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Alex Morse, 30, is the mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts who announced on Tuesday that he is challenging congressman Richard Neal for his 1st District seat in Congress. Morse was elected as the youngest, first openly gay mayor of Holyoke in 2011 at the age of 22 and has since gone on to be re-elected 3 times.
Despite the early success in his political career, unseating congressman Neal poses a significant challenge for the young Mayor. Richard Neal, 70, has been serving the western district of Massachusetts for over 30 years and has been the 1st District’s congressman since 2013, after the districts were redrawn. He wields a lot of influence in the house as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the more powerful committees in congress.
Morse believes the incumbent congressman is vulnerable due to how he handled President Trump’s tax returns earlier this year. Neal was hesitant to request the tax returns and file the subsequent lawsuit and only did so after significant pressure from left-leaning groups. Additionally, the incumbent congressman’s views on tax reforms and expanding citizens’ access to healthcare are at odds with the younger, more progressive wave of the Democratic party.
“There’s an urgency to this moment in Massachusetts’ First District and our country, and that urgency is not matched by our current representative in Congress,” Morse said in a statement announcing his candidacy, “The fact is, the congressman (Neal) has been largely silent on the issues that matter most. He’s been absent, unaccountable, and unavailable. It’s not just that we need new leadership in Washington. We need new leadership that understands that we can no longer settle for small, incremental, and compromising progress. We need to be on offense. We need to be fighting for something, not just against.”
Morse will challenge Neal in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Being Elected Mayor Was Alex Morse’s First Job out of College
After graduating from Brown University, Alex’s first order of business was to run for Mayor. Throughout college, he spent weekends in Holyoke running various community groups and organizations that he had joined or started in college. He was one of the most active organizers in the community, being mayor seemed like the logical next step.
Many thought that he would be unable to unseat incumbent Mayor Elaine Pluta. Pluta was a Hispanic mayor in a mostly Hispanic town with 14 years of experience in the Holyoke city council. He was mostly viewed as a fun news story and nothing more until his campaign was able to raise $50,000 and he received endorsements from the Springfield newspaper, former Holyoke mayor Michael J. Sullivan, and three city councilors. He ended up beating Pluta by 608 votes and winning the election.
2. He’s Faced Criticism For Not Being Transparent
In his 8 years as Mayor, Morse has faced his share criticism. In 2014, he was questioned by the city council for providing a $45,000 exit agreement to city solicitor Heather Egan, just a year after her appointment, and refusing to disclose the reason. He responded to the accusation on a Reddit AMA, saying “I do admit that I should have briefed the City Council before executing the settlement agreement with this former employee as to avoid issues of perception. Again, when faced with the decision to potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legals costs to fight frivolous lawsuits, or to execute a settlement agreement with funds that were already allocated in the budget, I chose the latter. Separation agreements are not uncommon in both the private and public sector.”
He drew the city council’s ire again in 2018 for buying a $10,000 artificial Christmas tree on a city debit card and not communicating that to the public. Holyoke had a tradition of residents donating trees. The Mayor’s office would send out a press release asking residents if they had a tree large enough on their property that they could donate. Morse took full responsibility for the incident and justified the purchase in an email to Holyoke residents which read “I believe the investment will pay for itself over time, and will allow for city staff to dedicate their time to other duties. After speaking with other city staff and some department heads, we agreed this was a good decision for the city in the long term,” Morse said.
3. Alex Morse Is Fluent in Spanish
While studying at Brown, Morse studied abroad in the Dominican Republic for 5 months, becoming fluent in Spanish. During the mayoral race, his fluency was put on full display. Holyoke’s population of 40,000 is 50% Hispanic, and being able to communicate with them was key to Morse’s campaign.
“Also, my campaign website is the only website that is completely bilingual in English and Spanish. It is incredibly important that we have a mayor who can communicate with the Latino community in a substantial and genuine way …,” Morse said in a statement back in 2011.
Highlighting his fluency was a central campaign strategy and helped him unseat Hispanic incumbent Elaine A. Pluta.
4. He Supports Marijuana Legalization
In 2016, Alex Morse was the first Massachusetts mayor to support marijuana legalization. This put him at odds with most of the state’s politicians who are unanimously against the initiative. “As I considered this question it became increasingly clear that I could no longer tolerate a system that results in disproportionate arrests of African-Americans and other minority groups and, frankly, has failed for decades to limit the availability of marijuana,” Morse said in a 2016 statement.
The initiative appeared as Question 4 on the ballot in the November 2016 election but citizens voted against it.
5. He Received Heavy Criticism for Starting a Needle Exchange Program
The town of Holyoke is being hit hard by the opioid epidemic, so much so that Alex Morse took drastic measures to try and curb it. Instead of tougher laws, he focused on treatment and started a needle exchange program because, according to him, “This isn’t about politics or rhetoric for me, it’s about compassion, and about saving people’s lives. At a time when many communities are plagued by the opioid epidemic, we must continue to expand access to treatment, not restrict it,” He said in a 2016 email.
His critics said the program made Holyoke a safe haven for heroin addicts. In an official statement, City Council President Kevin A. Jourdain said Morse “violated his oath of office” and said “Now it has spiraled out of control. He needs to step up and fix this, and make sure adequate protections are in place to ensure that the people of Holyoke are protected and moreover that the law is followed,”
The program, run by Tapestry Health, was shut down briefly in 2016 but has been back up and running since early 2017. By July 2017 they have collected 475,000 used drug needles collected and distributed 438,000 clean ones.