8:00AM to 11:00AM at the Tewksbury VFW on Vernon Street. Inspired by the traditional St. Partick’s Breakfast held annually in South Boston, this breakfast is more about fun and roasting that serious political jousting among candidates. 

Among those that have confirmed their attendance and participation at the breakfast are 5th District Congresswoman Niki Tsonas, Senator Sue Tucker, State Representatives Barry Finegold and Jim Miceli, GOP candidates Jamison Tomasek for State Senate and Mario Marchese for State Representative as well as candidates for local town office. With Senator Tucker’s recent retirement announcement there is a distinct possibility of many more candidates to round out the program. Stephen Bjork local comedian and columnist will act as moderator.

The event is open to the public. Tickets - available at the door - are $5 per person with politicos paying slightly more! Proceeds from ticket sales and a 50-50 raffle will help fund the town’s Memorial Day parade, Fourth of July fireworks and Veterans Day ceremonies — events that according to event chair Jerry Selissen - can no longer be funded through Tewksbury’s municipal budget.

Read more here in a recent Lowell SUN article: http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_14511749?IADID=Search-www.lowellsun.com-www.lowellsun.com#ixzz0hcZ0c3xZ

NOTE:

The Lowell City Manager’s St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast will be held on Wednesday March 17, 2010 at 7am at the UMASS Lowell Inn and Conference Center to benefit the A.O.H. - Ancient Order of Hibernians.

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The Sunday SUN political column item about the fall-out from Senator Sue Tucker’s decision not to run for re-election has me confused. It’s both the analysis and and some “facts” that I wonder about. I’ve included the Tucker Senate seat item here as the column is not availble in the Sunday on-line edition - only in the subscribed “electronic” version. My comments are in bold italics.

TREMORS SHOOK the political landscape of the Merrimack Valley last week with state Sen. Susan Tucker’s decision not to run for re-election. Many politicos did not see her departure coming.Democrats are scram­bling to line up her support­ers and stave off a flurry of entrants.

The scorecard:

 • State Rep. Barry Fine­gold, an Andover Democrat, has done little to hide his ambition for higher office since running for Congress in 2007. Aides to Finegold said he is still debating, but multiple sources said his candidacy is very likely. The district also includes Dracut, Lawrence and Tewksbury.

 

Finegold would be the conventional front-runner.

He will have the money lead against almost any oppo­nent — $93,000 in his cam­paign account today — and would run from a strong base in Andover and a sec­tion of Lawrence. Wouldn’t his longtime representation of precincts 3 and 3A in Tewksbury be a part of this strong base?

 

Finegold’s money advan­tage could discourage state Rep. Barbara L’Italien, another Andover Democrat, from running, though she said she is still considering her options.

 • Democrat Deb Silver­stein, chairman of the Andover School Committee, announced Friday that she’s in.

 

• Other Democrats con­sidering entering the race are David Abdoo, a former Lawrence city councilor who ran unsuccessfully for mayor last year; Francisco Urena, Lawrence’s veter­ans- services director; and former Lawrence Mayor Michael Sullivan.   The former Mayor of Lawrence when I last checked was a Republican - he night have gone “Independent” but certainly not Democratic.

 

 • Three Republicans pulled nomination papers before Tucker’s move: CPA Jamison Tomasek of Andover, telephone union president John Kelly of Dracut, and Mark Baldwin.  The IBEW/Union leader John Kelly had pulled papers to run againt Tucker in the Democratic Primary - he’s not a Republican.

 • Rep. Colleen Garry, of Dracut, is sitting out.

 

 • Word coming out of Dracut late last week was that Selectman John Zimini might run, but Kelly supporters will likely try to discourage his entrance and keep from splitting the Dracut vote. There is some speculation among politicos that Kelly might change his mind about the Senate race and go against Rep Colleen Garry in her Democratic primary.  

 • Tewksbury’s state rep, Jim Miceli, said he’s heard no chatter about any candi­date emerging from Tewks­bury. (Miceli lives in Wilm­ington, outside the district.) No name from Tewksbury has emerged and I don’t expect one. The Friends of the Patriotic Activities Committee Candidates Breakfast scheduled for Saturday March 13th at the VFW in Tewksbury might be a “hot spot” to get a scoop or check out the serious candidiates in the field.

Several people close to Tucker said she had consid­ered retiring two years ago. The Senator herself mentioned that she’d thought about retiring in the past.

  Tucker spent more than 22 years in the House and Sen­ate, making her claim of wanting to spend more time with her grandchild credible — even if it’s going to be a tough year for incumbents.

Nomination papers are available for this seat in the local town clerk and city elections offices and from the Secretary of State. Signatures need to be presented to local election officials by April 27, 2010 for certification. Candidates for State Senate need 300 certified signatures. There is time for this candidate scramble to play out - but not much time. Stay tuned.

Regarding Senator Tucker - as I wrote in my blog post on Thurday night: 

I live in Senator Tucker’s District and can speak from experience about her years of excellent representation and service. Her leadership on the issues of housing, senior citizens, education has been outstanding. She still has nearly a year left to continue her important legislative and constituent work.

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The Tewkbury Town Clerk -Mary-Ann O. Nichols has posted the results of today’s special election. 

It was an  up or down vote on the ballot question whether to fund the town’s $37.9 million share of the proposed $82 million cost of a new high school through a Proposition 2 1/2 debt exclusion. The MSBA has agreed to  reimburse 60.06% of the total cost. At the Special Town Meeting on Monday had an attendance of nearly 2100. Only 10 person stood against the warrant item.

Today with over 7300 votes cast - 6186 voted YES and 1191 voted NO. This is a big win for supporters of the new high school in these fiscal times.

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Tsongas supporters at campaign kick-off

Niki Tsongas at campaign kick-off

This afternoon I joined more than 150 others at the Niki Tsongas Re-election Headquarters at 17 Kirk Street in Lowell. With five Republicans and two unenrolled candidates already having taken out papers, Tsongas is sure to face multiple challengers this fall. Far from shying away from this fight, she seems highly energized by it, saying that she is looking forward to making her case to the voters over the coming months and that the Democratic case in general “is a case that needs to be made.”

Tsongas spoke quite a bit about health care reform, saying that the cost of doing nothing is unacceptable because the current system of health care is simply unsustainable. She said that Washington was caught completely off guard by the Scott Brown victory in January and the immediate reaction by many was to pull back and to break up health care into a series of smaller bills. (Tsongas herself believes that the Brown victory was not a referendum on health care reform, but the result of a “perfect storm” of political circumstances).

With the passage of just a few weeks, however, many have returned to the position that health reform must happen now. With both the House and the Senate having already passed health care bills, she predicted that a bill will soon be on the President’s desk for his signature and that the differences between the House and the Senate bill will then be worked out through the reconciliation process.

Once the President signs a health reform bill, Tsongas believes it will be as if a great weight has been lifted off of the country and we will then be able to move onto other critically important issues such as creating new jobs for regions such as the Merrimack Valley that have been especially hard hit by the recession.

But Tsongas is not naïve about what lies ahead. She said that politics in Massachusetts right now is very unsettled and that she and her supporters have to work hard for every vote. As if on cue, a group of union workers from Dorchester who were angry about not having gotten a job on a Tsongas-assisted project in Billerica (that did utilize 80% union labor), materialized on the sidewalk across Kirk Street from the headquarters, loudly expressing their displeasure. Their chants were unintelligible inside the headquarters, but they served to raise the political-adrenalin of the Tsongas supporters inside. In that way, the union protesters were helpful stand-ins for the Tea Party activists who will inevitably pop-up on the campaign trail in the coming months.

My sense is that Tsongas’s supporters are fully engaged and ready for a fight. Beginning with the Town Hall-Tea Party fiascos of last summer and continuing through to the Brown election, Democrats have been on the defensive for far too long. There’s now an eagerness to aggressively rebut the lies and misstatements from the other side that have gone unchallenged for far too long and to take the case for health care reform, banking reform, credit card reform, mortgage reform and job creation directly to the people.

It’s certainly going to be an interesting summer.

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Senator Sue Tucker

An announcement is imminent as another member of the Massachusetts Legislature decides not to run for re-election. The dominos will fall in the Merrimack Valley when Senator Sue Tucker finishes her personal calls and her decision becomes public tomorrow. Senator Tucker - a Democrat - represents the Second Essex and Middlesex District which includes the city of Lawrence and the towns of Andover, Dracut and Tewksbury.

Senator Tucker will be the third woman currently serving in the Massachusetts Senate to chose not to stand for re-election - she joins colleagues Senators Joan Menard of the First Bristol and Plymouth District and Marion Walsh of the Suffolk and Norfolk District. There are currently twelve woman in the Senate including the Senate President Therese Murray.

She served in the House of Representatives representing Andover from1982 to 1992.  When John O’Brien left the Senate for the private sector back in 1999, Tucker ran in a field of Democrats  to win the Senate seat. A member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee the Senator serves on a number of  Joint Committees including Education and Telecommunications, Ulitities and Energy and is the Chair of the Housing Committee.

Stay tuned as the potential candidates test the waters. The only currently declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for this seat - John Kelley of Dracut - won’t be alone for long! Expect State Representative Barry Fingold to take the plunge - he has over $100,000 in his war chest - a good start to a State Senate campaign!

Note: I live in Senator Tucker’s District and can speak from experience about her years of excellent representation and service. Her leadership on the issues of housing, senior citizens, education has been outstanding. She still has nearly a year left to continue her important legislative and constituent work.

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Join historians Bob Forrant of UMass Lowell and Jim Beauchense of Lawrence Heritage State Park for a discussion about the 1912 Bread & Roses Strike in Lawrence, plus a tour of selected historic locations. Afterwards, see excerpts from the documentary film “John Brown’s Holy War” and discuss Brown’s choice for armed conflict. The programs are free and open to the public on Saturday, Feb. 27, 1 pm to 4 pm, at Lawrence Heritage State Park, One Jackson St, Lawrence.

Presented by Mass Humanities in partnership with Lawrence H S Park, Lawrence History Center, and Lawrence Public Library.

“Where does keeping law and order shade into state suppression? How culpable are we when we do nothing while violence happens in our name? These are some of the powerful questions that will be addressed in the discussion.

For more information, visit www.masshumanities.org

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The scuttlebutt swirling around town since the February 3rd School Committee meeting had locals questioning  State Representative Jim Miceli’s position on the proposal to build a new high school in Tewksbury. When asked about his support at that meeting, Miceli said he still had some questions that needed answers. This position led Selectman Scott Wilson a few days later in a SUN interview to wonder - ” If your state rep isn’t fighting for you to get those dollars - which will go to someone else if they don’t go to Tewksbury - then what are they doing…” Scott apparently thought there was plenty of information available - sufficient for Miceli to have an opinion. He also suggested that Miceli in reelection campign mode was “trying to see what way the wind blows.”

There has been, in fact, some speculation as to whether Miceli - first elected in 1977 - was actually planning to run for reelection for his State Representative seat. His longtime colleague in nearby Billerica - Rep Bill Greene - has recently decided to retire and not run for reelection. Not for the first time - Miceli has an opponent in the upcoming election.  I found him to be his feisty self at the recent Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast - so was surprised at any rumors of retirement. Longtime Miceli supporters and activists claim that the reelection campaign is on!

Bottom line - Miceli appears to be running for reelection. And if the tone of his letter to the editor in today’s Lowell SUN is any indication - he is in fighting form. After stating in typical Miceli style that “I have completed my research and wish to state for the record that I fully support the proposal to build a new high school” - he takes on Selectman Wilson, declares that voters know how hard he has worked on projects for the district and states “It’s time to put the rhetoric away.” See Miceli’s letter here: http://www.lowellsun.com/letters/ci_14432768

I’d say that Miceli’s reelection campaign for the Tewkbury - Wilmington  19th Middlesex State Representative District is, in fact, on!

Note: There is a special town meeting scheduled for March 1, 2010 at 7pm -  the only article on the warrant is the appropriation to build a new high school. A special election follows on the high school building appropriation on Saturday March 6, 2010.

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There’s a new set of DVD’s out with recordings of the brilliant Leonard Bernstein offering music appreciation programs on TV in the 1950s. He has roots in Lawrence; the stage on the common is named for him.

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