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Massey at WNHH FM: "Let people do what they want with their money."
Michael Massey found Donald Trump in prison. Now he’s living straight — and running for Congress with a mission to boost the role of fellow ”Urban Black” Republicans in their party.
Massey didn’t find Trump in his cell. He found him on TV. And everything changed.
“I set a plan,” Massey said, “because of Donald Trump.”
Massey, a 44-year-old native New Havener who co-owns the Black Corner Store on Edgewood Avenue, said that Tuesday during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
He came on air to discuss his just-announced candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Third U.S. District Congressional seat, which Democrat Rosa DeLauro has held since 1991. Massey is so far contending with one other known GOP hopeful for the nomination, Rafael Irizary.
Massey grew up in New Haven. He said was never into politics until he was deep into a decade-long federal prison sentence on firearms, bank robbery, and drug charges.
“There was this old Black dude I used to pay chess with,” he recalled. One day he noticed the man watching “white TV” instead of the box the Black inmates watched
“Why you always sitting over here with these racist white people?” Massey remembered asking. The man replied that the other TV had stations like CNN that distorted the news.
So Massey watched a speech with the man. A speech by then-President Donald Trump. He liked the speech. “It seemed like he wanted to do good things for the country.”
Afterwards, his friend suggested Massey watch how CNN covered the speech. “They’re going to say it was racist, it was sexist,” the man told Massey.
“It was like he had a crystal ball.”
So Massey started listening to more Trump speeches. He read a Donald Trump book.
“I found myself moving over to the conservative side,” he said. “I set a plan because of Donald Trump. I was going to come home, write a couple books. I was going to get a store so I could be more involved with my people. And I was going to run for Congress.”
Massey left prison in 2018. He didn’t look back.
He and his wife Kenia opened the community-minded Black Corner Store at Platt and Edgewood across from Troup School. He wrote an “action adventure book” coming out next month called Burn and Break. Michael stayed interested in Trump. He crafted a set of issues based on his experience living in New Haven. He watched inmates he know get released early and receive a second chance at life thanks to the First Step Act Trump signed in December 2018.
And this month he launched that Congressional campaign. He’s promoting the idea of an “Urban Republican Movement” breaking the Democrats’ stranglehold the Black vote. “Our cities are a disaster. Our schools are a disaster” under failed Democratic leadership, he argued.
Massey has crafted a set of proposals based on his life experiences.
For instance: He may be the first Congressional candidate in recent memory to call for a different approach to “EBT” (electronic benefits transfer) cards — through which people receive food stamps.
The government restricts what people can buy with those cards. Massey wants to change that.
If people feel they need toilet paper, for instance, they should be able to buy toilet paper at his store, he said.
If they feel it makes sense and saves money to eat at McDonald’s instead of buying groceries, they should be able to do that, he said.
“If I’m making fried chicken at the corner store,” he noted, “they can’t buy it.” And people do love the fried chicken he makes at the store.
He argued that the restrictions “force” people to sell food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar so they can buy what they want. He’d change that by lifting the restrictions.
He was asked about a scheme in which some people in New Haven addicted to drugs were found to sell food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar to a shopowner. They bought drugs; the shopowner bought supplies at half cost. Should government try to restrict that from happening?
“Restricting it doesn’t stop that,” he said. Instead, allowing people to get cash at ATMs with their EBT cards would prevent them from selling their benefits at a loss instead.
And if they spend that money on drugs?
“Let people do what they want with their money. You can’t say because somebody’s going to do something bad with it, you’re going to punish everyone else.”
Another policy proposal: Let private companies pay inmates who volunteer for jobs $5 an hour to do work for them inside prisons.
That would help rehabilitate prisoners, he said. And over 10 years, a prisoner could accumulate up to $50,000 with which to start life fresh upon release.
Massey was asked if that plan would take away minimum-wage for higher-paying New Haveners who don’t go to prison.
He responded that he would envision the jobs coming back from overseas, where companies had sought cheaper labor.
“This policy will put a whole lot of money in the hands of these urban neighborhoods. Of course not every job is going to be done by people in jail. However, at the very least, it will curb recidivism. People come home now strong, mad, ten years removed from anything they knew. They angry and they broke. You shove these people back into our neighborhoods we have to deal with.
“We’re not going to have answers to everything. It’s a super plus, especially for urban neighborhoods that move the vote.”
Massey borrowed a proposal from Trump to create $5,000 “baby bonuses” for single moms over 18 and $10,000 for married couples to “create a financial incentive to wait to have a child until they are adults” and “increase the likelihood of men becoming fathers instead of baby daddies.” He called the plan a constructive way to combat abortion; while not setting a firm number, he said he opposes abortions in the eighth or ninth month but believes they should be legal earlier in pregnancies.
And he called for ending government-provided shelter and other aid to undocumented immigrants; the country’s too far in debt and should first take care of people in need who are already here.
Click on the above video to watch the conversation with Congressional candidate Michael Massey on WNHH FM’s“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of Dateline New Haven.