Gale D. Candaras
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Gale D. Candaras (born 1949) is a Massachusetts attorney and Democratic Party politician who serves as a member of the Massachusetts Senate, representing the First Hampden and Hampshire District.
Candaras was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. She attended Teaneck High School, Fairleigh Dickinson University and, in 1983, she graduated from Western New England College School of Law with a Juris Doctor. After law school, Senator Candaras worked for the Equity Trading and Arbitrage Division at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street in New York City. She is licensed to practice law in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In 1987, she moved to Wilbraham, where she held positions on the town planning board and finance committee and served for six years on the Board of Selectmen before being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1996, defeating incumbent Republican Valerie Barsom of Wilbraham. She was re-elected by defeating Republican challenger Rodney W. Fountain, a Wilbraham town official in 1998 and was re-elected unopposed in 2000, 2002 and 2004. She was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate in 2006, defeating Republican legislative assistant Enrico Villamaino of East Longmeadow. Candaras's district consists of the town of Wilbraham, a portion of the city of Springfield, the town of Longmeadow, the town of East Longmeadow, the town of Ludlow, the town of Granby, the town of Hampden and a portion of the town of Belchertown. She is being challenged in 2008 by Republican college student Alex Sherman, of Springfield.
Senator Candaras’ first committee appointments in the legislature as a State Representative were to the Committee on Government Regulations, the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Personnel. Eventually, she served on all three simultaneously. During her tenure, Candaras has served as Vice Chair of the Committee on Public Service and was later appointed as Chair of the House Committee on Ethics. In January 2003 she was promoted to a leadership position in the House of Representatives, when she received the post of Third Division Floor Leader. In January 2005, Candaras was appointed First Division Chair.
In June 2007, she was one of the 9 Massachusetts Senators to change their vote on the same-sex marriage amendment, having initially supported the amendment.
She is married to Arthur Wolf, a professor at Western New England College School of Law and former attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. Candaras has one son.
