David Hogg is putting half a million dollars behind Patrick Roath’s challenge to Stephen Lynch, and he is doing it like a candidate who believes the race can still move. On Sunday, Hogg knocked doors in Roslindale with Roath, the 39-year-old lawyer and former Deval Patrick aide who is trying to unseat the longtime Democrat in the Massachusetts Eighth District primary on Tuesday.
The spending is not small-time. Leaders We Deserve has poured at least $470,000 into the primary as of last week and sent nine mailers, making the contest one of the group’s biggest efforts this cycle. Hogg has also already headlined a fund-raiser for Roath in Dorchester and walked with him and college students along the Freedom Trail earlier this year, all while pushing Roath’s promise of a future-oriented, optimistic vision for Congress.
Hogg is using the race as part of a broader effort to back younger challengers against older Democratic incumbents, and the group says it has endorsed 47 candidates in congressional and state legislative races from Texas to Minnesota. By its tally, 34 have won a primary or general election so far, though Hogg has said many of the incumbents targeted by his group ended up retiring. The Massachusetts race has become a high-stakes test of whether that formula can crack a seat held by a veteran Democrat with a built-in political machine.
That is where the fight gets harder to square with the sales pitch. Hogg said in Roslindale that the contest is not about Stephen Lynch’s age but about his record, and he said he would not be there if the race were not very close. Lynch, for his part, has leaned on enduring union support from groups such as the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, while dismissing the attacks as ridiculous stuff that you hear in the middle of a campaign. His campaign has also accused Hogg’s group of lying about his record in Congress.
The dispute has centered on Lynch’s past votes on immigration and health care, which Hogg and Roath have repeatedly criticized. Lynch has answered by pointing to the Trump administration’s label for him as an ICE agitator and by arguing that money itself is warping the contest. At a forum in Weymouth this month, he said money in politics is probably the most insidious impact and danger to our democracy right now.
Tuesday will answer the immediate question that Hogg is pressing so hard: whether Roath’s campaign, backed by one of Leaders We Deserve’s largest spending pushes, can turn outside money, national attention and a close race narrative into an upset over one of Massachusetts’ most entrenched Democrats.
