by Neil W. McCabe

The former state representative running to for the 2nd Middlesex District State Senate seat will open his campaign headquarters Thursday at 315 Highland Ave. with a 7 p.m. reception.

“I hope residents will come down to our headquarters to discuss the issues that they care about and hear the ideas that I would like to bring to Beacon Hill,” said Joseph K. Mackey, who is an attorney.

Mackey is vying to replace the late Charles E. Shannon Jr.

“Charlie Shannon was a courageous and much loved leader,” he said.

Consistent with the views of the late senator, Mackey said if he was in the state senate for the vote, he would vote to override Gov. W. Mitt Romney’s veto of the embryonic stem cell research bill.

Hundreds of area voters have already signed up to help Mackey, who is pursuing the Democratic Party’s nod in the primary to be held Aug. 30, and then the Special Election Sept. 27, Mackey said. “We probably have 900 to 1,000 signatures right now, but we don’t have to turn them in until July, so we should have much more by then.”

Mackey was the Ward 4 alderman from 1980 to 1985, and in served in the state’s Great and General Court as a state representative from 1985 to 1990, he said.

In 1990, Mackey ran for Middlesex County District Attorney and lost the state’s current attorney general, Thomas Reilly, he said.

After losing that race, Mackey left public life to practice law and spend time with his family, he said. “When I lost my oldest daughter was 10-years-old, now she is 25-years-old and my campaign manager.”

Mackey said he was grateful to have had the chance to spend time with his family. “Politics is very time consuming, so is the law, but at least as a lawyer you have more control over your schedule. You can plan your week and take an afternoon off for a school play or a baseball game. I would have missed all that.”

“My wife says only independently wealthy, single men should be in politics,” he said.

The candidate has been married to his wife Paula for 28 years, and they have three children, Erin, a 1998 graduate of Somerville High School and Harvard University, Christopher, a graduate of SHS and member of the Harvard class of 2006, who is presently preparing for the NCAA baseball tournament, and Alyssa, SHS class of 2006, he said.

The son of public school teachers, was an all-scholastic football and baseball star at Somerville High School who went on to graduate cum laude from Harvard College and then from the University of Virginia Law School, he said.

Bringing the Green Line to the city is one of Mackey’s top priorities, he said.

The rest of the city will receive the same economic boom from the Green Line that Davis Square got when the Red Line T-stop opens there, he said. “Before the Davis Square Station was built, I remember very clearly standing in Davis Square on a summer Saturday evening, I looked in every direction, and I was the only one standing in Davis Square.”

“In 1920, the city had nine commuter train stops, now all we have is Davis Square,” he said.

Mackey said he is willing to listen to people who have concerns about the Green Line extension, but it must come to the city. “It is very important for the city that the Green Line should go at least all the way to Tufts. Originally, the Red Line was supposed to go all the way to Arlington Center, but they didn’t want it, so it stopped at Alewife.”

During his tenure on Beacon Hill, Mackey said his most productive time was spent on the Ways and Means Committee. “On Ways and Means, we handled most of the legislation and all of the budget.”

As a member of that committee, Mackey was a leading sponsor of many of the bills brought before the House, he said. “I was in a position to have an impact on other legislation.”

Among the laws Mackey is most proud of shepherding through the legislative process, was the bill that turned unclaimed bottle and can deposits over the cities and towns, he said.

“We found that there was anywhere from $20-22 million annually in unclaimed deposits that the beverage companies were pocketing. We seized that money and returned it to the people by giving it to the cities and towns for environmental purposes,” he said

It was one of the first pieces of legislation that specified that funds from the state had to be used to improve the environment. In Somerville, one of the first uses of the money was to buy the blue sidewalk recycling containers, he said.
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It was not an easy fight. When the bill first came up, it only got 30 votes. But, within three or four months of explaining the merits of the bill, Mackey said he was able to turn it around.

Another accomplishment, Mackey said he was proud of was the passage of the Healthy Start program, which guaranteed pre-natal care for pregnant uninsured women, the first bill of its kind in the country, he said.

Another bill required all emergency rooms in the commonwealth to have rape evidence collection kits, he said.

His drug asset forfeiture law allowed state and local police to seize dealers’ drug profits and use them for law enforcement and drug education. His Bad Apple law toughened penalties for drug peddling in area neighborhoods, he said.

The Massachusetts Victim and Witness Assistance Board cited  Mackey’s victim assistance law, when they named Mackey their Legislator of the Year. “The law gives financial and emotional support to those victims who too often are forgotten in the criminal justice system,” he said.

Mackey served on the Governor’s Anti-Crime Council and was named by the Massachusetts Bar Association as the “Legislator of the Year” for his effectiveness on Beacon Hill. The Victim Advocacy Network named Mackey its “Outstanding Legislator” for his compassionate and progressive leadership in the State Legislature. Joe served as a member of the Somerville Redevelopment Authority and is a member of the Somerville Democratic Ward and City Committee.

Mackey said he is a founding member of the Somerville High School Scholarship Foundation, where he has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for deserving youth, and currently serves as a Board Member of the Massachusetts Association of Mental Health.

He is a founding member of both the Dreams for Youth Foundation and the Municipal Scholarship Program. Mackey is co-founder of Team Mass. Baseball and Mass. Demons Basketball AAU Programs and a founding member of the Girls’ Pride Basketball Foundation, he said.