Lowell Vice Mayor Paul Ratha Yem, seen here during the April 20 Khmer New Year parade, said he expects Cambodian voters to turn out in large numbers in the next election, especially where the the 18th Middlesex District race is concerned. (Aleah Landry photo)
THERE ARE new faces filling Downtown Lowell stores and streets as newly arrived migrant families to the Inn & Conference Center are exploring their new city.
Even as the initial fervor over the migrants’ arrival has settled down, it looks like at least one candidate may make migrants and migrations a campaign issue.
Karla Miller announced her bid to run against state Sen. Ed Kennedy for the 1st Middlesex District seat, which covers the communities of Lowell, Dracut, Tyngsboro, Dunstable and Pepperell.
During his long tenure in local politics, Kennedy served on the Lowell City Council and as its mayor. He made the leap to elected state office in 2018, and has handily won subsequent races.
Of the 40 Senate seats in the Legislature, 36 are held by Democrats while Republicans are represented by only four members. Miller hopes to become the fifth, saying that there “is so much at stake in Massachusetts.”
In her campaign release, Miller cites spiraling costs, reckless spending and, despite State Auditor’s Diana DiZoglio’s best efforts, a lack of accountability on Beacon Hill. Specifically, she cites the latest budget proposal that includes $1 billion of spending on “unfettered illegal immigration and we are left to foot the bill.”
Before Miller debates Kennedy, she may want to brush up on her immigration facts. The migrants housed in Lowell and elsewhere in the commonwealth are people who are legally admitted to the United States. The Department of Homeland Security may temporarily “parole” aliens into the U.S. on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit.
The majority of the migrant families are fleeing unrest and violence in Haiti and Venezuela. Serving these families, the majority of which are made up of children, is a humanitarian mission and Lowell is standing tall at the forefront of that effort.
The growing costs, though, may resonate with voters who may be trying to balance open hearts with a closed wallet mindset.
In other races, Tara Hong is taking another shot at state Rep. Rady Mom’s 18th Middlesex District seat. Only 68 votes prevented the political newcomer from overtaking the four-term Mom in the September 2022 Democratic primary.
Another political newcomer, Andrew Kollar, also announced his interest in running. But the Lowell rumor mill is working itself into a frenzy over the supposed independent run by Dave Ouellette, a former Lowell health code inspector and current Dracut health director.
Ouellette could not be reached for comment, but according to Sun sources, Ouellette’s plan is to only run in the November election if Hong loses the primary. Say what?
The 18th Middlesex District covers a large swath of Lowell, including the majority-minority neighborhood of the Acre.
This will be a race decided by the Cambodian vote, and perhaps former state Rep. Dave Nangle figured that out when he dropped his interest in reclaiming his 17th Middlesex District seat from Vanna Howard, the first Cambodian woman to win a state representative seat in the country.
Cambodians vote, said Lowell City Councilor Paul Ratha Yem on the April 26 show of “City Life,” a live-feed show broadcast on Facebook.
He made his observation in response to host Cliff Krieger’s comments about the dismal voter turnout in November’s council races in Lowell.
“For me, when we look at the overall picture, the turnout was not so great,” Yem said. “But if we examine closely what are the groups that have actively come out … I know for a fact that the Cambodian community has come out really strong to vote, to elect someone that they want.”
He said the conventional wisdom said he couldn’t win against the aforementioned Ouellette in the 2021 race for District 7, which is also home to the northern portion of Cambodia Town.
“Using my case as an example, the critics said that I would have no chance in the Acre because they already know who’s going to win,” Yem told Krieger. “The result proved everyone wrong, including The Sun. Cambodians are going to be increasing their number of votes.”
The final result in the 2021 contest had Yem with 454 votes and Ouellette with 385.
In politics, it’s all about the base. If Mom’s base is cracking, Hong might have a shot at the seat with or without candidates Kollar and Ouellette being in the race. Conversely, if Mom’s base is solid, this race may be over before it even starts.
Yem’s personal experience running for office, as well as his analysis of the last election cycle, suggests that Cambodian voters are paying attention and may be a deciding factor in political contests.
Kratman OUI case delayed yet again
TEWKSBURY SELECT Board member Mark Kratman made an appearance in Woburn District Court, again, and the appearance was brief, again, as his trial for an alleged third OUI was delayed, again.
With another hearing now scheduled for Aug. 5, it is becoming increasingly likely that we will reach the fifth anniversary of the Nov. 11, 2019 incident, in which Kratman was pulled over by Wilmington police, without a resolution to this case. Multiple callers that night reported an erratic driver, and a responding police officer witnessed Kratman’s vehicle crossing traffic lines and nearly striking a utility pole. The police said in their report of the incident that Kratman failed multiple pieces of the standard field sobriety test, and that he refused to take a breath test.
July 26 of last year had been set as the date for the beginning of a jury trial in this case by Judge Asha White, but that was continued to a new date in November, which was continued again because of an apparent medical episode resulting in a fall Kratman suffered early that month, which allegedly left him in a coma for several days. This episode kept Kratman largely out of the public eye. He was absent from Select Board meetings for weeks, and opted mainly to appear remotely when he did finally return.
White was again the presiding judge for the April 30 hearing, and he heard some details of the injury from Kratman’s attorney. Terrence Kennedy told White it was a “significant head injury,” and that they have a letter from Massachusetts General Hospital.
“The doctor said six months. I am going to suggest a three-month status update so we can see where he’s at then,” said Kennedy to White, before they decided on Aug. 5.
This case has been delayed for so long at this point, that if Kratman had faced trial even within weeks of his initial arrest, he could have been given the maximum sentence for a third OUI conviction and he would have been released about two years ago. For a third offense of driving while intoxicated in Massachusetts in district court cases, the driver can face up to $15,000 in fines and a mandatory minimum jail sentence of between six months and two and a half years, with no eligibility for parole for at least 150 days. A conviction would also result in a driver’s license suspension for eight years.
Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day debate again in Westford
WESTFORD’S APRIL April 27 Town Meeting was the most well-attended in the town’s history, according to Town Manager Kristen Las, with about 1,800 voters present during the peak attendance of the day on the football field of Westford Academy.
The meeting, however, lasted nearly eight hours from start to finish, and that high attendance was not maintained throughout the entire ordeal. The vast majority of those who attended were undoubtedly there to vote on the Proposition 2½ budget override, which was successfully passed after multiple hours of debate just on that issue. After a break for lunch, giving many the chance to seek relief indoors from the bright sunshine and creeping sunburns, Town Meeting resumed to a significant dip in the number of people in attendance, and that number seemed to continue to slip until just a fraction remained in place for the final articles of the day.
The very last article to be considered in the marathon Town Meeting was a citizen’s petition from Anthony DeLeo to declare the second Monday in October simultaneously be Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Westford. Officially Westford as a town currently only recognizes Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but the back-and-forth on the matter has gone back years in the town.
DeLeo, while addressing the remaining Town Meeting voters, said he hoped that recognizing the day as both holidays would be “a compromise.” The history of Columbus Day is complicated, with commemorations dating back to at least 1792. In 1892, 400 years after Italian explorer Christopher Columbus is said to have landed in “The New World,” President Benjamin Harrison declared Oct. 12 a one-time celebration of the holiday after an incident in New Orleans in which 11 Italian Americans were lynched. It would be declared a national holiday in 1937 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Columbus is often revered for his sea voyages across the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to discover a faster route to the Indies. Columbus famously failed in that endeavor, instead finding himself on the shores of what we now refer to as America, the name of which is derived from another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. When Columbus did reach shore, after allegedly stealing the credit from one of his sailors for being the first to physically see land, he found that non-European peoples were already living there.
It is these interactions between Columbus and the Indigenous people of the Americas where the controversy surrounding the holiday begins. Columbus and his crew almost immediately forced many of the natives they encountered into slavery, with many being shipped back to Spain to be sold. While it is perhaps easy to suggest that his actions were normal for the time and he shouldn’t be judged any more harshly than other historical figures, it should be noted that there are contemporary sources that state that even for his time, Columbus was considered to be a particularly cruel person to the people he subjugated.
Within decades of Columbus’ arrival, the population of the Taino peoples he first encountered is believed to have fallen from the hundreds of thousands to just a few hundred, thanks in large part to Columbus and the era of colonialism he sparked.
In 1892, when Harrison was trying to solve a diplomatic crisis with Italy following the aforementioned lynchings, Columbus had been the only Italian figure that was widely recognized by people in both Italy and the U.S., DeLeo said at the Town Meeting.
“The citizens of this town have been asked four times their opinion on whether to eliminate Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. All four times … the votes were very close. It culminated in a vote taken in May of last year that was a nonbinding vote,” said DeLeo, noting that it came down to a difference of 15 votes out of more than 2,000, with the majority choosing Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
One voter, Emily Zimmerman-Gilstrap, said she thought it was a positive thing when Westford decided to “get with the program and stop sugarcoating our history,” regarding the Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day debate.
“To ask Indigenous peoples to share that holiday with Columbus is entirely missing the point. If you want to celebrate Italian heritage, take a separate initiative to do that on a different day,” said Zimmerman-Gilstrap.
Soon after, voter Alan Andrews made a motion to dismiss the article, with him and other voters calling it an attempt at “a do-over.”
Dennis Galvin — who suggested in a 2020 special Town Meeting discussion on this very same issue that Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead be celebrated on the March 15 birthday of President Andrew Jackson — said the suggestion of having both holidays on the same day brought “a new dimension” to the issue.
“This is an attempt to try to bring everybody together and say, look, let’s recognize the history, let’s recognize both, keep it on the ballot. It deserves to have a debate,” Galvin said on the motion to dismiss the article.
After some more discussion, the motion to dismiss the article passed 165-145. Just for comparison, Article 1, which was the budget override most Town Meeting attendees seemed interested in, passed 1,190-694.
All this talk about acknowledging the cruelty of Columbus, and of honoring Italian heritage, and yet one never hears any suggestions about Amerigo Vespucci Day.
Chelmsford School Committee reorganizes
A NEW member joined the Chelmsford School Committee last month after incumbent Donna Newcomb chose not to run for reelection and Diana Lebeaux took home the most votes on the entire ballot. The committee has now undergone its reorganization following the April 2 election.
In three unanimous votes on April 9, Dennis King was named as the new chair of the committee, Maria Santos as vice chair, and Lebeaux as secretary.
Tyngsboro’s loss is Bedford’s gain – again
FOR THE second time in less than a year, Tyngsboro is losing a top employee to nearby Bedford.
Last September, Town Manager Matt Hanson left to take the top job in Bedford. His departure came only a few months after his title and authority changed from town administrator to town manager.
Now, Town Planner/Economic Development Director Eric Salerno is leaving to become Bedford’s economic development director.
Salerno arrived in Tyngsboro in 2018, a year after Hanson was named town administrator — he’d been assistant town administrator since 2015.
Bedford’s population of 14,000 is slightly larger than Tyngsboro’s 11,000. But it is closer to Boston, which may be why its economic base is more diverse.
Companies such as iRobot, Progress Software, Instrumentation Laboratories and MITRE are headquartered in Bedford. Bedford also boasts a Whole Foods Market and a large Marshalls, which at one point in this reporter’s experience was the best in the region.
Bedford is also one of the towns which border Hanscom Air Force Base. Hartwell Road, which leads to the main gate at Hanscom, is dotted with office buildings that defense contractors occupy.
So Salerno will have a much different experience in his new post.
Tyngsboro’s current Town Manager Colin Loiselle served as assistant town manager under Hanson and won accolades from the Select Board. Loiselle had left that position in March 2023, but returned by popular demand to succeed his former boss and mentor.
Announcing Salerno’s departure to the Select Board, Loiselle said he became Tyngsboro’s first town planner and economic development director in 2018.
“Since then, Eric has coordinated substantial, but well-coordinated growth in Tyngsboro, including the Toll Brothers’ project (the upscale housing development on the former Tyngsboro Country Club site), two large warehouse projects that are permitted and in development stages, a $2 million MassWorks grant for public/private improvements at the Highway Department, and played a critical role in shepherding along the 440 Middlesex Road project,” Loiselle said. “Eric has been a tremendous resource for businesses of all sizes and professionalized our planning process.”
Salerno leaves Tyngsboro on May 8, a day after the annual Town Meeting which will be asked to vote on the MBTA Communities Act. He has spent his time recently drawing up zoning districts that will allow the town to comply with this act requiring communities served by the MBTA, either directly or indirectly through proximity to a city like Lowell, to create by-right zoning districts for multifamily housing.
“No small feat,” Loiselle said of that effort. And, a lot is at stake for Tyngsboro with the outcome of the Town Meeting. Some communities are refusing to implement the act. The state is suing at least one of them for its refusal.
As Salerno, however, reminded attendees at a pre-Town Meeting information session, the town should vote to comply with the law because “it’s the right thing to do.”
This week’s Column was prepared by reporters Melanie Gilbert in Lowell; Peter Currier in Tewksbury, Westford and Chelmsford; and Prudence Brighton in Tyngsboro.