A Sheffield, Massachusetts resident is launching an independent bid to challenge Democratic Congressman Richard Neal of the Massachusetts 1st district. Nadia Milleron – a lawyer and farmer who’s lived in Berkshire County for over 25 years – was launched into the national spotlight when her daughter died in a 2019 Boeing Max crash in Ethiopia. Milleron tells WAMC that her foray into politics is about standing up to corporate influence on government, saying the people of Western Massachusetts are ready for a new voice.
MILLERON: Because I'm ready, and the district is ready. So, I- I lost my daughter, as you know, probably. My daughter Samya Rose Stumo died on a Boeing plane, a new Boeing plane that was defective. It was defective in both production and design, and it went down in Ethiopia in 2019. And before that point, I was pretty apathetic in terms of politics. I didn't want to be involved, I thought it was disgusting. I thought that the people involved were not good people. And I didn't think I wanted to have anything to do with it. I didn't think there was any progress to be made in that regard. I farmed and homeschool my children. And then my daughter died on the plane, and right after she died, we were just absolutely stricken. Like, we couldn't even get off the couch. I mean, we- I couldn't even really plan a funeral or memorial service, my family had to step in and do that, my friends. We were just absolutely devastated. And then we also did not want to engage with the press, we did not want to talk about what had happened. We didn't understand that it was a design defect, we didn't understand why that had happened. But then, people started contacting us in April of 2019. So, the plane crash was just almost exactly five years ago, on March 10th of 2019. And then in April, people started saying, they're going to put the plane back in the air, and it hasn't been fixed- You have to do something, you have to stand up. And this is a terrible irony in our society, that oftentimes, victims’ families are required to stand up. Nobody else- People, politicians and the public, sort of crave that devastation. They want to hear the pain and the suffering, and they don't move, and they don't change policy, unless they hear from the victims.
WAMC: So, on that note, coming from that perspective, coming from that apolitical or even antagonistic towards the concept of politics, to being shoved into the spotlight through this tragedy- How would you describe the kind of changes you'd like to see in the federal government?
Well, what I saw is that if you don't do anything, if you don't stand up, it doesn't stay static, it doesn't stay, like, at a bad level, and just kind of a static bad level- It gets worse and worse and worse until our existence will be intolerable. I mean, trains, planes, you know, all the regulation, all the things that are supposed to keep us safe are just being eroded by the collusion between huge businesses, corporate power, and government, and the money that goes into people's campaigns. So, for example, Richard Neal, over the course of his 34-year time in Congress has received over $70,000 from Boeing, and then other companies like pharmaceutical companies, and then you can see that some of his votes, for example, voting against transparency in pharmaceutical pricing this last December- And he was the outlier in the Massachusetts delegation. No other Massachusetts representative voted against that. So, over time, money destroys integrity, and it destroys representatives in government looking out for us. And that has to be stopped. It has to be stopped now. And what I saw is that when you have issues, and there are many of them, where 80% of the public agree- So, for example, aviation safety. Everybody in Congress flies, and when we went into their offices and said these planes are unsafe and something has to be done, immediately, we got attention. And it was a huge effort, it was a huge lift. But we were able to help pass the Aviation Safety Act in 2020, December of 2020, unanimously bipartisan. And so, what I realized is that there are many of these issues. For example, we need to manufacture more of the goods that we consume right here in the United States. Specifically, we need to manufacture pharmaceuticals here, which- Generic pharmaceuticals have a lot of problems when they are manufactured in regions where there's no supervision, there's no standards that are enforced. So, there are many of these issues that people agree on, and we have been pitted against each other for the benefit of huge corporations, but we don't need to be pitted against each other. We agree – Trump supporters and Biden supporters and people who are libertarians and all kinds of people – agree on core issues. We need better health care, we need doctors, we have a shortage of medical doctors, we need housing. These are all issues that, when I'm on the street talking to people and asking for signatures so that I can be on the ballot, it's universal. And so, with that kind of people power, we can make these changes.
Now, you're certainly fighting an uphill battle running as an independent against a well-established Democrat and in a district that that has been strongly Democratic for quite some time. What is the strategy here to take on someone who has proven to be somewhat resilient to even challenges inside his party like Richard Neal?
Well, I think that is the problem is the party. People don't trust the party. The party undermined the last challenger, Alex Morse, in a horrible way, in an absolutely homophobic smear, which The Intercept publication now found to be unfounded. And Richard Neal participated in that. If you listen to his YouTube debates, he said, oh, you know, you’ve got to listen to the victim, you always have to listen to the victims. But the fact was, there were no victims. There were no victims. It was purely a smear. And that deprived the population of a new, young person who had a proven record in Holyoke, who was going to do good things for the populace. You know, Richard Neal, he hasn't had a town hall meeting in our district since 2017. And that was under a coercion, where people put, made an advertisement, putting him, “where is this man,” and they put him on a milk jug and said, where is our representative? So, the power of the Democratic Party is being misused for corporate gain. And Richard Neal did not move to repeal the Trump tax cuts of 2017. He did not, he said proudly, that he was going to leave those corporate tax cuts in place. And we need corporations to pay their fair share, because without them paying their fair share, our deficit balloons into a huge, totally unmanageable situation. And also, we have services that are cut. So, I am not a politician. I am a regular person with just all the problems and difficulties that a regular person has. But I have had enough, and so have the people of this district. And it is universal- When I go out there and talk to people, can you imagine, people stand in line to sign my nomination papers. I have never seen that. I've collected a lot of signatures for different causes. And I have never seen people waiting for the other people to finish signing so they can sign too.
So, should you be elected to Congress, you'd be taking on any number of federal issues. I'm interested- This conversation about the Democratic Party, there's been a lot of controversy among the base about the Biden administration’s support for Israel during the ongoing military crisis in Gaza. Any thoughts on an issue like that, that might fall into your lap if you made it-
No money for foreign wars. The money needs to stay here. It's our tax money. We have suffering in our district, we have people that don't have proper healthcare, don't have proper housing, we have people that are dying early. So, that's what happens with all of this corporate malfeasance and government collusion- People die, people suffer right here in our country. That money all needs to stay here. It doesn't need to go to kill other people.
Now, if you had to break down broadly how you fall in some avenues of political thought – I know that running as an independent, running specifically under this lens of corporate money in politics – when you when you dial in a little bit as far as being left of center, right of center, how would you break down some of those stances?
I am not any left, right, nothing. I am practical. I am focusing on issues that everybody cares about. We need more manufacturing in our country. We need to elevate our economic situation. People need to get a good wage. That manufacturing is going to provide security- When we manufacture our own food, bring in our own food and our own medicine, that provides security for the people of this country as well as a good wage. So, all of my issues- Getting medical doctors. People, when they moved to this area, they can't find a doctor. If you have a doctor, you have to wait months to get an appointment. There needs to be federal incentives to get doctors not to go into specialties but into primary care and into areas which are doctor deficient. Everybody agrees on that. We need affordable housing. These are, there are so many solutions for affordable housing. There are many people who have worked on this issue for a long time. They need support, and they need to implement that wisdom that they have and the experience that they have. So, I am not any left, right, nothing. I am just a practical person who can identify issues that we all agree on and go after them and make them happen.
Neal has been in office since 1989. His office offered WAMC the following statement about Milleron’s challenge:
“Working with President Biden, we’ve made historic progress by delivering generational investments in our infrastructure, passing the largest legislation ever to tackle climate change, addressing racial injustice, and creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. And there’s so much more good work we can do if we take back the House and reelect President Biden. That’s why I’m running for reelection and am committed to electing Democrats up and down the ticket across the country.”
