This story has been updated – Nov. 29, 6:30 p.m. ANOTHER SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT justice is heading off the bench early, giving Gov. Maura Healey two open seats to fill in the new year on the state’s highest court. Justice David Lowy, 63, will leave the SJC on February 3, 2024 – well before reaching the state mandatory judicial retirement age of 70 – to serve as general counsel of the University of Massachusetts system, a job likely to come with a big pay raise. The UMass Amherst alumnus will also serve as strategic advisor for law school education and become an adjunct law professor at t ..read more

FOR A BEHIND-THE-SCENES operator who shunned the limelight, it was an extraordinary public affirmation of the impact he had on the state’s political landscape.  Hundreds of people gathered in Faneuil Hall in Boston on Tuesday to remember John Walsh, a Democratic political strategist who is credited with reinvigorating campaigns with a focus on grass-roots organizing.  The crowd included scores of young people Walsh mentored as they looked for a foothold in politics along with a large cast of political dignitaries that included two former governors, the state’s current governor and a ..read more

Two high-stakes games of chicken are playing out on Beacon Hill – one between top Democrats in the House and Senate and the other between Democrats and Republicans in both chambers. The standoff between the top Democrats is playing out behind closed doors but the policy differences appear fairly clear. Both branches support a $2.8 billion spending bill providing $250 million in additional funding for the state’s overwhelmed emergency shelter system. Senate leaders, however, want to let Gov. Maura Healey decide how best to spend the $250 million. House leaders, by contrast, want to exert more ..read more

STATE AUDITOR DIANA DIZOGLIO’S ballot initiative asking voters to weigh in on auditing the Legislature appeared to clear a significant hurdle on Tuesday, when she said the campaign gathered more than the number of signatures required. DiZoglio is looking to place the initiative, which would mandate audits of state lawmakers, on the 2024 state ballot. Her effort faces a number of hurdles, including the required filing of 74,574 voter signatures with local elections officials this week. The signed petitions are then to be filed with Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s office by the first Wednesday ..read more

JOHN WALSH MADE his most visible mark by charting a winning course for a previously unknown first-time candidate to be elected governor and helping a four-decade congressional veteran fend off a challenge from a member of the state’s most storied political family. But his more enduring impact was felt outside the headlines, where he reshaped how campaigns were waged and brought countless young people into the political fold with an encouraging message about their own ability and their potential to make a difference. “There are multiple generations of political staffers and activists and candi ..read more

WHILE 2024 VOTERS may yet consider whether they want to legalize psychedelics for medical use, end the use of the 10th grade MCAS as a graduation requirement, or categorize app-based gig workers as independent contractors, two would-be ballot measures forcefully opposed by Massachusetts conservatives fell by the wayside this cycle – ranked choice voting and rent control.  Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who is listed as a supporter of ranked choice voting by the advocacy organization Voter Choice Massachusetts, nonetheless decided not to certify a number of ballot efforts that bundled ..read more

Second in a series exploring ways to embrace the nuance and complexity of contentious issues. See the first installment here.  MUCH OF OUR public discourse in political campaigns, legislatures, and the media is increasingly shaped by a pattern of engagement and argumentation that privileges controversy, relies on facts and figures without validation or context, and glosses over critical details, ambiguities and trade-offs. As a result, important issues of public policy are oversimplified or distorted, leading to dysfunctional decision-making and dangerous divisiveness.  As evidence ..read more

MICHAEL DUKAKIS did not pick himself up from searing campaign losses or persevere to serve longer than any governor in Massachusetts history by viewing the glass as half empty, and he’s not about to start doing so now.  Dukakis has long been fueled by a steadiness of purpose and belief that better days are to come. His stride may have slowed from his power-walking days of the past, but the one-time Brookline High School cross country standout is still firmly oriented toward forward motion.  That’s true whether it’s talking up the need to build more housing, or continuing the push to ..read more

WHEN CHRISSY LYNCH set out to right injustices as a college journalism student, she quickly bumped up against the profession’s traditional uneasiness with advocacy. But the new head of the Bay State arm of the nation’s largest trade union federation eventually found her voice and her people, after a winding path through political campaigns, bartending, and waitressing as she went. Lynch is the Massachusetts AFL-CIO’s first female head, succeeding Steven Tolman this fall to be the first new president in more than a decade to lead the 800-organization federation. Some 17 years ago, when she fir ..read more

IT WAS A little more than two weeks before Election Day as Juan Jaramillo took a seat at Casa Blanca, a pastry shop that takes up a sliver of space in a shopping plaza between the last stop on the Blue Line and four lanes of the VFW Parkway in Revere.  Around him, the background chatter was a mix of English, Spanish, and Arabic, the three main languages spoken in Revere. “If you turned on a public hearing, you wouldn’t know it,” Jaramillo said. With his election victory on Tuesday in the race for an at-large city council seat, the 30-year-old son of Colombian immigrants is on track to ch ..read more