Primary Election Date: 07/06/2006
General Election Date: 07/06/2006

Who Am I?

Claire Naughton has been working to improve our communities for her entire life. As a teacher, a parent, and an active community member, Claire has shown her commitment to our families through various displays of leadership and experience.

She holds the honor of being the former chair of the Foxboro Democratic Town Committee, the Foxboro Historical Society and the Foxboro League of Women Voters. She is the current chairperson of the Foxboro Registrars of Voters. She is also an elected member of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee.

Claire ran for State Representative in a Special Election in February of 2006 to fill the conservative Representative Michael Coppola's empty seat (Mr. Coppola passed away in late 2005). She ran for the seat against Virginia Coppola, Representative Coppola's widow. Although she only started out with 21% name recognition, Claire carried both Norton and Mansfield with 51% of the vote and won a total of 45% of the vote in the district. In doing so, Claire was the first Democrat to exceed 39% of the vote for State Representative in the district since 1994.

Claire lives in Foxboro with her husband of 37 years, Dennis J. Naughton, a retired teacher and principal at Millis High School. Claire and Dennis have two sons, Matthew and Patrick.

Why Am I Running?

Although Mrs. Coppola won the Special Election in February, after serving only a few months in the State House, she has already decided she does not want to return to the State Legislature after the end of her current term. Claire, however, is still running an aggressive, progressive campaign to win the House seat and be able to effectively address the priorities of her constituents at the state level.

Claire knows that as a Democrat in the Massachusetts State House, she will be a member of the majority party, and will therefore be significantly more effective in conveying the needs of her district. She also knows that State Government has an important role to play in addressing concerns for our families and communities. As State Representative serving Foxboro, Mansfield, and Norton, the concerns of the families will be her priorities as well. Strengthening schools, making access to more affordable and reliable healthcare for our families and increasing state aid to help the towns pay for police and fire departments are important to the quality of life for the people of the district.

Hold Me Accountable!

1) Education: As a teacher for over 30 years, Claire knows that strong schools help to build strong communities and she will work to ensure that the schools in the district have the resources necessary to give all children the quality education they deserve. Budget cuts on the state level have made it harder to keep class sizes small, and recruit and retain high quality teachers. These are the essential elements of quality education and Claire will work to bring those resources to the district's schools.

2) Healthcare: The Massachusetts state legislature has done a commendable job this year in passing a unique and groundbreaking health care bill that provides health care to state residents who were not previously covered. However, there is more to be done before health care in Massachusetts becomes what it should be for everyone -- for all families and individuals. Claire understands that all of us need to be free from the worry that our health care is becoming more expensive while our coverage declines. She also understands that health insurance reform has just begun.

3) Local Aid: The towns pay for our schools, our police and fire departments, and for other important local services. When state aid is cut, our services are cut and our property taxes are pushed to the limit making it hard for lower and moderate income families to make ends meet. Claire sees that battling over local town budgets is having an increasingly divisive effect on our communities. Because of inadequate state aid, carefully prepared budgets have different interest groups vying for the same money, causing ill will that should not have to exist. Claire will fight to make the state honor its commitment to the towns so that people can pay the bills without raising property taxes.

My DFA values:

Claire believes that the role of government is to support all of our families, not to interfere with their lives and personal decisions. Claire supports a woman's right to chose and will oppose efforts to limit this right. And Claire supports the ruling of the Supreme Judicial Court expanding marriage rights to all couples. Claire will oppose any effort to write discrimination into our State Constitution.

One of Claire's major priorities in her campaign is bringing more State funds into the towns of Foxboro, Mansfield and Norton. A recent issue in the district was the Proposition 2 1/2 override in the town of Norton. The override passing would have brought over $2 million into the state police and fire departments and school systems, and would have only cost the average taxpayer about $400 more per year. While Claire as a former teacher obviously supported the idea of the override, she did not officially stand with either side so as not to drive away votes. Her main position on the issue, however, is that the state needs to be more active in funding local aid to the towns so that there is no need for overrides period. Claire plans to fight to make issues like the one recently faced in Norton a thing of the past entirely.

My Campaign is People-Powered!

Claire enjoyed going door to door to more than 1600 homes in the district between December and February of 2006 during her last campaign. She plans to continue that effort on a larger scale thanks to not only the nicer weather but also the larger availability of volunteers in the summer. Claire hopes to meet as many of her constituents as possible during this campaign.

Already underway as well is our phone banking effort. While only in its early stages, we have several interns and volunteers making daily confimration calls to people who said they supported Claire back in February in an effort to see how many of our supporters from 5 months ago are still with us today. As the summer continues, calls will be made via phone banks to other voters in the district who were less firm in their support, or who were unsure about whether or not to support Claire.

During the special election in February, our campaign did not seek to have house party fundraisers simply because the entire campaign was being put together in a period of under 2 months, and there simply was not enough time. Now that we have a more normal duration in which to organize our campaign, we plan on getting the message out to not only our best volunteers, but all of Claire's supporters throughout the state that they too can help Claire win this election, even if they're unable to vote for her.

Other grassroots components of our campaign include our GOTV (Get Out The Vote) activities including everything from making reminder calls to our supporters before the Primary and General Elections, to sending out necessary absentee ballots, and even driving people to their polling places if they cannot get there on their own.