"Surprise" Candidate Announces Run for State Senate

Editor's note: The following is a press release from the office of Mike Barrett.

Mike Barrett has announced his candidacy for the 2012 Democratic nomination for State Senator for Bedford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Concord, Lincoln, Waltham, Weston and large parts of Sudbury and Lexington. The area is represented currently by Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), who has not declared her intentions for 2012.

“These are challenging times,” Barrett says. “People are downhearted about government, and too many incumbents seem to be in it for themselves. It’s a good moment for a fresh start. I have 17 years of experience in the private sector and 17 years of experience in the public sector, so I feel prepared. I envision a high-spirited, high-energy campaign.”

Barrett, a 16-year resident of Lexington, served previously in the State Senate in 1987-1994 from Cambridge. He claims an unusually strong record:

• In 1990 he wrote an attention-getting cover story for the Atlantic Monthly advocating a longer school day and year for American students, triggering a debate that continues to this day. The next year, the US Congress created a National Education Commission on Time and Learning and named Barrett one of nine national commissioners.

• Intensely involved in employment issues, Barrett chaired the Education and Job Training Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures and served as founding member of the state’s Older Workers Task Force.

• In 1989, after other efforts had failed for 17 years, Barrett led a difficult but ultimately successful fight in a then-resistant State Senate for passage of Massachusetts’ first law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Marking the victory, the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts hailed Barrett’s “great courage and independence” and “enormous political skill.”

• As Senate chair of the Committee on Health Care, Barrett focused on health and human services for retirees, the poor, and those with mental, developmental and physical challenges, earning a Good Government Award from the Mass. Mental Retardation Providers Council. 

• Early in his career, as a State Representative from Reading, Barrett chaired the House Environmental Caucus, earning a Special Achievement Award by the Environmental Lobby of Massachusetts. For his leadership in the Senate on toxic use reduction, he received a “Best Bets” award from the National Center for Policy Alternatives. 

• Barrett has been named Legislator of the Year by the Mass. Municipal Association, the Greater Boston Association of Retarded Citizens and the Mass. Developmental Disabilities Council.  Boston Magazine named him “Best Democratic Rising Star” and both the Boston Phoenix and the Lowell Sun named him one of the Ten Best Legislators in Massachusetts.

Barrett ran for governor of Massachusetts in the 1994 Democratic primary.  Unsuccessful, he left politics in 1995 and moved with his wife and daughters to their present home in Lexington. Barrett served for a decade as a gubernatorial appointee to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC). Today he’s Lexington’s alternate representative to the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission.

For the past 17 years, first as CEO and General Counsel of the Visiting Nurse Associations (VNAs) of New England and then as a market analyst and IT consultant, Barrett has focused on information technology and health care. In the late 90s, the VNA nurses with whom Barrett worked began lugging laptops into patients’ houses to document their condition. Later, as an analyst at Forrester Research, Barrett authored a seminal report on the then-new trend of patients using the Web to empower themselves with information.

Today, as a small business owner of Critical Mass Consulting, his own consulting firm, Barrett studies smart phones, social media, inexpensive sensors and even home robots, all with the aim of using technology to help people take command of their health.  For the past five years he’s moderated panels at the annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston and delivered keynote addresses at the industry’s annual Healthcare Unbound conferences on the West Coast. 

Barrett grew up the second oldest of 10 children. He went to public and parochial schools before working his way through Harvard College on scholarship.  Graduating magna cum laude, he co-managed Barney Frank’s first campaign for public office and attended Northeastern University School of Law, after which he was selected to serve as law clerk in the Federal District Court in Washington. 

For relaxation, Barrett sings lead and plays guitar with Arl-Lex Five & Dime, a band performing folk, country, gospel and early rock’n’roll in venues near Boston.