We need You to Support and Elect Frank Addivinola to the MA 5th Congressional District

Katherine Clark was sworn in as a Massachusetts State Senator, in January 2011 representing Lynnfield, Malden, Melrose, Reading, Stoneham and Wakefield. She was first elected in March 2008 to represent Melrose and Wakefield in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Senator Clark serves as the Chair of the Joint Committee on Public Service and the Vice Chair of the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business. She also serves on the Joint Committees on Education, Public Safety and Homeland Security, Veterans and Federal Affairs, and Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight. Senator Clark is a member of the Advisory Council for the Department of Early Education and Care. In early 2011, Senator Clark was appointed to the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Advisory Board at the University of Massachusetts Boston.^[1]

Clark’s husband, Rodney Dowell, is an attorney and executive director of the Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers program.

Congressional primary

In October 2013, State Sen. Katherine Clark won the Democratic primary in the special election for Massachusetts’ 5th Congressional District.

Clark took 31.6 percent of the vote in the seven-way Democratic race to fill now-Sen. Ed Markey’s Boston-area House seat. Her closest competitor was Middlesex County Sheriff Peter Koutoujian, who won 22 percent.

State Rep. Carl Sciortino, an openly gay candidate who got Internet and media attention for a TV ad that featured him “coming out” to his tea party father as a liberal, came in third with 16.1 percent of the vote. State Sen. William Brownsberger came in fourth with 14.6 percent, followed by state Senate Majority Whip Karen Spilka with 13 percent.

The Democratic state senator was heavily favored to win the general election in the solidly blue 5th District, where President Barack Obama received 65 percent of the vote in 2012.

Clark, who was backed by the pro-Democratic women’s group EMILY’s List, led in most of the little polling that was done in the race.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel said in a statement that he’s confident Clark will win in the blue district.

“Katherine will be a voice for the middle class, and I am confident that the people of Massachusetts’ 5th district will agree, and in December will elect her to this Democratic seat, which President Obama won with two-thirds of the vote in both 2008 and 2012,” he said.^[2]

Education/ career

Katherine Clark’s professional career includes service as a prosecutor, school committee member, General Counsel for the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services, and Chief of the Policy Division for the Massachusetts Attorney General. She has been an advocate for seniors, the environment and social justice as a top policy maker.

Katherine Clark is a graduate of St. Lawrence University, Cornell University School of Law, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.^[3]

In her early career she worked as an attorney in Chicago, then moved to Colorado where she worked as a clerk for a federal judge and later as a staff attorney for the Colorado District Attorneys Council.She moved to Massachusetts in 1995 and became general counsel for the state Office of Child Care Services.^[4].

DSA support in 2004

According to to the Boston Democratic Socialists of America newsletter, The Yankee Radical, September 2004, page 8, Boston DSA endorsed several State Senate candidates in 2004. These included Katherine Clark, challenger, Democrat (Melrose).^[5]

Mass Alliance endorsement

In 2008, Mass Alliance endorsed Katherine Clark for the vacant State Rep. seat in the 32nd Middlesex Dis-trict (Melrose, parts of Wakefield). Clark has been Chair of the Melrose School Committee, and was endorsed by former Rep. Mike Festa and Attorney General Martha Coakley, for whom she was then working. “She also aced the Alliance questionairre”.^[6]

DSA endorsement

In 2010, Katherine Clark, running for Massachusetts State Senate ,Middlesex and Essex, was included in a list of the mainly Massachusetts candidates endorsed by the Boston Democratic Socialists of America, published in the The Yankee Radical:^[7][8]

Rep. Katherine Clark is running for the open seat in being vacated by Richard Tisei. Elected to the House in 2008, she has made her colleagues focus on making the funding formula for public schools fair to all communities. Katherine has been named Legislator of the Year by Citizens for Public Schools.

Progressive “vetting”

On September 12 2013, eight progressive organizations including Democratic Socialists of America hosted a forum with five Democratic Party candidates, including Katherine Clark, to fill new Senator, Ed Markey’s seat in Congress.

Our goal is to give Massachusetts’ voters a better understanding of the differences between the five candidates and their positions on important issues to these groups.

Forum Part 1 The questions in this first segment are on the environment and climate change, the Citizens United decision and fair elections, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s “Back to Work” budget. Forum Part 2 The questions in this second segment are on income inequality, military spending, the Syria crisis and Iran, and the Israeli settlements in Palestine. Forum Part 3 The questions in this third and final segment are on women’s rights and reproductive rights, and how to be an effective progressive in Congress.

The forum was sponsored by: 350 Massachusetts, Better Future Project, Democratic Socialists of America, Massachusetts Peace Action, Greater Boston Move to Amend, National Organization for Women, Progressive Democrats of America, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. The forum moderator was Jordan Berg Powers of Mass Alliance.^[9]

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