Republican Candidate for Governor Geoff Diehl says if he is elected, he will rehire every state worker who was fired for refusing to take the COVID vaccine.
“And I will tell you this, I will find every state worker who was in on those decisions who thought that was a good idea, and fire every single one of them.”
Diehl made the comments on the Paying Attention Podcast with Tom Duggan last month (iHeartRadio, iTunes, YouTube).
Diehl pointed out that the state has a nearly $3.8 billion surplus and that some of that money needs to go to opioid addiction and prevention, housing homeless veterans, and hiring more police officers.
With Massachusetts Republican Governor Charlie Baker not running for reelection, Diehl first has to get past Wrentham businessman Chris Doughty in the primary. Asked how he plans on beating Doughty who is outspending him on the campaign trail, Diehl says he’s not worried.
“It doesn’t matter how much money Chris Doughty spends; Republican voters want someone with a track record. I’ve been working the Republican ranks for a long time, serving in office, working with local people in my district. I have a lot of folks out there who support the work I’ve been doing. I think those grassroots folks are going to be the ones having their voices heard on primary day.”
Asked how he plans on beating Maura Healey in a state like Massachusetts with Donald Trump’s endorsement, Diehl said it won’t matter.
“I’m looking forward to facing Maura Healey. As the sitting Attorney General a recent WCVB poll shows 46% approval rating. The other big number to look at is, 60% of Massachusetts voters are undecided right now. And you know in a state like Massachusetts if 60% are undecided that means they are not voting for the Democrat.”
“This is one of those cycles like when Scott Brown ran and he won,” he added.
“After the pandemic people started to realize that the government has taken over too much of our lives and they are out of control. I think there’s going to be a lot of pushback on that.”
“Maura Healey is a big Government person I am an independent, personal accountability type person who owns a small business. You know, we believe government needs to provide services, provide them transparently and cost effectively, but they shouldn’t be in control of everything in our life.”
“When Maura Healey said she was proud to block two natural gas pipelines coming into Massachusetts, what she did was drive up the price of home heating oil. That’s going to make it unaffordable to seniors.”
“I lead the charge to stop indexing the gas tax to inflation, can you imagine if I hadn’t gotten that done in 2014? We just found out today that the inflation rate is about 9.1% or higher, we would be paying California gas prices right now.”
Diehl said that he would use some of the excess state revenue to reimburse cities and towns for excise taxes so people will buy more cars in the state. “I want to suspend the excise tax in Massachusetts.” ◊