LYNN — Tanisha Sullivan has a vision to reinvigorate the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office — making the position an advocate on issues like abortion rights, voting rights, and election safety.
Sullivan, the former chief equity officer for Boston Public Schools and the president of Boston’s chapter of the NAACP, said she believed the secretary’s office was one of the most important in the state because of its ability, when “fully activated,” to clear roadblocks facing voters on a number of issues.
“I want to reinvigorate the office,” Sullivan said in a meeting with The Item’s Editorial Board Tuesday morning. “There are things in that office that I think we can build on,” she said, citing the securities division’s enforcement role as an aspect of the office she thinks is working well.
But, Sullivan said, she would like to see the secretary play a more active role in shaping the regulations for new digital assets like cryptocurrency.
“That’s an evolving regulatory landscape. I don’t want to sit back as Secretary of State and wait for them to hand me the regulations — that’s a new industry, I want to be in there and I would want our securities division to be in there doing what it can to shape those regulations to ensure that yes, the public is protected from fraud and bad actors. But that also yes, the people have an opportunity to participate in this industry,” she said.
Sullivan, a Democrat, is mounting a primary challenge to incumbent William Galvin, who has served as Secretary of State for 27 years and is seeking a seventh term in office. She cast Galvin as a frequent opponent of progress, knocking him for a lack of support for abortion rights and automatic voter registration.
“Massachusetts is lagging as it relates to the advancement of voting rights. We’re lagging because for well over a quarter of a century, we’ve had a Secretary of State’s office that has been reactive, reactive to either a lawsuit or reactive to legislative action,” Sullivan said. “We have not had a Secretary of State’s office here in Massachusetts that has been proactive in advancing voting rights. Here we are in 2022 — the biggest civil rights issue of our time, within the last 50 years and Massachusetts has a Democrat sitting in the Secretary of State’s office and we are not leading.”
If elected, Sullivan, who earned a resounding victory at the Democratic Party’s convention in June, said she would fill what in her eyes is a key need for the office — to become more engaged with those pushing to increase voting rights.
“I’m running for Secretary of State because at this moment in our democracy, we need a Secretary of State who’s not only proactive and engaged and working hard every day, to increase voter participation to ensure that we’ve got a strong democracy but we also need a Secretary of State who is a friend and an ally to our voting rights community,” she said.
Sullivan said secretaries of state in California and New Jersey have taken on the more active role she has laid out, citing the Office of Community Engagement set up by Secretary Shirley Webber in California as a prime example of the kind of work the office needs to be doing.
“She went into office and immediately recognized the need for the Secretary of State’s office to be more closely connected to communities and so she set up a division within her Office of Community Engagement because she recognized, as I do, that ensuring that people are able to register to vote is not enough to ensure that they actually are inspired and motivated to cast a ballot, that there’s a need for a relational piece and that the Secretary of State has a role to play in helping people understand the role they have to play in government and that government is for them,” Sullivan said.
Galvin has supported the status quo during his nearly three-decade tenure, she said, and will only continue to do so if re-elected.
“He does believe that the status quo is working fine. And that for me, and I think for all of us should be part of the concern,” Sullivan said. “The status quo is working, but it’s not working for all of us, we can see that [when] we’re looking at it through the lens of the economy. The status quo is not working. Small businesses are the backbone of our communities. They are the lifeblood, they’re struggling. He’s not even thinking about what he could do to help ease that pain because it’s always just been you file your reports and you pay your fees and I give you a certificate.”
Sullivan, the daughter of a Boston Public Schools educator and a small business owner, said “one of her favorite” parts of the job is the secretary’s role as the overseer of the state’s historical commission and archives — in part because of the role the secretary can play in supporting affordable housing in that area.
“There are millions of dollars — upwards of $50 to $60 million a year — that are allocated in historic tax credits. Those historic tax credits can be used for affordable housing projects to help finance them and oftentimes, especially for the smaller developers, they’re critical,” she said. “They can help a project move forward, or they can slow a project down. ”
“This one gets me excited because there’s opportunity here. Currently, that process is like every other process that comes through the Secretary of State’s office today — it’s transactional,” Sullivan continued. “I want to change that process.”
Galvin, in Sullivan’s view, knows he could do more as secretary, but chooses to expand his purview “when he wants to.” Sullivan, on the other hand, believes there’s almost no limit on what she could do as secretary.
“There is no restriction on how the office functions when we talk about its role with voting and elections. There’s no restriction on how the office functions when it comes to ensuring that people have access to public information,” she said. “My vision for this office in many respects acknowledges that this is an executive office with executive authority. The office as it has been functioning outwardly has not fully embraced [its] power to serve our communities.”
“I want to do that,” she continued.
Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected].
