IN HIS SECOND bid for a congressional seat, former Biden White House aide Dan Koh won the Democratic nomination to succeed US Rep. Seth Moulton on Tuesday, with the presumed front-runner taking top spot in a crowded five-way field.
The Associated Press called the race for Koh at 10:27 p.m., with 43 percent of the vote and a 12-point lead over state Rep. Tram Nguyen.
Elsewhere on the congressional map, incumbent US Reps. Stephen Lynch and Richard Neal held off challengers from the left, laying out a path to a mostly unchanged Massachusetts delegation.
Moulton’s unsuccessful Senate bid opened the first competitive race in the Sixth Congressional District — which runs from Lynn up the North Shore to the New Hampshire border — in more than a decade. Five Democrats were openly in contention after Mariah Lancaster dropped out in the campaign’s final days and endorsed Nguyen.
Koh, 41, grew up in Andover and worked for Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and later the Biden administration. He entered primary day as the best-funded candidate, with about $4.7 million raised.
In a year when many Democrats sought to distance themselves from the Biden presidency, Koh leaned in. He touted endorsements from former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, and branded himself as someone whose top issues were fighting Donald Trump and “protecting democracy.”
A jubilant Koh promised to “take up any fight to defend the America we know and love and to build a better future for our children,” as he claimed victory late Tuesday.
He’d nearly made it to Congress once before. In 2018, he lost the Third Congressional District Democratic primary to now-Rep. Lori Trahan in a packed primary by less than half a percent of votes cast, after a district-wide recount. Trahan picked up the seat with 21.6 percent of the vote.
Some Massachusetts Democrats had begun coalescing around Nguyen, 40, as the race waned. She arrived in the US as a refugee at 5 years old after her family fled Vietnam. In 2018, she unseated Republican Rep. Jim Lyons, who went on to chair the state GOP, by 10 points, becoming the first Vietnamese American woman elected to office in Massachusetts.
Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Koh’s former rival Trahan both endorsed Nguyen for the seat, as did House Speaker Ron Mariano. The representative leaned into an affordability platform, centering housing and economic justice.
A late-July internal poll for Koh’s campaign, conducted by Global Strategy Group, had him at 34 percent — roughly double the level of support for attorney John Beccia and Nguyen. That poll predated Nguyen’s endorsements from Pressley and Trahan.
Nguyen was sitting at almost 30 percent of the vote when the Associated Press called the race.
The race had a few echoes of the last time a Markey challenge opened up a US congressional seat. In 2020, when Joe Kennedy III unsuccessfully sought to unseat Markey, the Fourth Congressional District primary ballot featured seven Democrats.
Current US Rep. Jake Auchincloss came out on top by a mere 1.4 percent margin over Jesse Mermell, capturing about 22 percent of the vote.
In both the 2018 and 2020 congressional races, progressives decried the number of candidates that split the vote. Koh came out with a more decisive lead, though he didn’t crack a majority of the votes.
Former state Rep. Jamie Belsito and software engineer Beth Andres-Beck rounded out the field. Beccia was showing about 12 percent of the vote at 10:30 p.m., Belsito almost 9 percent, and Andres-Beck and the late exit Lancaster each with almost 4 percent.
Koh will face Republican Micah Jones in November. If Koh wins, as he is heavily favored to do, he would be Massachusetts’s first Asian American congressperson.
To the west, US Rep. Richard Neal turned back a primary challenge from Northampton teacher Jeromie Whalen on Tuesday, likely extending his almost four-decade hold on the district.
The ranking Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, 77-year-old Neal is seeking a 20th term for the Massachusetts First Congressional District. He was facing Whalen, who built his campaign around taxing the wealthy, single-payer health care, and lost school aid. “I’m a public servant, not a politician,” Whalen told WWLP in launching his bid.
The Associated Press called the race for Neal at 11:07 p.m., with the congressman at 55 percent of the vote and holding a roughly 10-point lead over Whalen.
Neal’s last real primary fight, a 2020 race against then-Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, ended in an 18-point win.
The contest came amid a wave of incumbent losses nationally — including Neal’s own Ways and Means colleague, Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, who lost his primary the month before, according to NOTUS. Neal waved off the comparison, telling NOTUS that challengers tend to act like political history started the day they were born.
Previous challengers have “really been unable to fracture, nevermind break” his longstanding relationships in the district, he told the publication.
Neal’s victory means a rematch: independent Nadia Milleron, who took 37 percent of the vote against Neal in 2024, is running again, alongside a second independent, Anthony Celata.
Along the coast of Boston, US Rep. Stephen Lynch fended off the most serious challenge of his decades-long career on Tuesday, defeating 39-year-old Patrick Roath in the night’s third rebuke to generational change messages.
Lynch, 71, was looking to secure a 13th full term in the Massachusetts Eighth Congressional District against Roath, a voting rights attorney and former aide to Gov. Deval Patrick.
The Associated Press named Lynch the projected winner just 20 minutes before midnight on Tuesday, with about 57 percent of the vote and a secure 13-point lead over Roath.
Roath was banking on a surge of enthusiasm for candidates that would take on the Trump administration. He rolled out a slew of local backers, like former Gov. Deval Patrick; state Reps. Jay Livingstone, Sam Montaño, and John Moran; Boston City Councilors Enrique Pepén and Ben Weber; the four Quincy city councilors who just ousted incumbents in an uprising against mayor Thomas Koch, a long-time Lynch ally; an array of school committee members across the district; and teachers unions like the Massachusetts Teachers Association and Boston Teachers Union.
Lynch, running a mailer campaign pitching himself as the sensible middle, asked voters, “When the political extremes drown everyone out, who is listening to you?”
Lynch leaned on labor support from groups like the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts and the Iron Workers Local 7, as well as seniority on the House Financial Services Committee, meeting the challenge with little sense of public concern. The few times he faced primary challengers, in 2018 and 2020, he stomped them by around 30 percentage points.
The race drew some attention from a national PAC looking to support progressive challengers to Democratic incumbents. By June, Roath had out-raised Lynch $1.1 million to $817,000 since the head-to-head began.
The sitting congressman will match up against Republican Robert Burke in November, in a district Lynch has held since a 2001 special election.
This post was updated September 1 at 11:50 p.m.
