LETTER: Mara Dolan, Committed to Education

The following is a letter to the editor: 

Mara Dolan is the best candidate running for the Massachusetts State Senate, 3^rd Middlesex District.  She is bright and decisive and she is my daughter. 

Mara is as inspired and indefatigable about helping others as she is about herself. She has served as public defender for nine years using her experience in social work as well as the law to return young people and their families, as often as possible,  to stability and community life. 

She knows how important work and education are to productivity and social order. As a teen, Mara learned the "Wright" system for keyboarding and was Mona Wright's first assistant in teaching high school students in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to master touch typing. Mara went on to use her skills to work as a legal secretary and to put herself through school. Mara was a champion debater in college and an astute student life-long. She has made her own way since 18, successfully raising a daughter as a single parent. My granddaughter, Grace Ames, graduated summa cum laude from Franklin Pierce University this spring.

Mara was out knocking on doors for Democrats while in elementary school and having political discussions around the dining room table almost since she formed her first sentence. Maybe "I am a Democrat" was her first sentence. She is the co-chair of the Concord Democratic Town Committee and a member of the Massachusetts Democrats  Policy Committee. Her cable program "Right Here, Right Now with Mara Dolan" has brought the best of policy makers and political thinkers to viewers and voters in towns throughout  Massachusetts.  She is very well-informed and a leader on public policy. She really does get the big picture.

I believe she was born to run, to live her Democratic ideals, to work for others and with others for a more positive and progressive society. She will bring the knowledge that comes from hard-won experience to the 3^rd District, to Massachusetts and the country.  I am proud of Mara with all her determination and commitment to education, schools and libraries, to job creation and economic growth, to health and well-being for us all. I believe in Mara and every thing she so ardently stands for. She is a woman for our time. 

Louise Blalock

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