Five days after announcing she will be a candidate for governor of Massachusetts, NBC10 Boston met up with Sonia Chang-Diaz in a park in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood for her first sit-down interview.
Why is she running?
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"I'm tired of waiting for government to greet the challenges that working families in Massachusetts face with the same determination and the same urgency and the same orientation toward action that families are, in fact, living those problems," she said.
As a state senator, Chang-Diaz is often associated with her work on education reform. What would be her issue as governor?
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"Well, look, there won't be just one because there's no one silver bullet," she said. "If you made me choose just a small handful, though, what I would say is, the through-line across them is laying down infrastructure, whether it's physical or human infrastructure, to tackle the big systemic problems so that working families are than freed up to take care of their families, to contribute to their communities."
In addition to education, Chang-Diaz mentions economic development, economic justice, climate change and transportation infrastructure.
Chang-Diaz has two Democratic opponents -- Ben Downing, a former state senator, and Harvard professor Danielle Allen. They both consider themselves staunch progressives.
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"One of the things that I bring to this race is a 12-year record of delivering on that kind of systemic change that working families have been waiting too long on," Chang-Diaz said.
She cites her work and coalition building on education funding, criminal justice and police reform.
"I've got that record of not just having progressive positions, but being able to actually deliver the wins and deliver the change that working families need," she said.
