State Rep-elect Megan Cotter is one of 12 new state representatives elected last month. The Exeter Democrat is the guest this week on Political Roundtable.
Here’s a transcript:
Ian Donnis: state Representative-elect Meghan Cotter, welcome to The Public’s Radio and congratulations on your election.
Megan Cotter: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Donnis: You won your seat on your second run for state rep. You ran two years ago in 2020 and fell a couple of hundred votes short. Why were you interested in becoming a state representative?
Cotter: I think it’s important to have different voices in the General Assembly. I believe families deserve better. We need strong public education in every community. We need affordability. I’d like to see more folks being able to move into my community. It’s a difficult run — myself, personally, we bought a foreclosure. Otherwise, we may not have been able to move into our community. And I’d like to see stronger action to protect our environment. As we move towards renewable energy. I’d like to see it done more responsibly, protecting our forestry. But we do need to make the transition and then also affordable health care. Everyone should have access to affordable health care.
Donnis: You scored a 32-vote win over incumbent GOP Rep. Justin Price. He is known in part for being the only state representative who was in Washington for then-President Trump’s rally on January 6. As I reported back then, Representative Price falsely blamed Antifa for causing the attack on the Capitol. Despite this, he almost got as many votes as you. There was a third party candidate who got about 10% of the vote, and that might have helped you. What do you think Representative Price still got so many votes?
Cotter: Well, I think there are a few factors. It is a conservative district. But also, you know, I didn’t talk about his his involvement in January 6. I didn’t want to bring that up at the doors. I didn’t bring it up in any mailers, because I wanted to give people someone to vote for, not someone to vote against. We could have painted a picture and put him as the big bad boogeyman. But we did not. I didn’t think that that would be appropriate. And I think that the third party person, he did definitely pull votes from from Price. But he pulled votes from me too. He was a softball coach in CHARIHO. So he was well connected in the community, which is important. Who knows what would have happened if he wasn’t in the race? But if the incumbent was a strong incumbent that people loved, he would have he would have been able to pull through,
Donnis: We hear a lot about how the nation is so divided these days. And there’s a lot of hyper-partisanship. So I wonder what it was like for you running in a conservative district? Was that kind of hyper-partisanship really evident to you? Or did you see it differently?
Cotter: In some aspects, for sure, and both sides. Sometimes the first question when I knocked on a door was what party are you? And that ended the conversation very quickly, actually, both ways. You’re Democrat, great, you have my support. I’m voting for you. You know, you’re a Democrat, you know, get off my property right now. A few times, I was a little scared for my safety, to be honest. But it didn’t stop me from from continuing. And this cycle, we did things a little bit differently. I have an e-bike. And I used it to canvas. That was super helpful, it really added to the success. We have a lot of long driveways and it’s intrusive to see a car you don’t know come down the driveway, like, who the heck is this? Especially in our area, you don’t often get people at the door. So the bike was, you know, wholesome. And, and I think a lot of people, you know, it started a lot of conversations. It was it was a great conversation starter. So it was it was awesome.
Donnis: On your campaign website, you describe how after college you faced a lot of financial pressure with your husband and your three children in terms of paying for things like rent, student loans, utilities, daycare, health care, and how that can be suffocating for a lot of people. Now that you’re a state rep-elect, what do you think the state should do to help people who are in that kind of similar financial situation?
Cotter: There’s a lot of things I think that the state can do to help folks. We have to remember where we came from. So when I graduated from college, it was 2008. It was, you know, during a recession, and then my husband and I started our family very early. And so daycare was not an option for us because it was so costly. So I think that’s something that we can certainly attack instantaneously, we have a $610 million surplus. So we should be able to advocate for families and, you know, put some money towards towards affordable care for families.
Donnis: How so? $610 million is obviously a lot of money, but what sort of policy or program do you think that should be filtered into?
Cotter: Well, I think right now, affordable childcare is probably on everyone’s mind. Women are disproportionately affected by by this and we start in the workforce later. I myself did as well. And I think it needs to be addressed. So whether it be credits towards towards childcare or, you know, just making it so that we’re investing in helping to pay for that. We also need to pay childcare providers more if they do not make enough money. And that’s that should be also on top of everyone’s mind. Also women are disproportionately impacted by that.
Donnis: Another issue you say you support is quality, affordable health care. Sounds good. No one’s against that. But the cost has to come from somewhere. It’s unclear how the state could provide Medicare for all, as some progressives want. How would you you’d seek to change that kind of policy? And how would you pay for it?
Cotter: I think there’s a lot of things that we can do. And we can start by investigating what it looks like if we lower the the age for Medicare starting 65, bring it down to 60. What does that look like? Also, there’s a lot of federal matching dollars that we can go after, and we should go after more of those to expand Medicare. And then the other thing that I think we can do is, is, you know, personally, I look at what I pay for health care. I would be fine paying extra taxes to have health care. You know, with my job, I talked to folks in Canada all the time. And I tease them and tell them they’re so nice because of the free health care that they have. Because they are really nice. But I talked about with them what their healthcare system looks like. And, you know, I think there’s some misconceptions here in the US of what that looks like. It’s not you don’t wait years to get to the doctor like people, people say, it’s not what people think it is.
Donnis: We’re talking here with State Representative-elect Megan Cotter, a Democrat from Exeter. And we know that Rhode Island has been basically spinning its wheels for many years in terms of trying to improve public schools. One of your arguments is that the school funding formula is inequitable. But we see how a lot of money gets spent on education, public education in Providence and other cities, with pretty lackluster results. What would your approach be to trying to improve the situation?
Cotter: I think there’s multiple approaches that that we can take. You see what Massachusetts just did. They increased taxes on the wealthiest folks in Massachusetts and they earmark those dollars for education. We should do something similar to that here. But also, you know, the district that I represent is two towns, two school districts, we have CHARIHO, we have Exeter-West, Greenwich, both are regional. So I think we should incentivize other school districts to become regionalised. I think it can cut costs, and it’s very beneficial to towns.
Donnis: The General Assembly has been trending in a more progressive direction through multiple election cycles. The election of lawmakers like yourself continues that. So what difference do you think that will make in this coming legislative session?
Cotter: I’m excited. I think it’ll it’ll be great. I think we have already seen a shift towards more progressive policies, the Act on Climate, a commitment to offset 100% of Rhode Island’s electricity to renewable energy by 2033. The budget seems to be trending towards helping struggling families. And the General Assembly is committed to working too hard to address the housing crisis. So I think it’s going to continue to trend in the same direction. And I like the fact that we have a speaker who’s willing to listen to all members and as a member-driven body, and that’s exciting as more strong women get elected who tend to be more progressive,
Donnis: If push comes to shove, and progressives differ from Speaker Shekarchi on a vote on a key issue, how will you decide which way to go?
Cotter: Depends on the issue.
Donnis: That’s fair. In terms of your profile as a progressive Democrat, do you think Joe Biden is the best choice to lead Democrats in the 2024 presidential election?
Cotter: No.
Donnis: Who would you like to see instead? And particularly as the incoming representative from a conservative district, what kind of Democrat do you think it would take to win the support from you know, independent voters in communities like Exeter, Hopkinton, and Richmond?
Cotter: Oh, that’s a good question. We’re still two years away. So we’ll see who emerges as as a good leader in the next two years.
Donnis: In terms of progressive politics, you ran this year with the support of the Working Families Party, a progressive group, and in 2020, you had run with the support of the Rhode Island Political Cooperative. This year, the coop had some big plans, but they basically fizzled. Why did you make that switch?
Cotter: I felt that I wanted to be my own person and run my own race. And in order to do that, I did not want to be attached to folks in different areas who may think differently than I do. We don’t agree on every every policy and the approach is different. So for me, I really feel that it’s Very important in my community to strip away the letter after my name after everyone’s name and talk about the issues. I’m not asking folks to vote for a Democrat, right? I didn’t knock on the door and say I am a Democrat, please vote for me. I’m Megan. I’m a mother. I am a wife. I am a squid lady. I’m someone who is very active in this community. And I want your vote because I want to give you good representation at the Statehouse.
Donnis: You mentioned being a squid lady, you have a quintessentially Rhode Island job, as a saleswoman with a seafood company selling squid and scallops. How did you wind up in that line of work?
Cotter: It’s it’s a funny story. Our house burned down. And I was working for Pepsi as a salesperson in the in the Boston area. So when I got the call that my house was burning down, I was in Needham, Massachusetts. I probably did about 120 on the car ride home. But it was incredibly overwhelming. We had to start from scratch. We lost everything. So every day it was something different. So today, I’m going to focus on mattresses. Tomorrow, I’m going to focus on you know, whatever the item may be. But I was working pretty far away. And it was a challenge. And I was rebuilding my life and my children’s lives. And so it just wasn’t working. So I decided to start a new career on top of that as well. I was on LinkedIn, and I came across the squid job. And I thought, well, I could sell squid, why not? And I ended up loving it. It was the best thing that ever happened. I enjoy my job. I get to talk to people all day long from all over the country and build those relationships and it’s wonderful.
Donnis: And as you told Patrick Anderson of the Providence Journal recently, you jokingly referred to yourself as a squid girl in a squid world.
Cotter: Yes, it’s funny because we’ve been saying that at home for years, all these little like funny calamari queen and you know, it’s just a joke, and I just I don’t know, I just said it.
Donnis: Just in closing for people who might not spend much time in the district 39 towns of Richmond, Exeter and Hopkinton — what are some of the cool places to visit or a good restaurant to stop in?
Cotter: Oh man, if you like to hike, there’s endless hiking trails, absolutely gorgeous. Mount Tom is in Exeter and there’s just so many different places to go on a walk. Restaurants. There’s Alaina’s Ale House. There’s Celestial Cafe. All of the items in there are from Rhode Island, all Rhode Island ingredients. We have many coffee houses and it’s just a beautiful place. It’s beautiful place to take a trail, take a hike.
Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis@ripr.org
