You might know Richard Tisei as the youngest Republican candidate ever to be elected to the Massachusetts Legislature – he won a seat in the House in 1984 at the age of 22. Or your might know him as the bottom half of the Baker-Tisei ticket – he accepted his party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor last month and will help his longtime friend Charlie Baker face down State Treasurer Timothy Cahill and Gov. Deval Patrick this fall.

You might not know him as a local businessman – unless you’re a member of the Eastern Middlesex Association of Realtors, where he’s currently serving a term as president.

Richard Tisei

Title: State Senator and broker/owner of Northrup Associates Realtors in Lynnfield

Age: 47

Experience: As a Realtor, 18 years; As a legislator, 26 years.

You started your business after you became a politician. That’s a bit unusual.

I wanted to so something in addition to serving in the Legislature, and decided to go into real estate. My father was a contractor and a builder, my mother owns a home inspection company, and all my relatives were involved in real estate in some way. The firm that I went into was Northrup Realtors….I started there in 1992, and I was a salesman there for eight years. Now, I’ve co-owned the company for 10.

How did you balance being a Realtor with your work in the Legislature?

Most times that people want to see houses are at night or on weekends, and I have a partner that I worked with. [In] the past three years, I’ve dealt with a lot of people, and you can really see the effects of the economic downturn, particularly in the real estate industry.…There have been so many people who have told me they don’t want to move, but they’ve lost their job and they can’t afford to stay in the house anymore.…The costs of doing business in Massachusetts are so high, in order to get the 320,000 people who are unemployed back to work, it’s going to take a big sea change in the way government views business.

What are some of your specific proposals to bring jobs back?

There’s no one big solution that you can wave a magic wand at and make the state more affordable and competitive. There are a whole bunch of different areas….Regulatory reform is really important, too. The government is constantly putting out regulations without having any idea what the financial impact of them are. What we want to do instantly is put a moratorium on new regulations, and require that any regulation the state puts out has a cost benefit analysis as part of it…. Before the government imposes a regulation, they should have to do a little research, and say, “Well, here is the financial impact on businesses.”

Does the campaign have an official position on the repeal 40B ballot initiative?

Officially our campaign is against the ballot question…. One of the problems Massachusetts has is that it doesn’t have enough affordable housing stock. And 40B has helped towards that…. A lot of the most egregious problems with 40B that people get upset about have been addressed through regulations. Most recently, the inspector general’s report showed there’s still a lot of problems with it….Clearly there’s a lot more to do to improve oversight and improve the way the program runs. But to abolish the program I don’t think makes a lot of sense.

Are there any other reforms you think could help create affordable housing, aside from 40B?

There are a lot of other things in the state that are still preventing development. Title 5 [which governs septic systems] is a perfect example….Rather than have a uniform code for the whole state, cities and towns have a lot of different regulations per town. There are communities that promulgate very strict Title 5 laws which have nothing to do with protecting the environment. They’re being used to inhibit growth in a community. There’s no science involved….By putting a uniform Title 5 code in place for the state, you’d encourage development.

You’re in favor of tax cuts to help attract business back to the state. But the state’s facing a pretty big budget deficit right now – how will you make that up?

I owned a company, and I had a lot of sleepless nights where I was wondering how I was going to make the payroll and pay all our bills, because our revenue dropped 30 percent….I had to think outside the box and change our operating model. The state hasn’t done that at all.

You’re the president of the Eastern Middlesex Association of Realtors this year. Are you keeping that up? With the campaign, you’re going to be swamped.

I haven’t missed a meeting yet.