I am running not from personal ambition but because I was asked to run by people I respect. I could not in good conscience refuse. People need to step up and participate in the process, and not just sit at home complaining about how bad things are getting. Running this campaign, for me, is a matter of duty to the Commonwealth and to my conscience.
The Governor's Council is one of the least understood offices in Massachusetts, and one of the most important. Its eight elected councillors vote to confirm or reject the Governor's choices for judge and for the Parole Board, vote on every pardon and commutation, and approve the warrants that release money from the state treasury. Most voters have never heard of it. I want to change that, and I want to change how it works. Here is the platform I'm running on.
My Platform
I Am Not a Politician (But My Opponent Is)
One of the main problems with our state and national governments, if not the main problem, is the presence and influence of professional politicians. Politics is public service, not a career.
A professional politician is always running for office, and holds on to office, or tries to, as a lifelong career. If they lose an election, plan B is a job at a quasi-governmental agency, a politically connected nonprofit or a regulatory agency, still living off the taxpayer until the next campaign. And the longer anyone stays in office, the more temptation they meet: sweetheart deals, insider dealing and every kind of opportunity for corruption.
I am not a professional politician. My working life has been spent teaching ethics, logic and critical thinking, in scholarship, and in managing property. My doctoral research at Boston University was on the revival of Roman republican ideals in the Italian Renaissance: active citizenship, and public service as a duty rather than a career.
I believe government works best when it is run by citizens who step away from private life to serve for a time, and then return to it. That rotation in office is part of the republican government the Founders gave us. When politics becomes a lifelong career, it is too easy for loyalty to a party to outweigh loyalty to the public.
My opponent's record speaks for itself. She joined the Methuen City Council in 2018, ran for State Senate in 2022 and lost the Democratic primary, then won this seat in 2024 with 47 percent of the vote in a three-way race.
I support term limits for every office. If elected, I pledge to serve no more than two terms on the Governor's Council, to spend that time mentoring young people for public service, and then to go back to private life, as citizens should.
Public Safety over Politics
“Public safety over politics” is my campaign slogan, and it points directly at the dangerous game the Democrats have been playing with public safety: a contest to outdo one another in public displays of “empathy” and “compassion” for the criminal offender rather than the victim of the crime.
It is on my cards and on my signs because the Council's most important duty is to advise and consent on the Governor's judicial nominations. The judges it confirms can serve until age 70, deciding cases long after the Governor who chose them has left office.
The results of that game are clear for all to see. Violent offenders are released long before their sentences are served, and some go on to threaten, rape and even murder innocent people. In January 2024 the Supreme Judicial Court ended life without parole for anyone under 21 at the time of the crime, and a year later the first eight people convicted of murder under that ruling were paroled. Every justice who decided that case was confirmed by the Governor's Council. This May, a man the Parole Board had released in 2025 was charged in a shooting on Cambridge's Memorial Drive that seriously injured two drivers. He has pleaded not guilty.
The list of victims of violent offenders released early makes for sad reading. This is a corrupt morality, and it must be called out for what it is and stopped.
On the Council, I will vote for judges and Parole Board members with the experience, the temperament and the respect for the law to put the safety of the public, and of victims, first. I will not vote for anyone because of political connections. And when a pardon or commutation comes before the Council, victims and their families will be heard before I vote.
Transparency
The Governor's Council is one of the oldest institutions in Massachusetts. It grew out of the council of assistants created under the colony's charter of 1629, and under the charter of 1691 it had 28 members. It once held far broader powers, and until a 1918 amendment it stood in the line of succession behind the Governor and Lieutenant Governor.
Today its role is narrower but still vital: advice and consent on judges, clerk-magistrates, members of the Parole Board and the Industrial Accident Board, notaries public and justices of the peace, along with votes on pardons, commutations and payments from the treasury.
Yet citizens should not have to file a public records request to find out how their councillors voted. The Council streams its meetings online, but its deliberations are not transcribed and the record of its votes has never been digitized. This year a news organization found that the Council's own rules were not posted on its website, and when it asked for records of the votes, it was told the office was too short-staffed to provide them. In the information age, that is unacceptable. Voters cannot hold anyone accountable, or even cast an informed vote, if they cannot see how their councillor voted.
My opponent's website does not list her votes. Here is what I will do:
- Be in my seat for every vote, and publish my attendance.
- Post every vote I cast, and my reasons for it, on a public website open to all.
- Report on the Council's business all year long, not just when I am asking for your vote.
- Push, from my first day, for the Council to put every councillor's votes and its rules online, free to anyone, with no public records request needed.
- Push to change the ballot so it says “Governor's Council” next to “Councillor.” Without that, voters can easily mistake it for a seat on their city council.
No Treasury Warrants Without an Audit!
Under the Massachusetts Constitution, no money leaves the state treasury without a warrant signed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Council. It is one of the Council's least noticed duties, and one of its most important.
In 2024, nearly 72 percent of Massachusetts voters approved Question 1, giving the State Auditor the power to audit the Legislature. Nearly two years later, the Legislature still has not complied. The Auditor has had to take legislative leaders to court, after the Attorney General asked the Supreme Judicial Court to throw out her first lawsuit. Governor Healey says she voted for the audit, yet calls it a matter “between the auditor and the legislature.”
I have made a public pledge: I will not vote to approve any treasury warrant until the Legislature submits to the audit the voters demanded. I will keep that pledge even if Mike Minogue, my own party's candidate, is elected Governor. Ask my opponent whether she will make the same pledge.
Once the audit is done, I will keep treating the warrant vote as a real check, not a formality. The Council does not write the budget; the Legislature does. But I will read the warrants, ask hard questions when the numbers do not add up, and tell the public when I see spending that looks wasteful. Every dollar in the treasury belongs to the taxpayers.
The Legislature's defiance of the voters is outrageous and unacceptable. It is exactly the arrogance, unaccountability and corruption that set in when one party governs a state without effective, credible opposition.
All eight seats on the Governor's Council are held by Democrats, yet just over two-thirds of Massachusetts voters are not enrolled in any party, and only about one in four is a registered Democrat. A body that is supposed to check the Governor's choices cannot do that job well when every member belongs to the Governor's own party. That is not a check. It is an echo. I will be an independent voice on the Council, and I will make your voice heard on Beacon Hill, whatever your party and whoever the Governor is.
I would be honored to have your vote on November 3.
Bill FalcetanoGloucester