Mass. Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Doughty: The Boston.com interview

Chris Doughty says he’s the MassGOP’s best shot at beating Democratic powerhouse Maura Healey for governor in November.

At least one poll has shown Healey, the attorney general and presumptive Democratic nominee for the corner office, could handily best either Doughty or his fellow Republican Geoff Diehl — whoever emerges from the party primary on Sept. 6.

But, Doughty, a Wrentham businessman, maintains he has the practical sensibility and experience that Massachusetts voters have consistently reached for in their conservative governors, to balance power, politics, and priorities between the left-leaning Legislature and the state’s chief executive office.

“I have an opponent on my far right, I have an opponent on my far left, and I speak to the 80 percent of the exhausted middle that just wants a governor that can run it well,” Doughty said, referencing the two other candidates, one of whom is Donald Trump’s pick for the job and the other being the state’s top prosecutor who continuously sued the former president during his time in the White House.

“Remember, (the state’s) a $52 billion corporation, 44,000 employees, the largest employer in the state. I’m seeking the job to be the CEO of the largest employer in our state, and I want to do a good job,” Doughty said, speaking to Boston.com on a recent Zoom call. “I’m trained for it, I’m ready for it. I’m going to let my opponents fight over national politics. I’m going to let them fight over their extremism. That’s not me.”

So what is Doughty for?

Since entering the race in January, Doughty, president of Capstan Atlantic, a metal gear manufacturer, has set a focus on making Massachusetts more affordable, citing especially how a number of large employers have either planned to leave or have already left the Bay State recently.

State officials have overtaxed constituents — and then overspent their money, Doughty contends.

“I look at our state budget, it’s a lot of waste going on,” he said. “Coming from the business world and the private sector, I don’t like to waste people’s money. I feel like our policymakers have a stewardship and a duty to ensure that we’re not wasting people’s hard-earned money.”

On the trail, Doughty, a father of six, has called for more investments in the state’s education system, from early childhood education through trade schools and college.

Doughty came to the state 34 years ago with his wife, before the couple went on to build Capstan, which now employs 300 skilled employees and spans two facilities, according to his profile. In 2016, the Massachusetts Economic Council awarded Capstan the gold medal for job growth and economic expansion.

“I’m not a career politician so I come to this to solve some problems. That’s why I’m here,” he said. “I’m not here as the next stepping stone in my political career.”

Doughty sat down with Boston.com recently to chat over a myriad of issues, from fixing the MBTA to clarifying his stance on abortion, and how to attract and retain teachers.

Here’s what he said:

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Boston.com: You just put out a tax reform plan fairly recently. Could you take me through what exactly you’re looking at doing and how you would lower taxes for the middle class? The flip side of that question is, how do you balance any deficit in state revenue from those reductions?

Doughty: Well, let me just always say employment is the end game. You have to always start with good jobs for people, good economic opportunity. And this is why tax policy is so important. It’s actually not for taxes, but for jobs, good jobs. Not just nonprofit jobs, but jobs that are for profit, in addition to nonprofits. So that’s the reason you need to have a good tax policy.

There is a careful balance. If you go too high, people can’t afford the taxes and then businesses and organizations leave the state. If you go too low, then you don’t have enough to provide services for people, and there’s many services we need to provide in state government. You have to find the balance. You have to do it in the context of all the other states. We’re not an island. We have to know what New Hampshire is doing, Connecticut, New York, Tennessee, Virginia, etc. And so having the right tax policy is one of the most important things we hire a governor to do. 

That’s why I believe that candidates for governor should put out a tax policy because this reflects what they think is the balance between these two important and competing needs.

So we put out a detailed tax plan. I won’t go through all the details in the Zoom call, but I would just highlight a few.

One is the sales tax. I believe we need to start bringing down our sales tax from six-and-a-quarter back down to about 5 percent. This will put money in everyone’s pocket.

I would like to put a gas tax holiday in place right away, immediately when I get into office, (to) just give people a couple hundred dollars a week, or a month rather, just to help them get through this high inflationary period.

I want to adjust our corporate tax rate to be competitive with the rest of America, so that people know that Massachusetts is open for business, not just high tech and biotech in the city, but also all jobs, manufacturing jobs, industrial jobs, all types. 

In addition, I think I would highlight property taxes. We have some of the highest property taxes in America. I would like to begin lowering our property taxes in Massachusetts so that people can afford to stay in their homes, particularly our senior citizens, where they get pushed out of their homes. As the value of the properties go up, so does the property taxes, and in some cases, our senior citizens can’t even afford the property taxes so they end up having to move out to state-subsidized senior living.

So those are a few areas I would highlight, but the details are on our website under our tax plan.

I know you’ve talked a lot about, especially in last month’s debate with your opponent, about the companies that we’ve been seeing leave Massachusetts lately. Do you attribute a lot of that to the tax situation here in the state or are there other factors in play?

There are other factors.

So according to the business owners that I talked to, there are three main problems in Massachusetts.

Number one, affordability. We’ve talked about that a little bit.

Number two is utility costs. We have the third highest utility costs in America and climbing almost every day. This causes large employers like Raytheon, Smith and Wesson, and other, sort of industrial businesses, to have to leave our state. It’s just because we’re heavy, heavy industrial or utility users.

Number three is taxes, which we were just talking about. And also, we need to create a business-friendly environment; we put out what we call the Small Business Bill of Rights, which is also on our website.

The Small Business Bill of Rights is something that I want to implement throughout the entire state government. I want everyone to memorize it. … I want our state government to be the advocates and partners for small businesses, not the adversaries.

We’re one of the hardest states in America to open a small business. We have so many steps, so many regulations, so many fees that you have to go through to open a small business, that we’ve fallen far behind the competitive other states that we compete with. So I want to make it really business friendly. That requires every state organization to accept that that’s not just, you know, economic development, but that includes, you know, DEP and OSHA and all the regulations that all the business owners have to deal with.

We have our first reader question for you, and this one has to do with public transit. The question is from Laura from Littleton, and she wants to know, “The MBTA is obviously a mess. Would you support an increased tax to fix it? If so, how would you convince the state Legislature to approve it? And if not, how would you find the money to fix it?”

OK, I have a unique set of skills to fix this. I run large industrial manufacturing companies with old assets like the Orange Line. I’ve done many financial turnarounds. The MBTA has sort of two things going on. They have a financial turnaround, which you’re bringing up in this question, but the second one is old assets, old equipment that breaks down often. So I’ve already put out a plan for the MBTA that highlights three areas.

Number one is safety. Before we talk about anything else, we have to make sure everyone is safe. I run large industrial businesses, I always start with safety. So I’ve suggested that we bring in a third party that will do safety audits for us. These are very common. I use them in my business already. They’re professional safety people to make sure our public is safe, number one. 

Number two is the finances. The MBTA’s ridership is down about 40 percent, 30 to 40 percent, but yet the expenses are up about 15 percent, meaning that it is right now in financial distress. The pensions to all those that have worked in the MBTA are underfunded. We’re only about 60 percent funded, so we have that problem on top of it.

The third element is employee engagement. We have to engage all of our employees in problem-solving. Right now there’s a disconnect between management and the employees, and we need to fix that. Again, I’ve been doing that my whole career, so I’m very comfortable with engaging employees, working with them, and making sure that we’re listening to them. 

As far as this specific question regarding taxes or fare increases, that’s the last thing I will look at. We already invest a great deal of money in the T, and you’ll notice people always say, particularly politicians, “Oh, let’s put more money at it, more money at it.” We’ve been saying that for 20 years, and is it working? No, sometimes problems don’t get fixed with just pumping more money into a system. You actually have to fix the structural underlying problems of the system itself.

If we put more money into it, and all we add is more overhead, more management, it doesn’t fix the problem. I’ve seen so many organizations do this. They say we need more money, more money, and then they just hire more management, more supervisors. … What we have to do, what we have to fix is the workers. We have to put more money into the workers and into the assets themselves to fix this problem.

So I’m not sure we need to bring in a lot more money. I’ll know that soon after I have the chair, then I’ll tell everyone what needs to happen. But right now, I’d make that our last resort.

Housing in Massachusetts has long been expensive, but rising rents and a sky-high real estate market have made affordable housing even harder to come by for some, especially in the last few years. How will you approach this as governor, especially for renters, who are more likely to struggle financially than homeowners?

So we haven’t put out our formal housing plan yet, but it’s coming. So let me highlight, there’s a lot of things we have to do. Probably over a hundred, but let me highlight just a few.

The first one is, I would like to take the secretary of Housing and Economic Development and split it into two secretaries. One for economic development and one for housing because these are jobs that have different focuses. Economic development is to grow our state, to help small businesses, to bring in job opportunities. And we need a secretary that’s focused just on housing. 

I would like to have regional coordinators that each take a region of the state. I’d like to break the state up into 22 regions, have coordinators for each one, and give them responsibility and accountability for increasing affordable housing or workforce housing, I’ll call it, because right now who’s in charge? Who’s failing to not have enough affordable housing? I want to put people in charge so we have accountability like we have in the private sector, people that are actually responsible for doing it. That’s two. 

Number three is we’ve got to work with our towns and our cities on zoning reform. This is critical; it’s the hardest thing to do but the most important. Zoning reform requires expertise, and these regional coordinators I’m talking about will work with the towns and the cities to actually move the ball forward to solve the problem. We’ve been talking about affordable, or workforce, housing for decades. It’s time to fix it. This is why I want people to hire me, is to fix this problem once and for all, not just talk about it, not just to get votes on it, but to actually resolve it and to fix it. Zoning reform. 

Number (four) is that we’ve got to make it — reduce the regulations that it takes to build affordable or workforce housing. And I’m not talking Section 8, I’m just talking about workforce housing. Right now, everyone will tell you that to build a condo, particularly in Boston, it takes about $700,000-$800,000. But about $200,000 of that is just regulatory paperwork and expense. We got to make that easier. Take it from $200,000 of doing regulatory paperwork, let’s cut it in half. Then let’s cut that in half, so that begins bringing the prices down to something that’s at a more affordable point. 

The second thing is we’ve got to increase the number of people that are on the pathway to the trades. Right now our Department of Licensure, it’s a struggle to become a plumber or to become an electrician. And this holds back our ability to build enough workforce housing.

The last thing I might say is I just want to make it so that you can get building permits easier. In some parts of the country, in the world, getting a building permit is relatively straightforward. It’s a simple process. Here in our state, as you can imagine, it is multi-step. It’s complicated. It’s difficult, and this holds back a lot of development that we need.

You talked about wanting to split up the state into, I think you said it was 22 different regions. Why that number and what is the thought behind that?

There’s already part of our states divided up that way. It’s a little bit tighter than counties because counties are a little bit difficult the way we’re set up where we have cities and suburbs.

And so you take the city of Boston, that should be like its own specific focus to increase housing supply. But then there’s other areas like in Western Mass. that are much more geographically spread out. So it just makes logical — I’m not creating (anything) new. I’m copying Virginia, our sister commonwealth to the south. This is what they have done to increase their housing supply so it’s not my creation. I’m sort of copying what other states have done.

Our next reader question. This one is from Sean McMahon, who’s from Hudson. Their question has to do with education. “Teachers feel disrespected by their students, parents, and administrators. What steps would you take to retain these teachers and attract new teachers?”

All right, I have been doing this my whole life. I have 300 employees down here in Massachusetts. I’ve had 600 employees. Keeping employees happy is my life story.

You just ask them. You let them have a seat at the table and say, “Do you like your job? What can we do to make your job more enjoyable? What do you need to be satisfied in your work?” And when someone quits, a teacher quits, we have to ask them. It’s called an exit interview. What did you not like about the job? What were the challenges? What works and what doesn’t work? When you listen to people carefully it becomes obvious what you need to do to fix it. 

This is a critical question because education takes place in the classroom. It doesn’t take place in the State House or in all these commissions we all talk about. It takes place in the classroom. We have to make sure our teachers feel recognized, that they feel appreciated, that they feel listened to.

If you take the country of Norway, they say that a teacher is considered at the same level as a doctor or a lawyer. It’s a significant trade. It’s important. Society recognizes them as important contributors to society’s health and long being.

And so as governor, I’m going to have the teachers at the table and I’m going to ask them, “What can we do to make it a better job? What can we do so that you’re in the classroom, not out doing paperwork or doing other things? And what can we do to increase your training?” Because teachers need training, too. We need to make sure we have the best teachers, and they feel well trained, and they feel appreciated and recognized.

With the continuing evolution of COVID-19 variants, I know we’ve been talking about this stuff for two-and-a-half years now, but what should Massachusetts be doing right now, at this stage of the pandemic?

My hope is that we’re on the off-ramp of COVID.

The next governor needs to bring us out of COVID, bring hope and optimism, economic opportunity for everyone. Parades, festivals, fun, kids back to school enjoying themselves, living their full lives. Businesses expanding, feeling prosperous. Restaurants full. Small businesses expanding, people opening small businesses.

We need a governor that is full of hope and optimism and focused on the future.

Also in the health care vein, I know you’ve said before that you oppose abortion except for cases of rape and incest. Do you think abortion should be banned or further restricted in Massachusetts, as we’ve seen in some other states since Roe v. Wade was overturned?

Well, you know, I have been, on this, I’ve been misreported a little bit. I have said that in our state abortions are safe and legal, and I’m not going to change it.

WBUR did a story on you recently that was kind of touching on that. So I figured I’d ask again.

No, I’m not going to change it. That’s not the issue that I have an interest in engaging in. I really want to focus on affordability and economic expansion and opportunity for everyone.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in overturning Roe v. Wade has opened the door for the court to potentially consider other cases that rest on the same legal theory and precedent, including the right to same-sex marriage.

I know we’re in 2022, but in 2014, a decade after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, the Mass GOP passed a platform praising what it called “traditional marriage.” That said, do you believe same-sex marriage is settled law in Massachusetts? And if so, do you think the state should be taking steps to protect same-sex marriage?

I do believe it’s settled law, and as governor, I would not seek to make any changes in that regard in our state.

Something that’s come up a couple of times in this campaign for you is that in 2016, you voted for Hillary Clinton for president. I don’t know if — and forgive me if this has been out there — but I don’t know if I’ve seen if you said who you voted for in the 2020 presidential election. Who did you vote for and why so?

I voted for Donald Trump in 2020. His economic policy with regard to international trade was spot on. I’m a manufacturer, I have seen us outsource so many of our critical jobs overseas.

And there’s been — it’s been unfair trade practices for decades. I’ve seen whole Midwestern towns emptied out. Right now you can’t get a chip made here in the states. There’s so many products we no longer make. Here in Massachusetts, we hardly make anything, and I appreciated Donald Trump’s willingness to stand up. I’m also grateful that President Biden has kept those tariffs in place.

What should voters take away from how you approach this job and what areas you align with Trump? As governor of Massachusetts, I don’t know if you have to worry so much about foreign trade, but how do you want voters in the general election to see your support for Donald Trump in 2020?

Well, I am focused on Massachusetts 100 percent. I would lay down in the road for this state. Got a good education here, raised a wonderful family, built a successful business. I am here for Massachusetts, I am not here for parties or party politics.

I have an opponent on my far right, I have an opponent on my far left, and I speak to the 80 percent of the exhausted middle that just wants a governor that can run it well.

Remember, it’s a $52 billion corporation, 44,000 employees, the largest employer in the state. I’m seeking the job to be the CEO of the largest employer in our state, and I want to do a good job. I’m trained for it, I’m ready for it. I’m going to let my opponents fight over national politics. I’m going to let them fight over their extremism. That’s not me. I speak to the 80 percent of the middle.

Our last reader question for you: This is from Hans Boerma from Marblehead. “Given the great job Baker has done, how would you differ from his policy approaches?”

I would build on the things that have worked. He’s made some good headway on medical costs. He’s done well on housing, but it’s not done. It’s not done, and I think it’s one of the reasons we always hire Republican governors is that the baton passed from one to the next with a very progressive Legislature has worked to keep us going.

We are one of the top-rated states in America on so many levels. And that’s not an accident. That’s because voters have for 30 years hired a fiscally-responsible Republican governor to offset and balance and be a backstop to a very progressive Legislature. And so I will carry on the tradition of a history of fiscally-responsible governors.

What do you want voters to know about you most of all ahead of Sept. 6?

I would say that this election matters. It really does. Keeping that balance in the State House has benefited all of us, and it’s just so important that we keep a balance in the State House.

When you look at other states that have had one single-party monopoly, or control, there are very few that have the success that we’ve had. Maybe none. They’ve become too extreme. They’ve spent too much money or became too progressive, or they’ve gone the other direction and become too conservative. I think that balance is critical.

And I hope everyone takes a moment to really pause and think about that balance and the importance of that balance, historically for our state and for the future of our state.

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