A debate has sprung up in the 1st Middlesex State Senate District, but not the kind of debate you’ve normally come to expect from InsideLowell and other local organizations.

Incumbent State Senator Ed Kennedy (D-Lowell) declined our invitation to participate in a discussion with his Republican challenger, Karla Miller.

InsideLowell has been attempting to schedule a forum over the last month between the two candidates vying for the local State Senate seat.

“She has made a number of false statements throughout the campaign and I’d spend the entire time correcting her misstatements” Kennedy said when politely declining our debate invitation.

Miller, who accepted our invite early on, has accused Kennedy of “ducking her” not just on InsideLowell, but with other organizations looking to host forums.

“It is disheartening that the elected Senator for the 1st Middlesex, Edward Kennedy, refuses to debate the issues that affect his constituents,” Miller said. “It’s time that the voters of this district hear from the candidates about where we stand on issues like auditing the legislature, the rising cost of energy, and the use of our tax dollars to provide for immigrants who were lured to the State under false pretenses that are costing taxpayers a billion dollars a year.”

Since launching InsideLowell, we have hosted numerous candidate forums, including this past August with the Democrats vying for the Middlesex North Register of Deeds and 18th Middlesex State Representative seats during the Primary election.

In October of 2022, shortly after our launch, we even hosted a debate between Miller and Rodney Elliott, who went on to win the 16th Middlesex State Representative seat against her.

Despite being unable to bring Kennedy and Miller together to discuss the issues, we have secured commitments from both to sit down for individual interviews to discuss issues relevant to the campaign.

Watch for those discussions on our podcast page, YouTube channel and on Facebook in the coming weeks.