Meet Christine

Christine Barber has spent a decade doing what too few legislators are able to successfully do, writing progressive values into law and getting them passed.

First elected to the State House in 2015, Christine is the first woman to represent her district and has built one of the strongest legislative records on Beacon Hill. She authored and passed the Work and Family Mobility Act, giving all residents the right to apply for a driver's license regardless of immigration status after a 17-year fight. She authored Dignity Not Deportations, a major provision of the PROTECT Act, the strongest immigrant protection legislation in the country. She passed Salary Range Transparency, requiring employers to disclose pay ranges in job postings. She eliminated copays for insulin and inhalers, expanded ConnectorCare to cover thousands more working families, and secured $103 million in savings by authorizing MassHealth to negotiate prescription drug prices directly with manufacturers.

As Chair of the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, Christine is leading the nearly $3 billion MassReady Act environmental bond bill. She passed the electric bus mandate: all new MBTA buses electric by 2030, and championed the Green Line Extension, fare-free buses, and clean energy investment across the region. As House Chair of the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators, she has been a career-long champion of reproductive freedom, fighting to protect the ROE Act and shield federal rollbacks.

Christine has secured nearly $25 million in direct local investments for Somerville and Medford, from Clarendon Hill affordable housing to Alewife Brook safety improvements to the Mystic Community Market.

Before Beacon Hill, Christine spent eight years as a health policy expert at Community Catalyst, where she helped build the grassroots campaigns that made the Affordable Care Act possible. Earlier in her career, she served on the State House staff team that drafted Massachusetts' landmark 2006 health reform law, the bill that became the national blueprint for the ACA.

Now Christine is running for State Senate in the 2nd Middlesex District : Somerville, Medford, Cambridge, and Winchester, to bring that same record of results to the fights ahead: housing, transit, climate, immigrant rights, disability rights, and health care.

The daughter of a public school teacher and manufacturing plant manager, Christine holds a Master's in Public Policy from UMass Amherst and a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross. She lives in Somerville with her partner, Ryan, and their two cats, Rafi and Roscoe.