HINGHAM, Mass. – For years, Jerry Grenier has reliably cast his ballot for Democrat Stephen F. Lynch, a political moderate who has been in the House since 2001.
But lately, the 73-year-old Grenier, a retired construction supervisor from Weymouth, a working-class suburb south of Boston, has gone cold on his congressman.
“I won’t be voting for Stephen Lynch,’’ declared Grenier, who joined dozens of protesters waving signs and ringing cowbells at an anti-Trump rally last month. “He did OK over the years. But it’s a whole new world with this regime in the White House, and in my opinion, Stephen Lynch, like a lot of Democrats, [isn’t] standing up to the gravity of the time.”
Democrat Patrick Roath hopes to defeat Lynch in next year’s primary by winning over voters like Grenier, who are weary of entrenched incumbents and calling for a bolder approach in taking on the Trump administration.
“There’s a growing awareness that we need new passion and energy,” Roath, a 38-year-old attorney from Jamaica Plain, said in a recent interview. “Maybe, just maybe, the solutions and the approaches from decades ago are not suited to the challenges of today.”
Roath is among a cadre of Democratic challengers taking on well-established House members in deep-blue districts across Southern New England.
In western Massachusetts, progressive public school teacher Jeromie Whalen is running against Rep. Richard E. Neal, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee and the dean of the New England House delegation who was first elected in 1988.
And across the border in Connecticut, Rep. John B. Larson, who is seeking his 15th term, faces multiple primary challengers, including former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford. Longtime Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Joe Courtney have also drawn primary opponents.
Declining fortunes
The rush of younger Democrats willing to take on party elders this early in the 2026 election cycle is rooted in last year’s steep losses following octogenarian President Joe Biden’s insistence on seeking a second term. (In an excerpt released Wednesday from her upcoming memoir, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ended up replacing Biden on the ticket, said it was “recklessness” not to have questioned his earlier decision to run.)
Democrats are now locked out of power in Washington, and the party’s approval numbers have tumbled to historic lows.
“We saw what happened in 2024 when an older leader clings to power for too long and goes unchallenged, and how much that can really come back to bite us in the ass down the road,’’ said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run for Something PAC, which backs progressive candidates 40 and under. “There is a stronger willingness to not tiptoe around people’s feelings or ego, to really lean into this idea that there is a hunger for new leadership.’’
After three House Democrats in their 70s died within weeks of one another earlier this year, Litman urged all Democrats over 70 to step aside.
Some have heeded the call, including Reps. Jan Schakowsky, 81, and Danny K. Davis, 84, both of Illinois, and Jerrold Nadler, 78, of New York.
But supporters of Lynch, 70, and Larson, 76, have firmly pushed back on the suggestion that they ought to quit. In a system that rewards seniority, both say their constituents have benefited from their long tenures.
Scott Ferson, a Democratic strategist who has worked on Lynch’s campaigns, told The Boston Globe earlier this year that the congressman “has always campaigned for his job by doing his job.”
“Personally, I think the Democrats nationally would be in a better position if they listened more to Stephen Lynch,” Ferson told the Globe. “There’s nobody who fights harder than him.”
A spokeswoman for Larson’s campaign highlighted his record championing Social Security and Medicare and securing military contracts for the F135 fighter jet engine, built by Pratt & Whitney, a major aerospace manufacturer in the district.
“As for talk about ‘new voices,’ this is democracy; anyone can run,’’ spokeswoman Mary Brennan Coursey said. “But what really matters to voters is results.”
Making their case
Several of the challengers say age alone is an imperfect measure of a member’s effectiveness.
“To me, it’s about the representation itself and bringing in new perspectives,’’ said Gilchrest, who is 43. “We have people struggling every day, and then we’ve got millionaires who aren’t paying their taxes, and yes, you can certainly blame some of that on the Republicans who are in power, but you also have to look at the Democrats who’ve been in power.”
Bronin, 46, said it isn’t healthy for the Democratic Party – or democracy itself – to have a permanent political class.
“We have to be willing to look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘We’re not where we should be.’ We are clearly struggling to hang on to voters who have been loyal Democrats, and we’re clearly struggling to reach younger voters,’’ he said. “We’re losing to a party that’s led by a con man. If that doesn’t tell us we need to make some changes, I don’t know what will.”
Roath, too, is wary of making an explicitly age-centered argument. Mingling with the protesters in Hingham — many of whom were retirees — he focused on his ideological and stylistic differences with Lynch.
“This isn’t just some swipe at all the older folks,” said Roath, who worked as an aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. “We’re focused on the tangible things we can do to make life better for people.”
Roath, who has never run for office before, outraised Lynch during the second quarter of the year, bringing in $288,000 to the incumbent’s $167,000. But Lynch ended June with more than $1 million in his campaign account, more than four times his challenger’s stash.
Lynch grew up in public housing in Boston and has strong ties to organized labor. He was the lone member of the Massachusetts delegation to back legislation dubbed the Laken Riley Act, which allows federal immigration officials to deport undocumented immigrants if they’re accused of certain crimes. He’s also the last remaining House Democrat who voted against the 2010 health care law. And for years, he identified himself as “pro life,” citing his faith, although in the face of increasingly draconian abortion restrictions, he renounced the moniker in a 2019 opinion piece.
Some voters in Hingham were put off by Lynch’s response at a February Boston rally to a woman who urged him to take a more assertive approach to the Trump administration. “I get to decide that,” Lynch said. “You wanna decide that? You need to run for Congress.”
Eighty-year-old Ruth Bennett, a liberal activist from Hingham, applauded younger candidates such as Routh who are stepping up.
“We need new blood,” she said. “Everybody needs some competition to up their game and to listen to what they may not have been listening to. [Lynch] is not a bad man, but sometimes people get stuck in a rut.”
But Lynch has his fans as well. Fay Picarski heard him speak at Quincy City Hall and said the congressman’s scrappy style reminded her of the Dropkick Murphys, the Celtic punk band that hails from the Boston suburb. “He was pretty passionate about what he believes in. I like him,” she said.
‘Stand for something’
Bill Curry, a former Connecticut comptroller who worked in the Clinton White House, said some younger Democrats don’t have much more to offer than their youth and their social media skills.
“It’s not enough to just say you have more hair or even more mobility. You’ve got to stand for something,” said Curry, who defeated Larson for the Democratic nomination for Connecticut governor in 1994.
Larson is a former teacher with a working-class sensibility and old-school Democratic politics. He voted against the Iraq War and was an early backer of Barack Obama in 2008.
Earlier this year, Larson momentarily froze on the House floor; his office later told the Connecticut Mirror that said he suffered “a complex partial seizure” and was prescribed medication to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.
For years, powerful Democrats were able to tamp down dissent, according to Erin O’Brien, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
“The Democratic Party in Massachusetts used to have a lot more control over candidate selection. Ayanna Pressley changed that,’’ said O’Brien, referring to the Boston progressive who scored an unexpected win over a 20-year incumbent in 2018.
Still, dislodging entrenched House members in a primary won’t be easy.
“Usually incumbents lose because they’re not paying attention or have a unique scandal,” CQ Roll Call elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales of Inside Elections said. “While there are high-profile examples of success like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she’s the exception rather than the rule.”
“It’s probably easier to pressure aging incumbents to not run for reelection at all rather than try to defeat them in primaries,” he added.
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