By Yukun Zhang
BU News Service
BOSTON – During the only televised debate for secretary of state candidates last month, incumbent Secretary of State William Galvin and his challenger, Anthony Amore discussed hard issues. Yet, another candidate on the ballot said he never got the invitation.
“I didn’t even know— nobody contacted anyone in my campaign, no one reached out to me. I actually found out after that article came out that says, hey, they are going to have a debate,” said Juan Sanchez, Green-Rainbow Party’s candidate for the secretary of the Commonwealth.
Sam Brewer, assistant director of media relations at WGBH, said the news organization needs to limit the number of participants in their news debate, and “candidates were selected based upon previously-used criteria, which included money raised, total number of donations and established campaign infrastructure.”
Sanchez said when his committee reached out to WGBH, they were told it was because they didn’t raise enough funds, and internal polling shows them receiving less than five percent of support.
Sanchez has raised $1,759.59 since July, according to official data. His most recent balance, filed yesterday, was $361.04. He works full-time at a community action agency in Holyoke, where he was born and raised. He is also working towards a degree in sociology at Holyoke Community College.
In comparison, Galvin raised $1.12 million this year and Amore, the Republican candidate, raised more than $50,000.
“We run clean and green as we like to call it,” Sanchez said. “We don’t accept any corporate donations or any money from super PACs. We only take small donations from individual people, like you or my next-door neighbor. We will never have the millions and billions that the Democrats and the Republicans have from Exxon and Citibank.”
During the WGBH debate, Galvin and Amore discussed same-day voter registration, election security, Amore’s voting records and Galvin’s attendance at the Historical Commission’s meetings as the chair of the commission. It ended with Galvin calling Amore “a liar” and Amore calling Galvin “a faker.”
Sanchez thought the debate was “terrible” and “white men bickering back and forth.” The two candidates did talk about their records and issues about voting, he said, but the majority of the debate was “nasty” and “negative.”
Sanchez, Puerto Rican, gay and HIV-positive, said he wants to “empower the underprivileged, the underrepresented and most of all underestimated.”
He said he would increase civic awareness and voter turnout by offering civics classes in schools and creating statewide multilingual education campaigns to help people, especially low-income minorities, understand how and why they should vote.
“I worked for campaigns where people said ‘I’ve never voted for that guy for mayor because he’s going to take away my food stamps,'” Sanchez said. “A mayor doesn’t have the power to take away your food stamps but I feel like it’s the Secretary of State’s job to ensure that every resident is involved, engaged and educated.”
Sanchez has raised $1,759.59 since July, according to official data. His most recent balance, filed yesterday, was $361.04. He works full-time at a community action agency in Holyoke, where he was born and raised. He is also working towards a degree in sociology at Holyoke Community College.
In comparison, Galvin raised $1.12 million this year and Amore, the Republican candidate, raised more than $50,000.
Sanchez said he received more than 10 calls back in February asking him to run but he had just lost a city council race in Holyoke. He was tired and disappointed.
“And then Jill Stein called me,” he said.
Jill Stein, Green Party’s 2012 and 2016 candidate for the presidential campaign, left Sanchez a voicemail asking him to run.
The Green-Rainbow Party was formed in 2002, when the Rainbow Coalition Party merged with the Massachusetts Green Party. Among the party’s values are grassroots democracy, “ecology wisdom,” social justice and nonviolence.
The party has three candidates for the state government races in this midterm elections. Besides Sanchez, Jed Stamas is running for state auditor and Jamie Guerin is a candidate for the treasurer.
Sanchez said the party lost its party status because Stein received less than three percent of the vote in Massachusetts in the 2016 national election. If at least one of the candidates this year could get more than three percent of the vote on Nov. 6, Green-Rainbow would be a political party again, he said.
Mike Heichman, a retired history teacher and an active member of the Green-Rainbow Party in Boston, said the Green-Rainbow Party had run candidates against Galvin “a number of times,” but Galvin does not want to debate with the party’s candidates.
“The person in charge of elections should be helping the state to know the issues, to know the candidates and to make an intelligent choice,” Heichman said. “Galvin doesn’t want to do that. He just wants to keep his job and be a loyal servant to the Democratic Party and to the systems.”
Sanchez is not the only independent candidate who did not get to debate on TV. Guerin also did not get a chance to appear in treasurer’s TV debate on WGBH News.
Jordan Hodges, the founder and co-chair of Green-Rainbow Party’s student chapter at the University of Massachusetts Boston, noted not only did Sanchez and Gurein not get a chance to debate but their names were not mentioned in WGBH’s written coverage of the debates either.
“What does it say about our democracy?” Hodges asked. “Why are people going out of their way to silence their voices?”
Hodges said the secretary of state is an office that does not need to be partisan and thinks an independent should be elected to keep the Democratic and the Republican parties in check.
Joshua Gerloff, secretary of the Green-Rainbow Party, said Sanchez is a social justice activist and the Green-Rainbow Party is all about “grassroots” democracy.
“I don’t consider the Democratic Party to be a progressive party,” Gerloff said. “Sometimes there is a progressive candidate and once they’re in, they have to keep going for the money and pull strings to benefit their campaign contributors. You are going to be working for them and not for the people and that’s why the Green-Rainbow Party doesn’t take money from corporations.”
“You might want to know why we are doing this,” said Heichman. “I would rather be part of a very tiny group that wants to work to create a better world than to be either a Democrat or Republican and be part of a system that is making things worse and worse.”
