The wave of young Democrats looking to unseat incumbents in the midterms has hit Massachusetts.
This week, Patrick Roath, an attorney and voting rights advocate, kicked off his bid to unseat Rep. Stephen Lynch more than a year ahead of the 2026 Democratic primary.
The move comes as the Democratic Party is soul-searching in the wake of a major election loss that featured a fiery debate about when incumbents should move out of their seats and make space for the next generation of elected leaders. Young candidates around the nation — including in California, Illinois and Indiana — are stepping up to run against longtime incumbents.
UMass Boston political science professor Erin O’Brien said that while the primary against an incumbent like Lynch represents an uphill battle, it’s not impossible.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, for one, upset a 10-term incumbent in 2018 to ascend to the House of Representatives.
“Mike Capuano can tell you that longtime incumbents can lose, but all the research will show you that that is a rarity,” said UMass Boston political science professor Erin O’Brien.
The context of this primary though, O’Brien said, is different.
“What this challenge speaks to is how unpopular Congress is amongst Democrats who feel that they’ve largely rolled over for [President] Donald Trump and aren’t using any of their institutional powers to make trouble for the Trump administration,” she said.
Lynch, who was first sworn into the U.S. House in 2001, has built a support network rooted in the predominately South Shore district’s more conservative and politically active pockets — including organized labor.
He has also taken steps to distance himself from conservative extremists. Lynch, who has at times described himself as pro-life, penned a 2019 op-ed denouncing efforts to limit access to birth control.
But Roath says he is running because Massachusetts needs representatives willing to go to Washington, D.C., and “defend our democracy” against Trump, he said in a campaign announcement video this week. He added that he would focus on issues like potential term limits for the U.S. House members, housing and the costs of education, healthcare and childcare.
“We are not seeing leadership on these issues right now,” Roath said in a statement to GBH News. “The reality is that the approach to governing that might have made sense twenty-five or thirty years ago is not necessarily suited to today’s challenges. That needs to change.”
Roath has also pointed to Lynch voting in favor of the Laken Riley Act — the first piece of legislation Trump signed into law earlier this year, which instructs the Department of Homeland Security to detain immigrants charged with or convicted of certain crimes. He said even though most Americans favor immigration reform, “that is not what the Laken Riley Act represents.”
“Rather, that bill, passed by the Congress in January 2025, weakened the due process protections available to noncitizens,” Roath said.
Lynch was the only Massachusetts representative who voted in favor of the bill, but it had bipartisan support from 46 Democrats in the House and 12 in the U.S. Senate.
Roath criticized Lynch’s supporting the bill as “shortsighted and expedient, and demonstrates a fundamental failure to take seriously the threat that the Trump Administration poses to all Americans.”
Lynch himself was not available for comment, but since that vote he publicly called the president’s actions “a clear and present danger to our democracy” at a March town hall.
Scott Ferson, a Lynch campaign spokesperson, said the congressman is fresh off of the 2024 reelection campaign and is concentrating on governing.
“The first few months of the term have been busy,” said Ferson. “Congressman Lynch is focused on the work he was elected to do, particularly in his capacity on the oversight committee.”
Lynch is the currently acting as the ranking member of the House’s oversight committee until outgoing Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, officially gives up the role. That represents one of the spoils of incumbency in an institution that has long operated on seniority — a benefit that only Lynch could offer to voters, O’Brien noted.
“Even though Congress has loosened some of the seniority system, it is true the longer you’re there, the more goodies you’re able to bring home to your district because you have better committee assignments and the like,” she said.
Lynch, she said, has a lot of other advantages, like name recognition and a strong war chest — slightly more than $1 million on hand.
“He [also] has relationships with donors, so it’s definitely an uphill battle for the challenger,” O’Brien said.
Roath, a first-time candidate, has vowed not to take corporate PAC donations as part of this campaign.
The last time Lynch faced a primary opponent in 2020, he led Robbie H. Goldstein in every corner of the district, ultimately securing 66% of the vote to Goldstein’s 33.5%. Prior to that, he beat out Rebellion PAC cofounder Brianna Wu and pilot Christopher L. Voehl in 2018, earning nearly 71% of the vote overall.
