Locals Gather at Meehan’s Legislative Assembly
WASHINGTON, April 20 – When Barry Finegold found out that Rep. Martin Meehan would be holding his annual legislative assembly during the week of school vacation, he jumped at the chance to go.
“Every year I get an invitation, and I’ve always wanted to go because its very interesting and you learn a great deal and Washington is a great city,” said Finegold, the Massachusetts state representative for Andover, Lawrence and Tewksbury.
But in the past, he’s never been able to attend the event because the Massachusetts House has always been in session when it was held. “But the fact that Marty did it during school vacation week, it worked out,” he said, because the House is not in session for the week.
Meehan hosted about 200 Massachusetts residents, most of them from the Fifth District, in a conference room on Capitol Hill Wednesday for his 12 th annual legislative assembly, which he also calls “Fifth District Day.” Among the speakers at the assembly were Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry (D-Mass.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), as well as James Carville, the co-host of CNN’s Crossfire.
Most of the speakers raised such issues as Social Security, President Bush’s energy bill and the federal budget deficit after lauding Meehan for his legislative work.
“Marty is such a leader in so many areas,” Kennedy said. “We’ve worked together on tobacco issues, and campaign finance, and he’s been a national leader.as well as working on all the things in the district.”
As Kennedy spoke, his Portuguese water dogs, Sunny and Splash, played with Meehan’s sons, five-year-old Bobby and two-year-old Daniel, beside the podium.
Patrick Blanchette, the Lawrence City Council president, said he was most looking forward to hearing McCain’s speech. “We’re from the Bay State,” he said. “We get to hear Senators Kerry and Kennedy a lot.”
Blanchette, who also teaches at the Greater Lawrence Technical School, also was able to attend the assembly for the first time. He said that he’s been to Washington before and would like to plan a class trip to the city.
This year, Meehan held the event during the week of school vacation so that more people could come. About half of the people raised their hands when Meehan asked if they had been to one of his assemblies before, according to Meehan’s spokesman, Matt Vogel.
As Kennedy pointed out, the assembly also was held the same day that the Red Sox were playing the Baltimore Orioles, whose stadium isn’t far from Washington. Many people planned to go to the game after the assembly.
For Jonathan Blodgett, the Essex district attorney, Meehan’s assembly was more about a chance to do some business.
“I wanted to come down to have a chance to talk to him a great deal about some of the issues important to me,” he said. “We have a drug education program in my office which we’re working very hard on, auto insurance fraud, and gangs. And those were a few things I talked to him about this morning.”
But Blodgett also enjoyed hearing some of the speakers. “I got a kick out of Carville,” he said. “He’s very entertaining. I never heard him before.”
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