QUESTION: What are the challenges you see in the role of state representative?

JESSICA: My name is Jessica Bradley Rushing and I’m running to be the next state representative for the Sixth Plymouth District, which includes all or parts of Duxbury, Marshfield, Pembroke, Hanson, and Halifax.

I am running to represent this district because I simply believe that we must do more to improve residents’ quality of life and keep this district a thriving community for everyone. Some of the challenges that I see are that years of unfunded and underfunded mandates have left municipalities with budget constraints that can’t and shouldn’t be addressed with overrides.

All five towns in this district this year had a budget shortfall and were seeking overrides on their ballots in the spring.

Residents deserve high-quality, consistent services, but fixed costs are eating more and more of the budgets, and towns can only raise the tax levy by 2 and a half percent each year, which is good, but not when the costs of health care, gas, and other fixed costs are rising by significantly higher amounts.

When you have these constant underfunded, unfunded mandates and budget shortfalls, and we are relying on taxpayers to fill those gaps, we create a situation where taxpayers simply cannot continue to approve those overrides. And we saw this in many of the towns in the district this year.

Halifax is an example. Revenues in Halifax have not kept pace with rising fixed costs. And in the past year alone, the town has been hit with major unavoidable expense hikes. This includes health insurance that went up 14.2%, pension assessments which went up 7.1%, liability insurance up nearly 28%, and the regional school assessment up 6%.

Now, when your town can only raise the tax levy by 2 and a half percent and your fixed costs are rising by anywhere from 6 to 28%, you are going to face budget shortfalls. We simply have to do a better job of bringing state resources back to the district so that towns aren’t continuing to ask to ask taxpayers to sh— to shoulder that burden.

We’ve also seen deferred maintenance in towns, which creates infrastructure needs that can’t continue to be ignored. But when we’re asking for operational overrides just to balance the budget, we don’t have the ability to also look at projects that need to be done across the district, um, that towns may be willing to pass an override for had they not already been asked to come up with money just to balance the budget. And when some towns pass overrides and some don’t, we see the level of services offered, and therefore the the quality of life across the district, different from town to town.

As state rep, I think it’s really critical that we do a better job of bringing state resources back to the district, including as earmarks. You know, there are small projects that can be addressed with earmarks that every state rep can include in the annual budget each year. These projects can be something small. When I was on the select board in Pembroke, I worked with our then state rep, Josh Cutler, to bring $30,000 into the district for a project that we used to replace a playground that was at the Madakis ball fields. It was an old playground, but tons of kids used that space every spring and summer while their siblings were playing on the baseball fields.

$30,000 isn’t a lot of money, but it enables the town to complete a project without relying on taxpayer funding.

I think that as your state representative, one of my most critical jobs will be to bring those earmarks back to the district and to bring more state resources back to the district across the board, including money for our public schools, so that we can see that public schools are fully funded, so that every child in every community in the district has the opportunity to get the best education possible. As your state rep, I would prioritize state resources, which also leads to the question of affordability and supporting working families across the district.

That’s what I see as the biggest challenge, and that’s what I will do as your state rep.

QUESTION: What are the priorities you see in the role of state representative?

JESSICA: As your state representative, my biggest priorities will be to ensure that the quality of life for residents of the Sixth Plymouth District continues to improve so that residents and this community can thrive. Budget shortfalls lead to overrides, and taxpayers can’t bear that burden. Earmarks to offset district projects, but we don’t get them if our state rep votes against the budget and doesn’t bring that money back to our district. My single biggest priority as your state representative will to be to bring more state resources back to the district.

We need to make meaningful progress on fully funding K through 12 education by ensuring that Fair Share Act money is going where it’s intended and where it’s needed the most. We need to reform Chapter 70 funding formulas so that school districts get the support they need. And we need to ensure that towns get the earmarked funds submitted for local projects rather than see them stripped out of the annual budget.

We need to lower energy costs with legislation that would eliminate hidden fees and curb price price spikes. And we need to rein in corporate and shareholder profits within the energy systems and boost renewable energy sources. I know personally that my own utility bills have gone up sharply over the course of the last few years. It’s getting harder and harder to afford to be able to keep your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And we need to do more to ensure that residents of the Sixth Plymouth District have the ability to heat, cool, and and have electricity and power in their homes for an affordable— for an affordable amount of money.

We also need to lower health care costs. We need to cut insurance red tape, cap prescription prices and out-of-pocket expenses, and cut insurance administrative waste. There’s legislation that has been passed and and additional legislation before the state legislature that would do many of those things, which I would support.

And as a U.S. Army veteran, I believe that Massachusetts also has a responsibility to ensure that veterans and their families can access health care and benefits that they have earned through their service. I would support fully funding veteran services, strengthening our networks of local veteran service officers, and making it easier for veterans to navigate state and federal health care programs. When I worked in the office of Congressman Bill Keating, one of my primary roles was to serve as a veterans constituent caseworker, and I saw firsthand how difficult it was to navigate these complex systems. Veteran service officers in each of our towns play a critical role in helping residents access those benefits, and I was proud to work alongside those individuals to ensure that veterans got every bit of assistance and support that they had earned.

I will also advocate for strong support for Massachusetts veterans homes and for the policies that address the unique health care needs of veterans, including behavioral health, disability-related care, and the needs of aging veterans.

And beyond that, I will work to ensure that working families have the support that they need. We need to build more housing of more diverse types so that young families can afford to live in the district and seniors can afford to retire and stay where they’ve lived for most of their lives.

I know as a parent of four kids that it is a really difficult market right now to try and look at housing in the Sixth Plymouth. Housing prices are skyrocketing, and my kids look ahead and don’t believe that they will necessarily have the ability to live in the place where they grew up. I want to make sure that we’re addressing housing, both adequate housing stock and affordable housing, so that when my kids are older, they have the ability to raise their families in the place that they call home.

As your state rep, those will be the biggest priorities that I have, and I’ll work every day to make sure that the families and the communities within the Sixth Plymouth District have everything they need to thrive.

QUESTION: What are the opportunities you see in the role of state representative?

JESSICA: As your state representative, the biggest opportunity I see is to advocate for the residents of the Sixth Plymouth on Beacon Hill for the issues that matter most to you. I know, and I’ve said, that we need to increase aid and funding from the state.

Massachusetts is a great state to live in. We have an incredible public education system. We have an incredible health care system. But we can always do more and make improvements to make life even better for all of our residents.

We need to fully fund education. Although Massachusetts has the number one education— public education system in the country, there are certainly ways that we could do more to ensure that all of our students have access to that high-quality education in the ways that matter most to them. We need to expand vocational opportunities. We need to ensure that school transportation is funded in a way that towns can manage. We need to ensure that all the access that we have right now to free community college across the Commonwealth, that that is expanded, and that we’re also looking at ways to more meaningfully use the funds that we’ve raised from things like the Fair Share Act to direct that funding where it’s needed most within the education system.

We also need to address the cost of child care. As a mom of four, I actually left the workforce for a period because the cost of child care was so expensive for four kids that it made more sense for me to stay home. That was a difficult decision to make, and I was lucky to have been able to make it. But child care is one of the biggest drivers of women leaving the workforce that we see nationally, and that’s true here in Massachusetts as well. We need to expand the number of child care slots. We need to make it easier to build and renovate existing child care, uh, facilities. Um, and we need to see partnerships between businesses and child care, uh, systems so that employees have the ability to put their kids in child care that is safe, high-quality, and near their work.

We also need to address aging infrastructure. All across the district, we’ve seen towns that need overrides in order to build a new public safety building, build a community center like we did in Pembroke. We see towns looking for funding for libraries and for DPW facilities. We know that there’s aging infrastructure, and we need to do more to bring state resources into the district to offset the costs so that residents of the towns have the services and the facilities that they need, want, and deserve. We also need to address the aging infrastructure in our water systems and our bridges, like at Powder Point in Duxbury, and we need to consider climate resilience.

I see this as a major opportunity. There are two coastal towns in the Sixth Plymouth District, Duxbury and Marshfield, and those coastal towns are going to be hit harder by climate issues than the inland towns will. And they’ll be hit harder, and they’ll be hit faster. We have a real opportunity to make meaningful progress on addressing climate resilience and ensuring that the residents who live in those coastal towns are safe when and if major storms hit and when we see the results of climate change.

As your state representative, it would be my privilege and honor to do the work on Beacon Hill to make sure that we are addressing the needs of every single resident in the district, whether that is a young family just building their their lives with young kids or whether that is a retiree who’s been in the district for 40, 50, 60 years. Um, I see this as an opportunity to really get to know even more of the the nitty-gritty issues that people across the district are concerned about, whether that’s beach access, whether that is battery storage, whether that is transportation. Um, there’s there’s a variety of issues across the Sixth Plymouth and across the Commonwealth that I think we need to do a better job of making meaningful progress to address. And as your state representative, I will see the biggest opportunity is bringing your voices to Beacon Hill to advocate for what matters most to you.

CLOSING REMARKS FROM JESSICA: I’m running to represent this district because I believe that we have to do more to improve the quality of life of the residents of the towns and keep this district a thriving community for everyone.

I grew up in Pembroke, and I graduated from Silver Lake, went to Boston University, joined the Army, and spent the last 25 years working in and around government and nonprofit organizations.

I moved back here to Pembroke almost a decade ago because I wanted my four kids to grow up in the place that I call home.

Since moving back, I’ve been deeply involved in the community and in government. I served on the Pembroke Select Board from 2019 to 2022, including as my— as chair in my final year, and I was only the third woman to ever serve on that board. I worked for Congressman Bill Keating on veterans and immigration services, where I was heavily involved in the evacuation of Kabul after it fell to the Taliban in August 2021.

When the U.S. State Department created an office to continue Afghan relocation efforts, I went over to State, where I worked as a deputy director for communication, and for two years helped build the operation that enabled almost 200,000 Afghan allies, people who worked alongside the U.S. mission during the course of our longest war, to follow the immigration pathways they’d earned through their service to our government and to come here and build new lives and pursue their American dreams.

When those operations were suspended by this administration and the entire senior leadership team in my office was DOGE’d, I went on to work as the chief of staff at AfghanEvac, a civil— the civil society arm of relocation operations that is still today working to ensure that those pathways are reopened for our Afghan allies, a step which 80% of the American public supports.

And before all of that, I worked as the director of communication at a nonprofit called the Officer Down Memorial Page, the largest law enforcement memorial in the country.

I want to use my experience at the local, state, and federal levels and in nonprofits to serve this district, and I want to bring that expertise to bear to ensure that the towns in the Sixth Plymouth can thrive now and into the future. I am dedicated to making this district a place where my children can someday also build their lives and raise their families, should they so choose.

But the stark reality is that the cost of living here is increasingly making that harder. Home prices are incredibly high. Health care and energy costs continue to surge. And towns’ budgets are struggling to keep up with rising costs. As a result, the services that residents need, want, and deserve are being cut, and it just makes it harder and harder for people to get ahead.

I am the oldest daughter of two union members: my mom in the Mass Teachers and Mass Nurses— Mass Nurses Associations, as she worked as the school nurse at Whitman-Hanson High School for more than 20 years, and my dad in the Letter Carriers union. Both of my parents served as reps in their respective organizations, and I grew up understanding that unions are the means by which families achieve stability, dignity, safe working conditions, and a fair shot. I know that every opportunity I’ve been given in my life was the result of their strong union jobs, which is why I am such a strong union supporter, and I am so proud to have the endorsement of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and of former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.

I have spent most of my adult life working in public service because I believe it to be a worthwhile calling. I’m extremely proud to be a member of the inaugural cohort of the American Service Fellows at the Harvard Kennedy School. This year, I am earning my master’s in public administration and learning even more about how best to serve this country, this Commonwealth, and this district.

I am running for state rep because the rising costs of housing, health care, and child care are outpacing wages. The affordability crisis is forcing seniors, young families, and working people out of the communities they have long called home. It is well past time for Beacon Hill to take meaningful action to make Massachusetts more affordable and ensure that every family has an opportunity to build a future here.

The time to act to address these issues is now.

This past cycle, every single one of the towns in this district faced a budget shortfall and sought an override to bridge those budget gaps. But we cannot keep asking taxpayers to shoulder the burden and foot the bill. We have to take steps to bring more state resources into the district for schools and for infrastructure and to offset the climbing costs of health care and energy. We can’t afford to wait, and we can’t afford to have a representative on Beacon Hill who is more interested in taking performative votes against the annual budget than he is in bringing actual money back to these towns.

This election is just a couple of weeks away, on November 3rd. Early voting is open from October 17th to October 30th. For the next few weeks, I and my campaign will be laser-focused on talking to as many voters across the district as possible in— in me— in in as many ways as possible, whether that’s knocking doors, making phone calls, sending texts, or sending mail. We’re talking to people one-on-one about the issues that matter to them. And I’m really proud to have the support of so many folks, incredible folks across all five towns, and I’m excited to keep building the momentum that we’ve already seen to get us across the finish line on November 3rd so that I can get to work for the residents of this district.

To learn more about me, about my campaign, and about my priorities for the Sixth Plymouth, please go to www.electjbr.com. You can sign up to volunteer or request a lawn sign. Follow me on social media and join this momentum. Join this team to get us across the finish line. And please vote for me on November 3rd.

Thank you.