Rep. John Gaskey sits down Thursday; Rep. Norman Orrall follows Friday, on the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11. It’s a second visit for each.

Middleborough is a town most people would assume answers to one state representative. It answers to three. The town is carved among three House districts: Rep. John Gaskey covers precincts 3, 6 and 7A, Rep. Norman Orrall covers precincts 2, 4 and 5, and Rep. Kathleen LaNatra covers precincts 1 and 5A. Depending on which side of town you live on, a different person carries your business to the House floor.

This week, two of those three are coming through the GOAT News studio. Gaskey joins us Thursday, September 10. Orrall follows on Friday, September 11.

Two sitting representatives choosing to sit down with a local outlet, on the record, in the same week doesn’t happen by accident.

Gaskey, a Republican from Carver, represents the 2nd Plymouth District — Carver, Wareham and his slice of Middleborough. He won the seat by unseating 11-term incumbent Susan Williams Gifford in the September 2024 Republican primary, 1,811 votes to 1,258, then defeating Democratic write-in candidate Sarah Hewins in November. Gifford, who had held the seat since 2003, died of cancer that October. Gaskey was sworn in in January 2025.

He came to Beacon Hill by way of the U.S. Coast Guard, where he served from 1989 to 2012 and retired as a chief petty officer — patrolling the New England coast aboard the cutter Escanaba, running migrant interdiction in the Caribbean and drug interdiction in the Eastern Pacific. He was stationed in Massachusetts on September 11, 2001. Military service runs through his family: his father served in Vietnam, his grandfather in the Pacific, and his oldest son serves full-time in the National Guard today. Born in El Paso, Texas, Gaskey worked as an engineer in the private sector and served on the Carver Planning Board before winning the House seat.

In his first term, Gaskey has pressed hardest on property rights and government accountability. In September 2025 he called for a formal study of how local zoning restrictions block landowners from developing their property and slow infrastructure projects, arguing the issue is “about ensuring that government is a partner in progress, not an obstacle.” This past June he was among the 28 House members — the chamber’s Republicans plus three Democrats — who voted against a bill narrowing the scope of the voter-approved law allowing the state auditor to audit the Legislature. It passed 125-28. “An audit without enforcement is not accountability,” Gaskey said. “The Legislature should not be writing rules that allow it to police itself.”

This is Gaskey’s second appearance on the GOAT News podcast.

Orrall, a Republican from Lakeville, has represented the 12th Bristol District — Berkley, Lakeville, his own precincts of Middleborough and East Taunton — since January 2019. He won the seat the year his wife, then-Rep. Keiko Orrall, left it to run for state treasurer; she had held the district since 2011. He brings roughly three decades as a professional civil engineer to the job, and his family counts five generations of living and working in the towns he now represents.

Orrall’s legislative record runs practical and local. Two home-rule petitions he carried for the town of Berkley, filed alongside state Sen. Kelly Dooner and requested by town vote, are now law: one creating an appointed treasurer-collector position in place of two elected offices, signed in October 2025, and one expanding Berkley’s Board of Selectmen to five members, signed this past July. On the infrastructure side, his engineering background shows: he has filed “An Act to rehabilitate regional roadways,” now before House Ways and Means, and “An Act relative to greener and healthier transportation corridors,” which would create a commission on how the state uses the land along its transportation routes.

Orrall sat down with GOAT News once before, in a conversation that never made it to tape. Friday marks his first appearance on the podcast itself, and his second time with our team.

That both men keep coming back — or coming back on the record — is exactly the kind of access GOAT News has worked to build: a place where the people representing this area can have a far-reaching, actual conversation with the community, not just issue a statement.

Orrall’s date carries its own weight. September 11 is the 25th anniversary of the attacks, and he is joining us that day in part to pause and mark the occasion.

Tune in this week as Gaskey, on Thursday, and Orrall, on Friday, talk through their priorities on Beacon Hill and what’s ahead for the towns they represent.

Sources
Middleborough State Representation — Town of Middleborough

2024 Republican Primary, 2nd Plymouth District — Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth

Wareham Rep. Susan Williams Gifford dies at 64 — WBUR

Mass. House votes to narrow scope of 2024 legislative audit law — WBUR

Five Questions For John Gaskey — New Boston Post

Press releases and statements — Office of Rep. John Gaskey

District and biography — Office of Rep. Norman Orrall

John Gaskey and Norman Orrall — Ballotpedia

Chapter 44 of the Acts of 2025, Chapter 124 of the Acts of 2026, H.3751 and H.3752 — Massachusetts General Court