A Sun Staff report
THE CONGRESSIONAL seat centered in Lowell has been a special place for women.
Edith Nourse Rogers held an iron grip on the then-5th District seat for 35 years, which made her for a time the longest-serving woman in Congress. Rep. Niki Tsongas has held the seat for a little more than a decade.
Tsongas announced last week that she will retire at the end of this term. As the accolades poured in Wednesday, attention shifted to possible successors, in particular to a pair of women who would present formidable candidacies: State Sen. Eileen Donoghue and Ellen Murphy Meehan.
Donoghue, the former two-term Lowell mayor, gave Tsongas a heck of a fight in the 2007 Democratic primary and is anxious to give it another shot. There are other considerations, including her spot on Senate President Stanley Rosenberg’s leadership team.
Like Donoghue, Murphy Meehan and “congressional timber” have often been used in the same sentence. There’s nothing Murphy Meehan would like more than to carry on the footsteps of her former husband, Marty Meehan. Meehan served multiple terms before he stepped down in 2007 to become the UMass Lowell chancellor, setting up the Tsongas-Donoghue primary battle.
President and CEO of her health-care consulting firm, Murphy Meehan co-chaired Tsongas’ 2007 campaign and has been involved in subsequent Tsongas election efforts. Murphy Meehan acknowledged immediately she’s giving a run strong consideration.
Other women who may jump in: Sen. Barbara L’Italien of Andover, whose district includes Dracut and Tewksbury; Dracut state Rep. Colleen Garry; Groton state Rep. Sheila Harrington; also of Groton; and former Mitt Romney aide Beth Lindstrom of Groton, whose name was circulating for a run against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
WORD IS that it will be full steam ahead for Daniel Koh, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s chief of staff.
Sources told The Column that Koh, who is from Andover, met Walsh last week and the mayor is 100 percent behind his run. Walsh is in his own re-election battle, and the two have to figure out the best time for Koh to depart to the 3rd District.
In a 2014 profile on Koh, The Boston Globe wrote: “Daniel Arrigg Koh has the lineage and resume of a luminary on the rise. The chief of staff to Mayor Martin J. Walsh holds two degrees from Harvard and hails from a family that includes a diplomat, influential medical doctors, legal scholars, and advisers to the powerful.”
According to the story, Koh uses “Arrigg” to honor his mother, Dr. Claudia Arrigg, a well-known Merrimack Valley eye doctor with a practice in Lawrence.
He comes from a long line of public servants:
* His paternal grandfather, Kwang Lim Koh, was South Korea’s acting ambassador to the United States;
* His father, Dr. Howard Koh, is the former state public health commissioner who served as assistant secretary for health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration; (Trivia: Howard Koh spoke at UMass Lowell’s graduate commencement in 2014).
* His uncle, Harold Koh, served as dean of Yale Law School and was legal adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.
POLITICOS DEVOURING every word of the saturation Tsongas coverage might have noticed Murphy Meehan is now Meehan’s former wife.
The couple filed for divorce in February 2016. The divorce was finalized on June 30, 2016, according to documents on file at the Essex County Family and Probate Court in Salem. The cited “irreconcilable differences.”
They married July 19, 1996, when Meehan was in Congress and Murphy Meehan was a vice president at Lawrence General Hospital.
Both parents share joint custody of their two children, Robert, 17 and 14-year-old Daniel. Murphy Meehan lives in the family home in Andover with the couple’s children.
“Though we are no longer married, Ellen and I remain best friends, trusted advisors and are raising our two boys together,” Meehan said in a statement to The Column. “Whatever she decides to do, she has my full and unconditional support. She would make a great member of Congress.”
Murphy Meehan said: “We talk daily, remain close, and we’re family and always will be.”
IN THE frenzy of the Tsongas story, the declared candidacy of Chelmsford Republican Scott Gunderson was lost in the shuffle.
Gunderson has been campaigning since March, and has found a mentor in U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican whose district is demographically similar. When Gunderson is not working as aerospace defense market manager for Parker Hannifin or traveling to Washington, D.C., to learn from Sessions, he’s getting out to 3rd District towns to introduce himself and met voters.
Gunderson, who grew up in Wisconsin, attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served in the U.S. Navy for 26 years. As a pilot, he flew in both Gulf Wars, in Kosovo and participated in air reconnaissance missions aimed, and served on the ground as infrastructure officer in Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2007 and 2008. He served as a staff officer for now-U.S. Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis at U.S. Central Command, and retired in 2014.
“Working in that type of environment, I’ve got a good understanding of how government works and how the military works, in addition to being a pilot,” Gunderson said.
If elected, Gunderson said his top goals will be to lower taxes for businesses, increase accountability, prioritize military spending and investment in veterans’ medical care and be present and accessible in the district when Congress isn’t in session.
REPUBLICAN GARDNER Mayor Mark Hawke is giving some thought to running for the 3rd seat, held by Democrats since the mid-1970s.
Hawke said he “had assumed she would run again and hadn’t given the seat a second thought.”
Now, Hawke told the State House News Service in a Facebook message he is “looking at the district and doing some research.”
The News Service also reported Andover Republican Rep. James Lyons said he will not run, and plans to start campaigning for his own re-election in September, getting a relatively early start on meeting voters and hearing about their issues.
“I’m looking forward to running for re-election,” said Lyons, whose district also include a slice of Tewksbury.
IN A crowded field, like the one Tsongas faced during her first election in 2007, it’s important to find ways to stand out.
Fred Faust, a local developer and long-time friend of the Tsongas family, was frustrated that his candidate was struggling to get coverage from the media, but he thought he had a winning idea.
He organized a “river day,” where Tsongas would get in a boat at different locations throughout the congressional district. The cameras and reporters wouldn’t be able to resist, he thought.
Turns out, they could.
After a logistical nightmare, the campaign had nothing to show for it. Not a single news story or picture.
“It was embarrassing and every other day someone in the campaign would say ‘Hey Fred, how about we do another river day?'” Faust said.
One person who never complained was Tsongas.
In fact, she held more river days after she was elected. They were much more successful.
DRACUT TOWN Manager Jim Duggan’s decision to place a moratorium on lateral transfers to any other Civil Service police department has caused a shift of attitudes within the Board of Selectmen.
Selectman Tony Archinski, who has given Duggan the highest ratings among selectmen in performance evaluations in 2015 and 2016, said he is very disappointed.
Selectman Joseph DiRocco Jr., who has criticized Duggan in the past and gave the town manager the lowest ratings on his 2015 and 2016 performance evaluations, said selectmen have no say.
“The town manager’s job is to worry about Dracut, not worry about Lowell or who is going there,” he said.
In a Aug. 3 memo Duggan sent to officials at the New England Police Benevolent Association (NEPBA), the town manager said “some members” would potentially be seeking to lateral transfer to the Lowell Police Department or other departments within the Civil Service system.
“Unfortunately, given our current staffing levels, until further notice, I am imposing a moratorium on lateral transfers to any other civil service police department,” Duggan’s memo read.
Duggan in last week’s Board of Selectmen meeting said up to eight officers are potentially interested in a lateral transfer, including one officer who he said reached out to selectmen individually.
DiRocco said that officer is Sgt. James Quealy, whom he described as a great guy who does a good job. When reached by phone on Friday, Duggan did not deny it was Quealy.
Archinski, who works for the NEPBA said that he’s in a very strange position because he was a police officer for 26 years. He said he knows how the police officers feel.
“I’m very disappointed and I’m in disappointed in two things,” Archinski said. “One, he’s (Duggan) not reading what the majority of the board would like him to do. And number two: he’s not willing to compromise.”
“How do you compromise that?” Duggan said on Friday in response to Archinski’s comments. “What is the cutoff?”
Duggan said he is not going to compromise the safety of Dracut, adding that it would also cost the town about $160,000 per lateral transfer position in order to pay overtime, fill the vacated position and send a new recruit to the police academy and pay for the academy.
“My decision was not done in a vacuum,” the town manager said. “I conferred with the Chief (Peter Bartlett) and his leadership on the impact that this would have on the department and I concluded that the decision that was made was in the best interest of the town, bottom line.”
IT WAS a lovefest last week when UMass Lowell and city officials signed the much-anticipated master agreement. It was a far cry from when city officials last year expressed outrage over the university purchasing yet another property.
The “historic” master agreement lays out the university’s commitments to the city. The agreement, initiated by UMass Lowell, includes promises by the university to contribute $3 million over 20 years for bridge repairs, and $1.6 million for maintenance on the Lower Locks parking garage.
“He is a very tough negotiator,” UMass Lowell Chancellor Jacquie Moloney said about Lowell City Manager Kevin Murphy, resulting in laughter from the audience. “That might be why it took us close to a year (on the agreement). Kidding.
“But the truth is he’s also a master of compromise, and he probably learned that in the great service he gave to this community as a state representative,” she added about Murphy.
Murphy took the mic: “Geez, I just realized after hearing all that money the city’s getting I did a better job than I ever thought, Jacquie,” which drew even more laughter from attendees.
The master agreement covers efforts from community policing and public safety to snow removal and economic development.
UMass Lowell’s $3 million pledge for bridge repairs will go toward matching funds for a $13.4 million federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant.
The parties also signed the lease agreement between the city and university for LeLacheur Park, home to UMass Lowell’s baseball team and the Lowell Spinners. UMass Lowell, which donated land for the park’s construction, has committed $85,000 to fund upgrades necessary for the university’s Division I baseball program and the Spinners.
Contributing to The Column this week: Todd Feathers and Rick Sobey in Lowell, Alana Melanson in Chelmsford, Amaris Castillo in Dracut, Enterprise Editor Christopher Scott and the State House News Service.
