Kari MacRae is trying to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.
The Republican from Bourne who serves on her town’s school committee got fired from her teaching position at Hanover High School less than one month into the school year over a Tik Tok video in which she expressed conservative views; there is also an ongoing recall effort in Bourne to try to oust her from the school committee.
Now, she’s running for the Massachusetts Senate in the Plymouth & Barnstable District.
MacRae told NewBostonPost she’s running for state Senate because of the outpouring of support she has received over the past few months, including people urging her to run for a higher office.
“I just had so many people supporting me, telling me thank you for standing up, not resigning, and telling me I should run for state Senate,” MacRae said in a telephone interview. “One person told me I should run for Congress, but you already have Jesse Brown running. I told my husband that quite a few people had told me to run for state Senate and he said, ‘Let’s look into it.’ We really started looking and I went, ‘You know what? I’m not getting a full-time teaching position in my state anytime soon.’ Nobody wants to hire me now because of the Left’s lies, to be quite frank. They don’t want that kind of attention and publicity in schools. Maybe it’s a sign that I should do something different.”
In the Tik Tok video that got her fired and triggered people in her town to push for a recall election, MacRae said that she doesn’t think schools should teach children about Critical Race Theory and that they can change their gender.
So pretty much the reason I ran for school board and the reason I’m taking on this responsibility is to ensure that students, at least in our town, are not being taught Critical Race Theory. That they’re not being taught that the country was built on racism. So they’re not being taught that they can choose whether or not they want to be a girl or a boy. It’s one thing to include and it’s one thing to be inclusive. And it’s one thing to educate everybody about everything. It’s completely another thing to push your agenda. With me on the school board, that won’t happen in our town.
MacRae told NewBostonPost that she identifies as conservative politically and registered as a Republican earlier this year. She said that she had been unenrolled in the past, but has been voting Republican for the past 15 years.
If elected, she said that her top priority would be economic recovery amid the coronavirus pandemic — as well as cost-of-living issues.
“Everybody’s struggling right now and it seems like only the elite have become filthy rich right now,” Macrae said. “I think small businesses and local police are important right now and making sure kids are safe in schools. You also have retired people at home worried about their security that also have rising heating bills this winter. I’ve been looking at ways to help encourage letting retirees and veterans keep more of their local taxes. I think there’s a lot we can do to support towns and to drive home bills that get blocked because there’s only three Republicans in the Senate. It makes it harder to get any good bills passed.”
On social issues, MacRae said she generally doesn’t think it’s the state’s job to intervene. However, she said that she opposes the taxpayer funding of abortion, that gender identity should not be a protected class in the Commonwealth, and that local school districts should be in charge of education.
“You do you,” MacRae said. “You have your own life. If you’re a good person — no matter what race, color, creed, or whatever — and you treat people with respect, I support you. You have the progressive left agenda saying that everyone is equal, but I’ve seen the bullying and harassment that comes if you don’t 100 percent agree with them. For me, I think we need to focus less on race and sexual preference and just focus on being good people and not dividing us into groups like we’re cattle. It’s ridiculous.”
MacRae also further explained her stance on abortion when asked by NewBostonPost.
“My personal views are that I don’t support it, but I don’t think the government should be imposing certain restrictions,” she said. “That said, I think taxpayer money has no place funding abortion whatsoever and programs like Planned Parenthood. I would fight for our tax dollars to not support abortion, but beyond that, I really don’t have an opinion as far as that goes.”
As for gender identity in public policy and in schools, MacRae said the current atmosphere surrounding the topic can result in well-intentioned people being punished.
“I think it’s a really slippery slope,” she said. “We have to cater to people just for them stating that they identify as something. That could cause some people to get fired from their jobs by using the wrong pronouns.”
The Plymouth & Barnstable District that MacRae is running to represent includes Sandwich, Falmouth, Bourne, Plymouth, Kingston, and Pembroke. It’s represented by state Senator Susan Moran (D-Falmouth). She initially won the post in a 2020 special election against Republican state committeeman and attorney Jay McMahon of Bourne. Moran won the special election 57 percent to 43 percent. Before that, Republican Vinny deMacedo of Plymouth represented the district, but he vacated the seat in December 2019 to take a job at Bridgewater State University.
Moran’s office could not be reached for comment on Sunday or Monday this week.
More information on MacRae’s campaign is available at karimacrae.com.
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