GREENFIELD — Shiva Ayyadurai, a candidate for the U.S. Senate seeking the Republican nomination, was on the Greenfield Common on Wednesday afternoon to discuss his qualifications and campaign platform.
Ayyadurai, of Belmont, is an engineer with four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a doctorate in biological engineering. He has also claimed, controversially, to have invented email.
As a candidate, he emphasizes his engineering approach to solving problems, which he says distinguishes him from the other candidates. U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III is challenging incumbent Sen. Ed Markey for the Democratic nomination in the Sept. 1 state primary; Ayyadurai and Kevin O’Connor are competing for the Republican nomination.
“What that means is, when you look at a problem, you don’t just look at the parts. You look at the interconnections,” he said. “A plumber does that naturally. An electrician does that naturally. A mechanic does that naturally. But you know who doesn’t do this? Politicians don’t do this. Lawyers don’t do this.
“I’m running against three lawyers,” he noted.
This is not Ayyadurai’s first campaign. In 2018, he ran for Senate as an independent candidate. Now, although he is running as a Republican, he also sets himself outside left-wing/right-wing politics.
“This left-right stuff is what’s separating us,” he said. “Engineers don’t look at things as left-right. ... Lawyers look at things as left-right.”
He also claims that Massachusetts party politics are controlled for certain results.
“The collusion is, the Republicans get to be the governor, and the Democrats get to be the senators. This is organized, by the way. So they always run an idiot on the Republican side,” he said. “The Republicans, the GOP establishment, Charlie Baker, they always run a loser. A lawyer puppet to lose to the Democrats.”
To clarify, he added: “Our campaign is scaring the s*** out of the establishment.”
Ayyadurai’s campaign tagline is “Truth, Freedom, Health.” The major points in his platform, he said, have to do with overhauling digital communication, health care and academic research, all of which he says have been compromised by corporate interests.
In health care, Ayyadurai supports a direct primary care model that would reduce the role of insurance companies and, he says, would allow doctors to provide more individualized care to patients.
In digital communication, he proposes breaking the control of private companies like Facebook and Google by using the U.S. Postal Service to create competitively priced alternatives to services now only provided by private companies, as the Postal Service historically has done with mail.
In academic research, Ayyadurai proposes that researchers who receive federal funding would be required to publicize all the data from their work, not just their final conclusions. In the current model, he says, scientists can “cherry-pick” results to support certain conclusions and can be bribed by corporations to produce findings that support their interests.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.