State Rep. Sally Kerans Shares Perspective On State House Return

DANVERS, MA — Sally Kerans said it was a strange feeling stepping back into the State House for one of the first times since she represented Danvers, Peabody, and at that time Topsfield, in the 13 Essex District 24 years ago.

Having won election back to the seat, which now represents a precinct in Middleton instead of Topsfield, in November, she was looking forward to her official swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday despite the coronavirus restrictions that meant there were only about two dozen people in the House Chamber and no family members allowed to be part of the occasion.

Kerans told Patch that while "it wasn't exactly the same" it was nice to meet new colleagues and that she walked out of the iconic building uplifted, and encouraged, and looking forward to driving back to Danvers to share the details of the significant experience with her husband.

She said it was when she called to tell him she was on her way that he told her the U.S. Capitol was under siege.

"To be filled with such promise and optimism and walk straight into this wall of horrific insurrection — there are no other words to describe an angry mob taking over the Capitol — was surreal," she said.

Kerans said she went straight home, turned on CNN, and watched until the early morning hours.

"It's just incredibly distressing," she said, acknowledging that the events nationally cast a regretful shadow over a personally momentous day.

But amid the bleakness of the moment, she said she found a little inspiration in U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's declaration of "Oh, we will finish our work," as Congress later returned to ratify Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.

As she takes her seat in the state legislature following a campaign run through a pandemic, she told Patch her intent is to show a similar resolve when helping Danvers, Middleton and Peabody small business owners recover from a crushing year of restrictions, helping students who have had nearly an entire academic year hollowed out in hybrid cohorts and remote classes and helping find ways to fix MBTA routes that she feels no longer serve 13th Essex residents efficiently and adequately.

"When I was first elected in 1990 we were also in the middle of a fiscal crisis," she said. "People were extremely angry. But the way the legislature functions have changed have been incredibly productive."

She said many of the changes deal with technology — allowing that email was just starting to become commonplace when she left Beacon Hill in 1997.

"I told one of the tech guys that this week and he asked me what we used to use before that," she said. "I told him we sent a lot of letters. There was a lot of mail."

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With less in-person interaction at least to start her term because of pandemic protocols, she said she still plans to find ways to reach out to small businesses and make them aware of the funds available to hopefully help them through to the other side of the health crisis.

"My top priority remains a strong response to COVID," she said. "I am very concerned that the $668 million (state relief fund) gets in the hands of small businesses. I have talked with some of them and they said they weren't able to get any type of help as of yet. A lot of my time will be spent trying to help businesses and people access the help that's out there.

"Small businesses really need attention."

She said she also wants to do what she can to make sure the coronavirus vaccine gets out "equitably and sensibly" and work to mitigate what she called "the continuing fallout educationally" of the year of the disrupted school schedule.

She added that she plans to look into ways to convince the MBTA to redesign bus routes so they are more helpful in bringing residents to downtown areas of Danvers and Peabody, and directly to Salem and Beverly commuter rail stops, rather than circuitous routes around the malls.

Despite the harsh difficulties of the pandemic and the painful scenes that played out nationally on her first official day back on Beacon Hill in more than two decades, she said she is looking forward to working to help things get at least a little brighter for her constituents.

"I am excited to be able to be digging in."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)