On Sept. 8, elections will be held for the Second Middlesex district state Senate seat. This covers Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, and Winchester.
Longtime Senator Pat Jehlen will be facing off against Cambridge City Councilor, Leland Cheung. No one has successfully challenged a sitting state democratic senator in Massachusetts, yet Cheung believes change is crucial at this stage in time.
“We need to make progress for the people that are suffering right now and don’t have time to get engaged…. We need to be more ambitious, more opportunistic, more aggressive in making change a reality,” Cheung said at a Medford debate.
His main focus throughout the race has been income inequality. According to Cheung, his expertise as an entrepreneur can bring more of an innovative approach to dealing with the economy, an approach that’s also rooted in the community. Cheung insists we ought to be investing more in locally owned businesses, as well as in education and infrastructure to attract more companies.
Cheung has also made it a point to highlight the urgency of making government less complicated and more transparent.
“Government used to be a lot simpler…somehow along the way with super delegates, super Tuesdays, and Super PACs, democracy got a bit too complicated and there’s been a loss of faith in the things we can do together,” he said.
As city councilor, Cheung introduced Participatory Budgeting in Cambridge, making government transactions more transparent by allowing residents to submit proposals and vote directly on how the city spends the money.
The extension of the Green Line has been a critical focus throughout the race, an issue which Cheung says deserves more transparency and greater urgency from the Senator.
“It’s great that the Senator has said she’s been working on this for 25 years. Well we’ve been waiting for 25 years and the legislature still cannot tell you how much the Green Line extension is gonna wind up costing, but there’s been no calls to reform the bidding process,” Cheung said. “We need to apply the open checkbook that our state has to our major contractors…25 years to go six miles? I often wonder how did we ever do these things in the first place. It seemed like a long time ago it was so much simpler.”
The incumbent Patricia Jehlen has held the Senate seat since 2005 and served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for 14 years. Starting off her career as a community organizer with migrant farm workers, she still considers herself a community organizer.
“I still think to myself, as a community organizer, everything I do has its root in the community,” she said.
As Senator and Congresswomen Jehlen has repeatedly fought for social reform—including working towards equal pay, women’s rights, higher minimum wage, LGBT issues. She’s been at the forefront for social justice in Massachusetts. Just last month the equal pay act was signed into law, a bill that puts in extra protections to ensure women are paid equally for equal work. Jehlen filed the bill originally with Rep. Alice Wolf in Cambridge.
For the most part, the Democratic candidates agree on just about everything. Yet the one issue of disagreement is charter schools. Charter schools receive government funding but operate privately, outside the public school system. The question on the ballot for Massachusetts voters this November is if they want to lift the cap on charter schools, allowing the state to approve 12 new charter schools every year. 
Jehlen is not in favor of eliminating the cap spending on charter schools, insisting that it takes away money from adequately funding our public schools.
“It means that there’s an unlimited amount of money from the state budget that could go to charter schools,” she said.
Cheung however, believes we shouldn’t take that choice from parents who prefer charter schools and don’t have the financial option to switch over to private schools.
“I don’t begrudge the senator for making her choice to send her kids to opt out of the public system, but I do begrudge her trying to make that choice for all other parents, and trying to remove that choice from other parents that just want that hope that they can provide their kids great education that’s gonna give them a leg up in life,” he said.
With Jehlen holding the Senate seat for more than 10 years now, it may seem difficult for Cheung to gain the district’s trust. Many constituents are satisfied with Jehlen’s progressive work so far and don’t see anything else that Cheung can provide that Jelhen can’t. At the Medford debate Cheung reassured voters that his hard-work mentality will create greater change.
Elections for the House of Representatives 26^th Middlesex district will also be held on Sept. 8.