The economy dominated the first debate of the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, as the top three candidates staked out their positions on the state’s budget crisis.
Incumbent Gov. Deval Patrick spoke positively about the Bay State’s fiscal situation in the radio debate hosted by WRKO, warning listeners that Republican challenger Charlie Baker and Independent candidate and State Treasurer Tim Cahill were too focused on “what’s wrong with Massachusetts.”
“We are coming out of the worst recession in living memory faster and stronger than the rest of the country,” Patrick said, pointing to job gains and an increase in home sales as evidence of an economic turnaround.
Throughout the Wednesday morning debate, Baker insisted that it was time for a change on Beacon Hill.
“My opponents are good guys, but they had their opportunity to reform state government and get the budget under control, but they didn’t,” he said.
Meanwhile, Cahill portrayed himself as the more moderate candidate who would fight for the middle class.
“The governor’s done a good job under tough circumstances,” he said. “Not as bad as Charlie says, but not as good as the governor says.”
One point of disagreement among the candidates was spending. Baker attacked Patrick over his use of the state’s rainy day fund, arguing that the governor tapped into it, “before it started to rain.” He also criticized Cahill for not speaking out against Patrick’s spending, a charge Cahill denied.
Patrick defended using the fund because he said it helped balance the state’s budget.
“It has been raining in the last few years and [the rainy day fund] has absolutely made it a little easier to manage through these times,” he said. Patrick also said that immediately implementing tax cuts proposed by his opponents would only make the budget problem worse.
On the subject of illegal immigration, Cahill and Baker said they strongly supported a recently defeated bill from Rep. Jeffrey Perry R-Barnstable that called for tighter restrictions on benefits for illegal immigrants.
Cahill argued that recent legal immigrants were suffering most from illegal immigration and said police should be able to detain those are in the country unlawfully.
“For people who go through the system and play by the rules, for someone to cut in front of them is not fair,” he said.
Patrick called for national immigration reform and said he was concerned that the amendment would be “overreaching,” and might conflict with federal law.
All three candidates were effusive in their praise of Massachusetts’ education system, but clashed over what future educational standards should entail.
Baker said he was “scared to death for the kids of Massachusetts” over what he said was talk of changing the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test that all students in the state must pass in order to graduate high school. Both Baker and Cahill opposed having the Bay State conform to national standards that President Barack Obama has called for.
Patrick, however, said he would be open to national standards of education, as long as they didn’t undermine what all candidate’s agreed was the state’s first-class educational system.
“If the national standards are at least as ambitious as ours than we would support them,” he said. “If they are not, we won’t.”
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