Even if you don’t pay close attention to Massachusetts politics, you probably know that Rep. Seth Moulton is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. Ed Markey in a hotly contested Democratic primary. But even if you do follow politics closely, you might not be aware that House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and U.S. Reps. Jake Auchincloss, Bill Keating, Richard Neal and Stephen Lynch are all facing challengers, too.
That’s a stark contrast to 2024, when no members of Massachusetts’ all-Democratic House delegation had to weather primary contests.
Yet none of these races has received the same level of attention the Markey-Moulton contest has, for a few reasons.
For starters, other than a presidential contest, a U.S. Senate race is about as big as it gets. Plus, despite Congress’s deep unpopularity, incumbents seeking reelection rarely lose (even though they do, sometimes). What’s more, the House challengers aren’t nearly as well known as Moulton is.
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Three of the nine U.S. representatives — Reps. Jim McGovern, Lori Trahan and Ayanna Pressley — are not facing any challengers. With Moulton vacating his seat to run for Senate, the North Shore is seeing an open and heated primary with six Democrats on the ballot.
For the five remaining seats, GBH News has put together a brief primer to get you caught up on the Democratic challengers in the 2026 cycle — both because should know who’s on your ballot and because, taken collectively, these challengers’ campaigns offer some insights into the internal dissatisfaction currently roiling the Democratic Party.
We’ve listed them in what looks like order of viability, from most to least likely to get elected based on their fundraising, endorsements, polling, campaign operations, and the effectiveness with which they make their case. If our predictions turn out to be wrong, though, feel free to check back in on Sept. 2 and remind us that we missed the mark.
Plus: Here are our conversations with the incumbents they’re challenging.
Patrick Roath
8th Congressional District
Challenging Rep. Stephen Lynch
Courtesy of the Roath campaign
Roath makes a case for change that closely resembles the one Moulton is trying to make against Markey. As Roath sees it, America’s current political moment demands an urgency that the 25-year incumbent Lynch isn’t demonstrating.
“This is a really scary time in our country’s history, right?” Roath said. “We have an extremist in the White House that is threatening to undermine the foundations of this country, everything that we have worked so hard for, and really set us back by generations. And confronting that challenge — Trump’s MAGA extremist challenge — requires a different kind of leadership. It requires boldness and urgency and fresh thinking and a willingness to go down to Washington and treat it like a mission.”
Roath, an attorney, former aide to Gov. Deval Patrick and past board chair of Common Cause Massachusetts, supports term limits and, unlike his opponent, isn’t taking corporate PAC money. He faults Lynch for voting against the Affordable Care Act (a vote Lynch said he took because the final version of the ACA wastoo generous to insurance companies and the very wealthy). And he accuses Lynch of not being present enough in his district, claiming he “cannot be bothered to even show up in the district for a town hall or a candidate forum.”
Roath gets our nod as the most viable challenger largely because of his fundraising prowess: he’s raised more than $1.1 million with, he said, a median donation of $25, suggesting a broad base of voter support. Among other things, that’s enough money fund a new ad buy that will put this spot online and on TV in the coming weeks. That, in turn, could help remedy the lack of name recognition that looms as one of Roath’s biggest weaknesses. (While an internal poll earlier this year showed Roath leading Lynch 57-42 when respondents were given basic, though somewhat Roath-friendly, information about the two candidates, a whopping 77% of voters initially said they didn’t know who Roath was.)
Roath also boasts endorsements from Patrick, David Hogg’s group Leaders We Deserve, the Boston Teachers Union, and AFT (American Federation of Teachers) Massachusetts. When it comes to the campaign’s final stretch, the latter two could help counter the political boost that Lynch, a former ironworker and past union president, has traditionally gotten from the building trades.
Lynch is the favorite here, but the prospect of Roath pulling off an upset isn’t far fetched as it initially seemed.
Jeromie Whalen
1st Congressional District
Challenging Rep. Richard Neal
Courtesy of the Whalen campaign
Whalen casts Neal as a case study in the corrosive effects of money in politics.
“The current congressman is, percentage-wise, one of the top recipients of corporate money in all of Congress,” Whalen said. “And so what happens when you have representation that is in bed with giant corporations — you have a lack of visibility, you have a lack of accountability, and you have a lack of caring.
“That’s what we’re seeing playing out right now,” Whalen added. “[Neal] repeatedly ignores his constituents. He refuses to go to any candidates’ forums. That’s not representation.”
The corollary to this argument is a suggestion that, if elected, Whalen would be far more in tune with the needs of his constituents than Neal currently is.
“It all comes down to, in a post-Citizens United world, who is being looked after,” Whalen said. “Right now we see corporations and millionaires and billionaires running away with the bag, and we’re stuck here trying to figure out how we’re going to afford groceries and rent.”
Whalen, who’s a 39-year-old high school teacher, notes that Neal’s been in Congress almost as long as Whalen’s been alive. (Neal was first elected to the House in 1988.) And while the roughly $280,000 he’s raised is eclipsed by the $4 million Neal has in the bank, Whalen insists it’s enough to get the job done, citing the fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted then-Rep. Joe Crowley after raising roughly $300,000 in their 2018 primary contest.
In addition to framing his opponent’s prodigious fundraising as a liability rather than an asset, Whalen also argues that he’s been able to turn his campaign into a movement.
“Last Saturday, we had 85 people come out to knock doors in Springfield,” Whalen said. “We knocked 3,100 doors on one day, and we had conversations with over 400 people. And we’ve been doing that for the past year.”
Jonathan Paz
5th Congressional District
Challenging Whip Katherine Clark and running against Tarik Samman
Courtesy of the Paz campaign
A win by Paz — an educator, activist and former Waltham city councilor — would be a seismic event in the House, where Clark is the second-highest-ranking Democrat. It would also be a testament to grassroots Democratic dissatisfaction with party leaders’ response to Israel’s war in Gaza, which Paz describes as genocide.
Paz isn’t just criticizing Israel’s tactics and Clark’s approach, however: he’s also taking the unusual step of releasing a documentary that portrays Clark as beholden to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and unresponsive to constituents who pressed for a ceasefire. Paz’s focus on Israel’s war in Gaza is reflected his endorsements, which include Massachusetts Peace Action, If Not Now Boston, Arlington for Palestine and Medford for Palestine.
Paz also promotes a bevy of other progressive causes. “We want peace. We want to abolish ICE and replace it with an immigration system rooted in humanity,” said Paz, whose father was deported when Paz was 14. “And we want to take on the billionaire class rigging our economy. I think the 5th District deserves a fighter in Congress who’s going take on these billionaires and not take donations from them in the millions like our incumbent is now.” (Given that part of his pitch, it’s no surprise Paz has also been endorsed by Our Revolution Cambridge.)
Paz also implies that Clark has been too quiescent when it comes to the Trump administration, saying the 5th District “deserve[s] leadership that’s going to take on MAGA fascism head on.”
Paz said he and his team have knocked on nearly 40,000 doors, calling his field game “second to none” and touting contributions totaling about $75,000, the vast majority of which he asserts were for $100 or less. “This is the picture of a grassroots campaign,” he told GBH News.
That donation figure cuts both ways, however. It’s substantially higher than some other challengers this cycle (more on them in a bit) but also notably lower than both Roath and Whalen. That may be, in part, because Paz isn’t the only challenger taking on Clark from the left — so is Tarik Samman, who you’ll read about momentarily.
Craig Swallow
9th Congressional District
Challenging Rep. Bill Keating
Courtesy of the Swallow campaign
Swallow claims the eight-term incumbent Keating isn’t sufficiently present in his district or responsive to the people who call it home. He also argues that Keating has undermined public trust by trading in defense-contractor stock while sitting on the House’s Committee on Armed Services and Committee on Foreign Affairs — and by accepting money from defense-contractor PACs like those representing the employees of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX, previously known as Raytheon. (Asked about Swallow’s charge, Keating said his stock trades are conducted through an intermediary without his involvement, and also that, since not everyone takes this approach, he’s a co-sponsor of legislation that would ban stock trading by members of Congress.)
“That alone creates at least a perception of corruption and mistrust in the government,” Swallow said, adding that he’ll work to ban stock trading by members of Congress if elected. “And the things that we’re advocating for in this campaign require someone who is not part of the system as it is and can see what the system can be when it really focuses on working- and middle-class people as the central priority of everything that the government does. So that’s why I’m running, because I don’t feel that’s what we have right now.”
Swallow also has a prescription for Democrats as the party seeks to return from the political wilderness and capture some combination of the House, the Senate and the presidency. Voters can tell when a politician is being true to their convictions, he argues — and they’ll reward you if you are and punish you if you aren’t.
“People are looking for a lot of the things that I was just talking about — representation that reflects who they are, representation that is authentic,” he said. “[New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani, if anything, has shown that authenticity is what is very important now. People will vote for someone they may disagree with if they feel as though the person is honest in who they truly are.
“The establishment does not represent that,” Swallow added. “There’s a reason why Democrats, even after a year and a half of sliding into fascism, are still underwater in their polls. … It is because of this pivoting to priorities that are politically advantageous for them, and not what they truly want to fight and advocate for.”
Swallow, who previously worked as an educator and in the service industry, has had less fundraising success than many of his counterparts: through June 30 of this year, he’d raised just over $33,000, including a $730.69 contribution from himself. (Keating had more than half a million dollars on hand at the same point in time.) He does, however, claim endorsements from Massachusetts Peace Action, the Progressive Democrats of America and several local chapters of Indivisible. And he’s convinced he’s on the right side of history.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of progressive candidates, both in Massachusetts and across the country, in the primaries we have and the general election, really sweep,” Swallow said. “I see this as a Tea Party-type movement for the left, and that’s why I think I have a chance here.”
Tarik Samman and Jason Poulos
Samman is running for 5th Congressional District, challenging House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and running against Jonathan Paz
Courtesy of the Samman campaign
Tarik Samman has an offer for anyone who visits his website: if you’re a resident of the 5th Congressional District and fill out a short form, he’ll call you back within an hour to talk about whatever’s on your mind. It’s a clever addition to his progressive pitch that sets him apart both from his fellow challengers and the incumbent he’s seeking to unseat. As Samman puts it on his site’s front page: “When was the last time Katherine Clark actually called you back?”
The bad news for Samman — who was born in Lowell and grew up in Syria before moving back to the United States — is that he’s one of two challengers facing Clark. Paz is in a significantly stronger position financially: through June 30, Samman had raised roughly $43,000, including more than $10,000 in contributions from himself. If either Paz or Samman weren’t running, the other’s chances would be better; as it is, their joint presence makes an upset of Clark all the more unlikely.
That may be acceptable to Samman, though, who describes his campaign as primarily focused on relaying one particular message: American politicians, including Clark, misunderstand the Middle East to our collective detriment.
“I’m a war survivor — I grew up in Syria during the Syrian civil war — and I was at the receiving end of the failed American foreign policy,” said Samman, who’s a Harvard Law School researcher and Harvard labor organizer. “And it bothers me when I see politicians right now voting on sending money overseas to wars in the Middle East without understanding the complexity of the Middle East countries and their culture … My main message is that I want us to stop spending money overseas because that’s a bad investment, and start spending money here at home to address the affordability crisis.”
He can win, Samman says, because Clark’s never really been challenged and because (as Swallow also argues) the zeitgeist is on his side. Alone among the challengers described here, Samman also says he’d be open to working with Republicans on select issues, citing the partnership between Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie on the Epstein files as an example of fruitful collaboration.
Poulos is running for 4th Congressional District, challenging Rep. Jake Auchincloss
Courtesy of the Poulos campaign
Photo by Jack Prior / Fig City News
Jason Poulos, an artificial intelligence and health policy researcher who’s running against Rep. Jake Auchincloss, has two specific messages he wants to get out to voters. First, Poulos argues that no one in Congress is sufficiently concerned about the massive impacts AI is likely to have on society at large, including tens of thousands of job losses. He believes he can be that voice, and links his support for policies like Medicare for All and Universal Basic Income to the need to gird for AI’s forthcoming impact on the labor force.
Second, Poulos faults Auchincloss for being too slow to respond to the destruction wreaked by Israel’s war in Gaza and for condemning the encampments that sprang up at Harvard University in opposition. Poulos also found himself listed on the website of the Canary Mission, which tracks alleged hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews on college campuses, after signing petitions in opposition to the war. (The Canary Mission site links Poulos to a specific petition that urges university presidents to divest from Israel and treat pro-Palestinian protesting students with dignity.)
“That kind of made me think of myself as an activist,” Poulos said. “And so part of this congressional run is building off of that activism.”
Poulos, who’d raised $36,000 from donors as of June 30 and given himself another $5,000, says he’s got fundraising momentum, and that his campaign has recruited 42 volunteers who’ve knocked on nearly 5,000 doors since May. He touts endorsements from Organize for Peace, SAWA: Newton-Area Alliance for Peace and Justice, and Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption. And he cites an Auchincloss internal poll that was released in mid-July and showed Auchincloss leading Poulos, 64% to 17%, as reason for optimism.
“Auchincloss has a lot of name ID,” Poulos argues. “To only have 64% in his own internal poll, I think, is indicative of weakness.”
That’s one possible reading. Another is that, with just a month left in the race, Poulos still has a lot of work to do to make his contest competitive.
