NORTHAMPTON — Jerry Springer couldn’t have dreamed up a better setup: Republican candidate for governor and staunch Donald Trump ally Geoff Diehl delivering a stump speech to flag-waving supporters on the steps of Hampshire Superior Court while two blocks away, on the steps of City Hall, activists and elected officials were calling for accountability on Trump’s part with the “January 6 Justice: Our Freedom Our Vote” rally.
The timing was a coincidence, as the Jan. 6 rally was scheduled a month ago, long before Diehl announced his event, according to the rally’s organizer, Deborah Pastrich-Klemer of Indivisible Northampton. But the diverging viewpoints made for an interesting lunch hour in Northampton on Saturday afternoon.
Diehl is known as an election denier but has eased up on the “stolen election” rhetoric in recent months, conceding, “Of course Joe Biden won the election — look at the economy.”
“There he is!” cried a Diehl supporter as the candidate and his running mate, former Peabody state Rep. Leah Cole Allen pulled up in their tour bus right where the Pioneer Valley Transportation Authority bus stops on Main Street. Their “Take Freedom Back Tour” is a grassroots effort to reach as many voters as they can (early voting started Saturday) and chip away at Democratic nominee Maura Healey’s big lead in the polls.
The campaign has invited all other Republican statewide candidates to join the tour, and John Comerford of Palmer, running for Governor’s Council, District 8, was only too happy to oblige. “The fact that he’s going to take over the state and bring back folks who were fired, people who didn’t get the vaccine, that’s good enough for me,” Comerford said. “He does what he says.” As for the unfavorable odds of a Diehl election, Comerford insisted, “His chances are good.”
They used to say that guys like Diehl, tall, tanned and chin-out confident, were from Central Casting when you’re talking about candidates for high office, but those clichés are long behind us. Diehl, by most accounts, has an uphill climb against Healey, poised to become the country’s first openly lesbian governor.
As he worked the crowd prior to his speech, Diehl, a former state rep from Plymouth, wasted no time in challenging Healey to a third debate and expressed outrage over Healey’s running mate, Kim Driscoll, backing out of a scheduled debate with Allen.
“Monday was supposed to be the only lieutnant governor debate and Kim drops out,” Diehl said. “I’m not sure they’re comfortable defending their energy policies that will bankrupt our state. Their radical opinions are being hidden. The only way for voters to know where they really stand is for Maura Healey to debate me for a third time, but they’re afraid that their policies will be exposed.”
Of the stolen election controversy, he only said, “There was the potential for election fraud and we’ve got to make sure that that never happens again.”
Diehl was offered a bullhorn by an aide but eschewed it. “We continue to have a money pit in Boston,” he said, proposing the “merging of Massport with the MBTA and stop the bleeding.”
But Diehl quickly touted his western Mass cred, reminding the assembled that he kicked off his gubernatorial bid last year in Hadley, which prompted a “NOOO!” from a few in the crowd, apparently flinching at the mere mention of a perceived liberal bastion.
Though both candidates doubted Healey’s promise of tax cuts and derided her stance on Question 4, which asks voters to uphold a new law that will remove the proof of citizenship or immigration status requirement for driver’s licenses, the freedom they’d most want to take back is the right to stick it to the COVID mandates.
“What we want to do is reach voters and remind them that they have a say in vaccinations,” said Allen, who, after serving in the Legislature, was fired from her job as a nurse at Beverly Hospital for refusing to get the COVID vaccine. “I exercised my right to opt out,” she said, “but it should not be tied to your employment. Parents everywhere have reached out. We want to make sure families have economic freedom — it comes back to what this country was founded on!”
Diehl spoke of a “silver lining” to the pandemic, the concept of remote learning.
“Towns WANT to offer remote learning,” he said. “It’s a solution to the work-around with people not coming back to work.” And he promised to “help people with the cost of home schooling if the public schools are not doing the right thing.”
Pointing to his running mate, Diehl said, “She was pregnant and was fired for refusing to get vaccinated because she was nervous about the side effects. We want to bring back medical freedom and restore jobs!”
As Diehl, Allen and their entourage boarded the tour bus, the Raging Grannies were just kicking off the rally down the street calling for Trump’s atonement. Said Diehl, “Trump’s been out of office two years. You’d be better off asking Biden to atone for what he’s done to this country. If you want to waste your time over something that never will be, good luck.”
Though both events drew small but enthusiastic crowds of 50 or so, the hundreds strolling down Main Street on a perfect fall day got a crash course in diametrically opposed politics.
“Trump and his MAGA Republican allies must be held accountable for their conspiracy to overthrow a legitimate election and for halting the peaceful transition of power,” said Pastrich-Klemer.
“We’re small but mighty!” declared Tanisha Arena, executive director of Arise for Social Justice in Springfield. As Diehl’s “Take Freedom Back” turned in the distance, Arena asked, “What does it mean to be free? As a Black lesbian woman, a teen mom, how much time is it going to take to be seen, to be valued? My rights exist solely on legal interpretation and can be erased. If I wanted to marry a woman, I couldn’t do that until 2015 when someone decided it. Vote like my life is in your hands!”
“We can never think that elections are safe,” said Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra. “Trump and his MAGA supporters are not patriots, they’re authoritarians. We’ve got to hold them … and their racist hatemongering accountable.”
“Sometimes people just lie,” said State Rep Lindsay Sabadosa, referring to a Republican colleague’s charge that Martha’s Vineyard liberals called in the National Guard when 50 migrants arrived there, when it was Republican Gov. Charlie Baker who made the call.
Just then a large red firetruck, adorned in Diehl For Governor regalia, cruised by blaring a horn worthy of the Boston and Maine. “Perfect example!” cried Sabadosa. “They say the election was stolen. We have someone running in Massachusetts who says that. Elect people who understand facts!”
Amherst’s John Bonifaz, founder of Free Speech for People, called Trump the “Insurrectionist-in-Chief!” and urged the invoking of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, where Trump would be “forever barred from holding public office again!”
A guy drove by with a bullhorn out his window, hollering something as indecipherable as a subway announcer, but Bonifaz has some pipes. “We need to learn how to fight back, for all that’s guaranteed in the Constitution!”
Dr. Shirley Jackson-Whitaker, in pure gospel voice, led the crowd in “There’s a Man Goin’ ‘Round Spreading Lies” but not before decrying the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.
“These idiots don’t know a fallopian tube from an inner tube,” she said. “But when they’re making decisions on my tubes, I have a problem with that!”
Of poorer neighborhoods, she said, “They can’t keep guns out, they can’t keep drugs out, but they can take our rights away. The taste of our freedom will be a bitter memory.”
The guy with the bullhorn drove by again, this time in the passenger seat, much closer to the crowd. “MAGA, MAGA, MAGA, MAGA,” was what he was saying, as the people and Jackson-Whitaker sang.
