Geoff Diehl, the Donald Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial nominee, challenged his Democratic opponent Attorney General Maura Healey this week to make a pledge to not require COVID-19 vaccine mandates for Massachusetts children.
Individual students and parents should have the latitude to decide “whether vaccination is the right decision for them,” Diehl said in a statement Monday.
But campaign spokespeople for Healey, who has repeatedly insisted her coronavirus-related policies as governor would be rooted in science and data, declined to comment to MassLive Monday afternoon about the pledge.
A vociferous opponent of pandemic-related government mandates, Diehl has repeatedly bashed Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu for their COVID requirements, intended to bolster public safety as the virus continued to circulate widely.
Diehl and his lieutenant governor running mate Leah Allen have escalated their anti-vaccine mandate rhetoric in recent days as vaccine advisers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that most COVID-19 shots be added to immunization schedules for children, adolescents and adults. The recommendation is not a mandate, though, and individual states can choose how they want to update their immunization schedules,
Politico reported.
“As your next governor, I pledge to you that I will not agree to adopting this requirement,” Diehl said in a
video published over the weekend. “A student’s ability to enter school should never be tied to this vaccine. My opponent will do just the opposite. As she said in her last debate, she will not commit to protecting your individual freedoms — she instead left open the potential for unilateral mandates, lockdowns and masking regulations all over again.”
During last week’s second and final gubernatorial debate, Healey would not say whether she would reinstate a mask mandate should there be a “huge” COVID surge this winter. Still, Healey stressed it’s “very important” to keep students in school and businesses open.
“I think it’s something we have to take in turn as things happen, and evaluate and be ready to take whatever steps are necessary,” Healey had said. “I know I’m not a big proponent of making judgments about things without the science, without the data, without the information. That’s just who I am.”
Diehl, during the debate, said he’s not anti-vaccine or anti-masking, though he believes those safeguards are personal choices. Imposing mandates infringes on people’s civil rights, said Diehl, who’s vowed to rehire all state workers who lost their jobs over Baker’s vaccine requirement last year.
But that pledge, which Diehl has said he’ll fulfill on day one of taking the corner office, may be partially unnecessary. Some fired workers who sought religious exemptions from Baker’s mandate, including a janitor and driver’s license examiner at MassDOT, have been offered their jobs back, MassLive reported Tuesday.
Source: https://www.masslive.com/politics/2022/10/diehl-challenges-healey-to-anti-vaccine-mandate-pledge-for-mass-kids.html
Original source can be found here.
