Donald Osgood, Sr. has recently announced his bid to run for the First Suffolk Senate special election.
Osgood is currently the only candidate running as an independent. “I am a person who is going to fight on behalf of everyone. I’m running as an independent because I don’t want to be locked into a political group. I believe that if you run under one political group, you really can’t be as effective as you would like to be because of the guidelines within your political group,” he said.
Osgood was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He currently lives in Dorchester with his wife and two of their six children.
Osgood attended the Boston Public School system and went on to Bay State College to study accounting. He later earned a degree in Christian theology from the Berean School of The Bible, an adult continuing education program.
Osgood has worked for the Boston Center for Youth and Family Services as part of the trauma response team, where he helped victims of violence find services. He is also an ordained pastor, which moved him to launch “Gateway Ministries: The Movement” three years ago, where he co-pastors with his wife.
“A lot of decisions made sometimes aren’t made with the communities involved,” Osgood stated. He says that having been a long-time citizen of Boston, a community activist, a pastor, and and inner-city young man, he knows and understands the process in order to make a change.
Osgood recently ran in the 2017 Boston mayoral election, where he ran against current Mayor Marty Walsh. When asked what sparked his desire to run for another public service position, Osgood stated that he was “not a politician.”
“I am a person who likes to help wherever I can fit in to help. This is what I’m supposed to do at this time, so I’m taking a shot,” he continued.
His priorities are to reform the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI), which is a record of all criminal court appearances in Massachusetts, in regard to juveniles.
“Once your time is done, unless it’s for some heinous crime and they need to monitor you, I think they need to just wipe that out all together and make some adjustments,” Osgood said.
He would also like to focus on affordable housing and making “resident friendly” housing. He continues on to explain, “We hear a lot about this affordable housing that’s not really affordable, and so holding developers and landlords accountable for raising the rent and putting together stricter guidelines so people are not displaced, because we have too many whole families that are displaced.”
He also plans to focus on testing within the education system.
“I feel like we do a lot of testing, but a lot of the testing is geared for a lot of particular children and there are a few different ways that children learn, so if we only are giving it towards that one let’s say 10 or 20 percent of youth that learn one way, then the education system is missing the other 80 percent. We have to make some adjustments and hold some of the schools accountable in making sure that they are reaching every young person’s need,” Osgood explains.
The Special State Elections for the First Suffolk Senatorial District will be held on May 1, 2018.