When Leah Allen stepped down as a lawmaker in the middle of her second term more than seven years ago, she never expected to return to Beacon Hill politics.
Then 26, Allen decided to return to nursing after serving three years representing Peabody’s 12th Essex District in the state House of Representatives.
Allen — who then went by her maiden name, Cole — said she never thought politics “to be a life-long career” and wanted to devote more time to her chosen profession.
She returned to work full-time as a registered nurse, received her bachelor’s degree, got married, had two children, and left politics behind.
But Allen says circumstances changed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when her employer Beverly Hospital told her she needed to be vaccinated against the virus to continue her employment.
Allen was pregnant and breast-feeding at the time, and said she had concerns about the safety of the vaccines. She requested a religious exemption, but it was rejected. So she quit.
Now 34, Allen said the experience of having to choose between taking an “experimental vaccine” and losing her job rekindled her interest in politics.
“During the pandemic, I was really frustrated with what I saw as government overreach, with vaccine requirements, lockdowns, business closures and mask mandates,” Allen, who now lives in Danvers, said in a recent interview. “It made me want to get involved again.”
When Geoff Diehl’s gubernatorial campaign approached her with a proposal to run for lieutenant governor earlier this year, she decided to throw her hat into the ring.
Diehl and Allen worked together on the 2014 “tank the tax” campaign that successfully repealed a provision indexing the state’s 24-cent gas tax to inflation. She said the former lawmaker shares her conservative principles.
In the Sept. 6 GOP primary, Allen edged out Kate Campanale, a former state lawmaker from Spencer, to win the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor.
Besides an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, Diehl and Allen are running with strong institutional support from the Republican Party, winning 71% of the delegates at the party’s May convention.
On the campaign trail, Diehl and Allen have been running on a “personal liberties” platform opposing COVID-19 mandates, and pledging to expand school choice and roll back the state’s abortion protections. They’ve also called for cutting taxes and reducing energy costs by expanding natural gas pipelines.
Allen comes from a working-class family in Lynn, where her father worked long hours as a mechanic to care of her mother and three other siblings. She graduated from Lynn Technical High School in 2007, with plans to pursue a nursing career.
“My father works sometimes 80 hours a week so my mother could stay home and raise us,” she said. “They had kind of a tough life, but they taught us about personal responsibility, helping others and working to solve our problems.”
In Massachusetts, the lieutenant governor’s post operates largely in the shadows of the governor’s office.
Besides filling in for the governor, the only other required duty is serving on the 10-member Executive Council, which usually meets once a week and votes on judicial nominations and pardons.
But Allen says she has ambitious plans for the position if elected to the second-in-command job, a four-year gig that pays $165,000 a year with benefits.
Not surprisingly, among the issues she wants to focus on is medical freedoms and pushing back on vaccine mandates in public schools.
She also wants to work expanding school choice in Massachusetts as part of a proposed “parents bill of rights” that she and Diehl recently rolled out.
“This campaign is about standing up for the people of Massachusetts,” she said. “We’re here to protect people’s wallets, their freedoms, and make sure parents have a voice.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.
