Jamie Eldridge

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Jamie Eldridge

Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from the 37th Middlesex district
In office January 1, 2003 - present
Preceded by	None (District Created 2003)

Born	August 11, 1973 (1973-08-11) (age 34) Acton, Massachusetts
Political party	Democratic
Residence	Acton, Massachusetts
Alma mater	Johns Hopkins University, Boston College
Occupation	attorney
Website	State Representative James Eldridge

Jamie Eldridge (born August 11, 1973) is the Massachusetts state representative from the 37th Middlesex District, and is running to succeed State Senator Pamela Resor.^[1] He was a candidate in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district special election, 2007, finishing third in the five-way election. Eldridge is currently serving his third term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he sits on the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business, the Joint Committee on Election Laws, and the Joint Committee on Public Service. He was one of the first elected officials to endorse Deval Patrick for Governor. Eldridge is an Acton native and the son of a public school kindergarten teacher and electrical engineer.

1 Education
2 Career
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Education

Eldridge attended the Acton Public Schools and graduated from Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in 1991. He was one of the original founders of the school’s community service group, Acton Boxborough Community Outreach. He attended college at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, majoring in Political Science. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu. While studying at Johns Hopkins, he volunteered in the 1992 Presidential Election, and he was elected student body President. During his time at Johns Hopkins, he interned for Congressman Marty Meehan (D-Lowell). He started studies at Boston College Law School in 1997 and graduated in 2000.

[edit] Career

In his second year of law school, Eldridge managed then-State Representative Pam Resor’s successful re-election campaign in 1998. During this campaign, he worked on the historic Massachusetts Clean Elections bill, which provided public financing to political candidates willing to accept campaign spending limits and the prohibition of accepting of special interest and large financial contributions. After the bill passed by voter referendum, Jamie was appointed as the Middlesex-Worcester Senate District Coordinator.

In the same year, he also became Vice-president of the re-energized Acton Conservation Trust. He completed a summer internship as a student Prosecutor for the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office. He worked as a prosecutor in the towns of Natick and Framingham, and assisted on the District Attorney’s Community-Based Justice (CBJ) program in the city of Lowell. In his final year of Law School, Eldridge was elected chair of the Acton Democratic Town Committee.

Eldridge worked for Merrimack Valley Legal Services in Lowell, a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to the poor and the elderly. He worked as a public interest lawyer in the fields of housing, Social Security disability, and unemployment law.

He received the National Association for Public Interest Law (NAPIL) Equal Justice Fellowship; a national two-year fellowship that allows recent law graduates to create their dream public interest project to help the less fortunate. The fellowship allowed him to create the Community Development Justice Project (CDJP), which allowed him to practice Community Economic Development (CED) law in Lowell, to help build affordable housing, start new businesses, and create non-profits to address local problems. Unfortunately, he had to leave his fellowship early to devote his full energies to run for the 37th Middlesex District open seat.

Eldridge was elected to serve as State Representative on November 5, 2002. Upon his election to the state legislature, Eldridge became the first elected official in the history of Massachusetts to be elected as a Clean Elections candidate. To date, he remains the only such elected official, as the Massachusetts Clean Elections law was repealed a little over a year later. He was first sworn in as State Representative on January 1, 2003, when he cast his first vote in the Speaker of the House election for Byron Rushing over Thomas Finneran. The district includes the towns of Acton (precincts 3, 4, & 5), Boxborough, Harvard, Lancaster (precinct 1), Lunenburg, and Shirley. As a result of the represented towns in this new district, Rep. Eldridge represents many of the residents of the Devens community, a former U.S. military base now run by the state.

In 2007, Eldridge was a candidate in the Democratic primary for a special election to replace Marty Meehan as US Representative in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. He lost the five-way Democratic primary to Niki Tsongas, whom he then endorsed. The Lowell Sun called Eldridge's third place finish a "sign of a bright future".^[2]

Eldridge has endorsed Barack Obama for President,^[3] and was elected to be a pledged delagate for Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.