An energetic, visionary, and proven leader, Eric Lesser will partner with our next Governor to make sure she is the most successful in the country. Together, they will work on the biggest issue our state faces: the skyrocketing cost of living. Eric has a plan to fix our broken transportation system, build more housing, create better jobs, protect our environment, and make our state more affordable and equitable.
Eric understands that Massachusetts has so much going for it. But despite our Commonwealth’s considerable advantages, it’s harder and harder to live here. It’s too expensive – housing is out of control, transportation is unreliable, and childcare costs are crushing families. Meanwhile, small pockets of our state boom while entire regions are left behind. Our current situation doesn’t work: it creates skyrocketing prices and gridlock in some places, and vacuums jobs and opportunity from others.
Senator Lesser knows that systemic racism has plagued our country for centuries, and that all of our institutions have a role to play in the fight for racial justice. To protect Black, Latino, AAPI, and Indigenous people in Massachusetts, we must put equity at the heart of all of our policymaking.
Eric’s State Senate district includes Springfield and Chicopee, two of our most densely-populated and diverse cities, as well as rural communities like Hampden and Monson. In this complex region, Eric has worked on behalf of constituents of every color, creed, and political affiliation.
After the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Eric marched alongside hundreds of demonstrators to the Springfield Police Department, led by students at Springfield’s Central High School, to declare that Black lives matter. He worked to bring their voices into the Senate’s efforts at police reforms and has continued to approach his work through a lens that prioritizes equity and inclusion.
In 2020, Eric spearheaded negotiations for an economic aid package that saved small businesses across the state from the economic disruptions of COVID-19. He ensured that the aid would prioritize establishments owned by minorities, immigrants, and low-income people, demographics that were facing the worst economic fallout but struggling the most to secure government funding. Thanks to these efforts, hundreds of family restaurants, bodegas, barbershops, and other small businesses stayed afloat.
Since 2017, Eric’s Nonprofit Security Grants Program budget amendment has distributed critical funding to cultural and religious institutions at risk from rising hate crimes. For Eric, this issue is personal. In recent years, antisemitic terrorists and an attempted bombing have menaced Jewish preschools and nursing homes in Eric’s hometown of Longmeadow. In 2020, an arsonist attacked Martin Luther King Jr. Community Presbyterian church in Springfield. Eric will always stand up against fear and hate, for his community and for every community.
Eric has worked closely with communities of color in Western Mass, giving a voice to his constituents on Beacon Hill. He took on environmental racism and fought a toxic biomass plant from being built in Springfield, where Black and brown people already face polluted air. He has secured state funds for local Urban Leagues and Boys and Girls’ Clubs, especially during the pandemic.
In 2020, Eric advocated for a critical police reform package that toughens standards around use of force and invested in community-based alternatives to policing. The law banned chokeholds and other deadly uses of force, except in cases of imminent harm; created a new Police Officer Standards and Accreditation Committee to standardize certification and discipline of rogue officers; expanded community-based and non-police solutions to crisis response and jail diversion; banned racial profiling; and reformed qualified immunity doctrines for excessive use of force.
Eric voted to establish Juneteenth as an official state holiday, giving state workers the same benefits that federal workers receive. He also voted to establish a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. in the House chamber of the Massachusetts Legislature.
Eric supported the Senate’s passage of a bill that addresses continuing racial inequities in the Commonwealth’s maternal health outcomes, specifically in cases of maternal mortality and morbidity.