Stoneham resident Caroline Colarusso is no stranger to elected politics.
The 55-year-old has served on the Stoneham Board of Selectmen since 2015 and has run for state representative in the 31st Middlesex House District three times (2014, 2016, 2018), earning as much as 48.6 percent of the vote in 2014 against incumbent state Representative Michael Day (D-Stoneham).
Now, she is running for federal office: to represent Massachusetts’s Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Fifth covers towns and cities north, west, and southwest of Boston. It stretches from Winthrop in the east to Southborough in the west, and as far south as Holliston.
Colarusso is the only Republican pursuing the job in what Cook PVI calls a D+18 district, meaning it’s 18 points more Democratic than the national average. After the uncontested September 1 primary, Colarusso will likely face in November incumbent U.S. Representative Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Melrose who has been in office since December 2013.
Clark, 57, served a school committee member in Melrose before being elected state representative in 2008 and state senator in 2010. She serves as vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, which makes her sixth in the Democratic leadership. Clark has a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 3.31 (out of a possible 100).
During the six full years Clark has served in Congress, her Americans for Democratic Action liberal rating has averaged 97.5 out of a possible 100. (Those ratings were in 2014 (100 percent); 2015 (100 percent); 2016 (100 percent); 2017 (100 percent); 2018 (95 percent); and 2019 (90 percent).)
Colarusso, asked why she is running, said that in addition to disagreeing with Clark on policy, she is concerned with the direction in which the Democratic Party is headed.
“Democrat leaders dream of a government that manages the most complicated economy in history,” Colarusso said in a telephone interview. “They think they can produce specific social results. This approach has failed across the globe time and time again for more than 2,000 years. America is unique, America innovates, America is filled with achievers. America is a nation built on liberty. We must stop those determined to construct a system that is based on politicians picking winners and losers while destroying political, economic, and religious freedom.”
Additionally, Colarusso views Clark as a partisan and ineffective lawmaker on Capitol Hill.
Colarusso said that Clark spends too much time traveling the country to raise money for other Democrats that have nothing to do with the district, and not enough time trying to help Bay Staters.
“Ms. Clark consistently virtue signals and has failed to provide any pragmatic or substantive solutions to problems that plague our state and our country,” Colarusso said. “Ms. Clark’s words are divisive and inflammatory at a time when our country needs to come together and heal. She selfishly places her political aspirations over those of the people she is elected to represent.
“The Congresswoman is fixated on impeaching President Trump instead of working towards the betterment of our nation,” she added. “She assists Nancy Pelosi at all costs. She has lost her way. She votes how she is told.”
Colarusso grew up in the North End of Boston. She is a graduate of Emmanuel College.
She said she is pro-life.
If elected, she said, education would be her top priority.
“I will work for equal educational opportunities for all children especially for urban communities, where students deserve a chance to pursue the education they choose and need, not the school dictated by their zip code,” Colarusso said.
“Parents in urban communities need school choice for children to be able to compete globally. My opponent despises school choice, and is committed to leaving the next generation of children in poor economic standing, without the full opportunity to thrive, escape poverty, and live the American dream.”
When asked how her experience in local politics — as a selectman and having run for state representative in the past — Colarusso said she is more in touch with the people of the district than Clark.
“Local officials are used to being accountable to the people,” she said. “I will provide a perspective that has gone missing in Congress. Too many members of Congress know how the rest of us should think, live, and thrive. Our elitist members of Congress are too far removed from the people who elected them. They are run by lobbyists in Washington D.C..
“I face the people in my district every day, at the pharmacy, in the grocery store, and filling up my gas tank,” she added. “I am just a girl from the North End who loves her state and her country.”
Clark’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
A Republican from Massachusetts has not been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since 1994.
Caroline Colarusso (courtesy photo) 
