The Herald’s saying that State Representative Geoff Diehl will challenge Elizabeth Warren next year. So what do we know?
- He’s a small business owner from Whitman who was first elected to the House in 2010.
- In 2013, he filed an amendment to a House bill to benefit veterans through a property tax exemption and a “Support Our Veterans” license plate program. His amendment would have required that all persons seeking state housing assistance provide their social security numbers. When his amendment was ruled out of order because it did not pertain to the primary subject of the bill, he and allies requested a roll call vote on that parliamentary ruling. The result, a 126-29 vote upholding the ruling, created the scandalous (if entirely specious) impression that 126 members of the House had voted to give priority for state housing assistance to undocumented immigrants over veterans. That roll call vote became the centerpiece of a flyer distributed in 20 legislative districts by the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance and its sister PAC, Jobs First Massachusetts, targeting Democratic incumbents in 2014. The campaign had little success.
- Also in 2014, after the Legislature increased the gas tax from 21 to 24 cents per gallon and tied future increases to the consumer price index, he played a prominent role in the successful ballot campaign to repeal that indexing. The repeal has resulted in a (greater) shortfall in the state’s transportation funding.
- In 2015, he and other conservative legislators joined with other, more progressive groups to oppose taxpayer funding for the Olympics. Later that year, he lost the election for an open State Senate seat (the incumbent, Thomas Kennedy, had passed away in June) to State Representative Michael Brady.
- He was the first state lawmaker to endorse Donald Trump for President, in February of last year. And he stood by his candidate through every controversy, even Trump’s disparagement of federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, when others grew faint of heart.
- His legislative priorities for this session include a bill to give taxpayers the option to direct the state not to use any of their income tax payments to pay for abortion services. It requires the Revenue Department to calculate the amount of state money used to pay for abortion services as a percentage of the state’s General Fund, to apply that percentage to the liability of each taxpayer electing the option and to set those amounts aside in a special fund.
