Goldberg aims to revitalize state
Lt. gov. hopeful's experience vast
POLITICAL CANDIDATE
Deborah B. Goldberg wants to be known as more than the Brookline woman whose grandparents founded the Stop & Shop supermarket chain.
What she really wants is to be lieutenant governor, and she is running a determined and well-financed campaign against competitors Timothy P. Murray, mayor of Worcester; Andrea Silbert of Harwich, founder of a nonprofit women's business group; and Dr. Sam Kelley of Cohasset, a child psychiatrist.
The 50-year-old Democrat, who served six years on the Brookline Board of Selectmen and has law and business degrees, said she'll bring a wealth of business and public sector experience to the job of the state's second-in-command.
Known for her work in revitalizing Brookline's commercial districts, Ms. Goldberg said she'll use the same approach to promote economic development in Massachusetts by working with businesses cooperatively rather than antagonistically.
"I want to be part of the team that gets the state moving in the right direction," she said.
Ms. Goldberg said the state is beset by spiraling health care costs and property taxes, a lack of affordable housing, and job losses that are forcing residents to move away — problems she said have emerged under Republican administrations.
"It's because of a lack of leadership in the corner offices," she said. "I know we can do a lot better for the people of Massachusetts."
Ms. Goldberg, who started running a year ago, has put together a professional campaign team with paid staffers and has engaged the services of veteran political pollster Tubby Harrison. She has lined up prominent supporters such as former Democratic National Committee Chairman Steven Grossman and Lois Pines, a former Newton state senator and Democratic attorney general and lieutenant governor candidate.
As of this month, she had raised more than $310,000, including $150,000 of her own funds, which she injected into her campaign account starting last March. She raised more than $55,000 in December.
Ahead of the party caucuses the first and second weeks of February, Ms. Goldberg and the other candidates are busy wooing prospective delegates to the party nominating convention in Worcester June 2-3. To get on the Democratic Party ballot for the Sept. 19 primary, candidates must get the votes of at least 15 percent of convention delegates on the first ballot. The general election is Nov. 7.
Ms. Goldberg often highlights what she said was the compassionate business orientation of her family's former company, and said she'd bring those values to the lieutenant governor's office. Before its hostile takeover in 1988, Stop & Shop had some 200 stores in New England, including many in Central Massachusetts, and paid 100 percent of health care costs for its unionized work force, she said.
"Part of it was bringing everyone along with us," she said. "It was a culture, a feeling. That's what drives me."
In addition to working for former Stop & Shop subsidiary Bradlees as a top manager, Ms. Goldberg founded a startup catalog operation within Stop & Shop just after she earned her master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
In the 1990s, she turned her attention to the nonprofit world, working as a volunteer consultant, fundraiser and interim executive director of a variety of charities and groups, including Adoptions With Love, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and The Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
Ms. Goldberg entered elective politics in 1997, becoming a town meeting member of her affluent community. She was elected as selectman in 1998 and served until 2004, the last two years as chairman when she said she treated the post as a full-time job.
She notes that her town — one of the state's biggest, with 57,000 residents — was able to add police officers and firefighters during the fiscal crisis of the late 1990s, without passing Proposition 2-1/2 overrides that would have driven the town's already high taxes even higher. She also says she forged a good working relationship with public employee unions by creating a fair bargaining process.
On the campaign trail, Ms. Goldberg also said she would push for more funding for public higher education, more autonomy for local communities to run their own finances, and affordable housing by working with developers and residents to produce housing complexes that are acceptable to local homeowners.
Like the other three candidates for lieutenant governor, she is for abortion rights, same-sex marriage and stem cell research, and against the death penalty.
On taxes, she is noncommittal. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, the Democratic frontrunner for governor, wants to roll them back, while his Democratic opponent Deval L. Patrick, has not ruled out a tax hike.
"The tax cut is not a lieutenant governor issue," she said. "If we have a tax rollback, my job is to revitalize the economy. If we don't have a tax rollback, my job is to revitalize the economy."
Ms. Goldberg, who is Jewish, as is Ms. Silbert, said she is proud of her religious heritage.
"I do not think that religion comes into play in this race," she said.
She and husband, Michael Winter, have two children, Evan and Meredith.
Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at ssutner@telegram.com .
