When State Rep. Chris Markey is out knocking doors in his district, he sometimes runs into firefighters that fought bitterly with his father, a charismatic mayor of New Bedford who once stripped down to his underwear to protest how their union was taking the clothes off his back.
Decades later, Markey said there’s still good will when he meets retired firefighters on the campaign trail.
“They’d go, ‘Oh, I hated your father, but I always respected him,’” Markey said. “‘If you’re anything like your father, I want you to be there.’”
As he seeks re-election to serve his twelfth year in the legislature, Markey said his family name still signals loyalty and integrity in New Bedford and Dartmouth, the neighboring town where he now lives.
His father Jack ended his career with a long stint as a judge in New Bedford’s district court, and his brother, John Markey Jr., served more recently as the top lawyer at City Hall.
But Markey said he has developed a reputation of his own as a pragmatic negotiator who understands how things really get done in the state legislature. He counts among his recent achievements an unglamorous package of laws that enables New Bedford to redevelop part of its municipal golf course as an industrial park.
While other politicians get attention for backing populist proposals, Markey said he doesn’t distract himself with writing bills the legislature is unlikely to pass.
Outside of public office, the 54-year-old runs a busy law practice where he’s known to defend some of the city’s most prominent citizens when they get into trouble. Last year, with Markey’s help, the CEO of the region’s largest hospital network saw domestic violence charges against him dismissed following an arrest.
The former hospital executive, Keith Hovan, has since donated to Markey’s re-election campaign, as have dozens of others, growing Markey’s campaign account by nearly $30,000 in two months, much of it sourced from the same network of business owners, politicians and lawyers who once worked in the orbit of his father and brother.
No one has run against Markey in eight years, but his recent votes against progressive proposals in the legislature have landed him in hot water with local labor leaders, triggering a backlash that could upset a longstanding power balance in the 9th Bristol District.
In February, Markey voted against a bill supported by the local labor council that eventually passed, making it possible for undocumented immigrants who pass driving tests to obtain licenses as soon as next summer. Markey also consistently voted against the Fair Share Amendment, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would increase taxes on people earning more than a million dollars a year.
In Markey’s analysis, the Fair Share Amendment, which will appear on ballots statewide this November as Question 1, might actually reduce the tax revenue Massachusetts takes in every year.
“You’re asking for a lot of money from a very few people who have the ability to move,” Markey said during a recent interview. “I think it is giving people false hope.”
Several research groups studying the tax’s potential impact disagree. The state’s Department of Revenue estimated it would generate around $2 billion each year; a study from Tufts University’s Center for State Policy Analysis put the same figure closer to $1 billion, accounting for expected departures from the state and various forms of tax avoidance. Any money raised by the proposed tax would be set aside specifically for transportation and education expenses.
Though polls consistently estimate that a majority of voters in Massachusetts support the new tax, Markey joined a small minority of legislators who tried to prevent the Fair Share Amendment from appearing as a ballot question this fall. Of the 157 Democrats who voted on the Fair Share Amendment, Markey was one of just 9 who voted against it.
His challenger in next week’s Democratic primary, Cameron Costa, has pounced on this difference in opinions.
Costa’s support for the Fair Share Amendment won him the endorsement of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the state’s largest federation of labor unions, which has spent more than $130,000 to support the ballot question’s passage.
“Anytime somebody asked me, ‘I support the policies that you’re talking about, what do you think is the best way we can afford that without really increasing taxes on me?’” Costa said, he would answer with the Fair Share Amendment.
Costa, who graduated from UMass Dartmouth this past spring, is trying to find a path to the State House in a part of Massachusetts where it’s difficult to unseat incumbents. Several of New Bedford’s state legislators took office before Costa was even born.
But the 21-year-old points to his experience organizing with progressive groups since he was a teenager, when he helped teachers at his vocational high school unionize while he was still a student.
Costa has also served as a student member on the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, which Gov. Charlie Baker appointed him to las
t year.
If Costa makes it to the legislature, he said he will be voting on laws from the perspective of someone who understands poverty firsthand. At times during his childhood, Costa said he and his mother, who now serves on the New Bedford School Committee, didn’t have a home.
“There are some people, when we talk about experience, that come strictly from their professional experience,” Costa said in an interview, “but I also think it’s important to talk about how personal experience really drives legislation here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and across the country, rather.”
Lisa Lemieux, who runs the local labor council that recommended Costa to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO for endorsement, said the legislature could use more people with this perspective.
Lemieux said some of Chris Markey’s recent votes put the interests of wealthy residents ahead of working people. Markey’s final vote on the Fair Share Amendment last year was a breaking point for her, she said.
“I strongly feel that the legislature in Massachusetts has let us down over and over and over again,” Lemieux said. “I don’t have the power to kick them all out, but I certainly have the power to address one at a time.”
In an interview, Markey dismissed the AFL-CIO’s endorsement of his opponent as an example of a special interest group trying to gain influence over an inexperienced candidate.
But Costa characterized the endorsement as the potential difference-maker in their race. Union members have pledged to knock on 900 doors for him, which could provide a significant boost in a district with historically low voter turnout. Costa said he expects he could win the seat with slightly more than 2,000 votes.
He will be looking for most of those votes in Dartmouth, where Markey lives. The 9th Bristol District stretches from suburban neighborhoods like Costa’s on the Dartmouth-New Bedford line out through farmland to the seaside mansions of Padnaram and Nonquit.
The district’s voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to decide who wins the Democratic primary. Since there’s no Republican challenger, the winner is expected to cruise straight to the legislature next year.
Ben Berke is the South Coast Bureau Reporter for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at bberke@thepublicsradio.org. Follow him on Twitter @BenBerke6.