Stephen Lynch

DORCHESTER — About three weeks out from the Sept. 1 Democratic primary election, one of the tallest tasks for congressional hopeful Patrick Roath is spreading his name to the nearly 800,000 people he aims to represent.

The other central challenge facing the 39-year-old first-time candidate — a Jamaica Plain attorney and voting rights advocate — is convincing voters in the 8th Congressional District to replace the congressman who has represented them for a generation.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, 71, of South Boston, was elected to Congress in 2001. When he last faced a primary challenger in 2020, Lynch captured two-thirds of the vote. He beat his Republican opponent in the last general election by 41 percentage points.

As the primary season heats up, the national media has taken an increased interest in Lynch vs. Roath as an example of a race that might unseat an incumbent Democrat. The New York Times listed Lynch as an at-risk incumbent.

During a CNN interview last week, Roath pushed back on Lynch’s criticism of his lack of experience, saying he “didn’t wake up some morning” and decide to run for Congress. He has also avoided the pointed focus on his opponent’s age that U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, 47, has used to draw a contrast with Sen. Ed Markey, 80, in the U.S. Senate race.

But Roath says Lynch is no longer the right fit for the district, which stretches from Boston’s North End to the south through portions of Norfolk, Plymouth and Bristol counties.

On a recent Sunday, Roath canvassed through a 91-degree muggy day in a Dorchester neighborhood, past rows of duplexes and triple deckers, many with American flags hanging out front. He knocked door after door, hoping to convince residents to give him a chance.

“Our communities have changed a lot over 25 years,” Roath said. “And I think people need to see that reflected in their member of Congress.”

Part of his argument hinges on Lynch’s more centrist voting record, including votes to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and back last year’s Republican-led immigration law that nearly 60 other Democrats supported, although none were from Massachusetts.

Lynch has returned fire, defending his votes and leaning on his experience and relationships in the district as core to his case for reelection.

He is the third longest-tenured member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, after fellow House veterans Rep. Richard Neal and Rep. Jim McGovern, from Western and Central Massachusetts respectively.

Lynch says his experience and his willingness to work across the aisle bring substantial value to his constituents. It means he can deliver federal dollars to a range of projects back home.

Lynch’s office highlights $5 million to replace a seawall in Hull and $5 million more to restore the embankment and replace infrastructure at a Weymouth beach, part of a range of coastal defense and climate resiliency projects in the communities he represents.

There’s also the $3 million for public pool upgrades and $1 million for a local health center in Brockton, $3 million for facilities and equipment at UMass Boston, $1 million for facilities upgrades at the New England Center and Home for Veterans, $4.1 million for a new fire station in Quincy. The list goes on, according to a log of federal earmarks collected by Citizens Against Government Waste.

For Lynch, these funds are far from waste — they are the results that experience, relationships in Congress and a willingness to work across the aisle can bring.

“We don’t have the votes on the Democratic side to do this, so you need to sit down with Republican colleagues and try to work out a deal,” Lynch said.

Those projects were certainly on the mind of union members Lynch campaigned with in Dorchester on a cloudy afternoon in late July, including a group from the South Boston-based Iron Workers union that Lynch once led.

Holding Lynch signs and waving to passing, honking cars, union members gave a variety of reasons for supporting Lynch, including their longstanding relationships and well-established trust, his understanding of their work and lives and the federal dollars that have brought them work.

“How much money and how many services he’s delivered for this district, I just don’t want to make the mistake of seeing someone who’s made that progress, made those relationships and delivered on those things to be taken out so quickly,” Boston City Councilor John FitzGerald, of Dorchester, said.

Roath points to the congressman’s vote last year for the Laken Riley Act, a Republican-backed law requiring the detention of unauthorized migrants arrested or charged with certain crimes. Fifty-eight House and Senate Democrats voted for the legislation, though Lynch was its lone supporter from Massachusetts.

U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, the 4th district Democrat, said one reason he voted against the act was that it allowed federal agents to detain suspects indefinitely, depriving them of due process.

“What we really need right now are fighters in Congress,” Jessica Tang, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, said last Sunday as Roath canvassed Dorchester with fellow union members. “We cannot rely on people who we hope will maybe vote our way on important issues.”

Lynch has called the law “imperfect,” but an effort to address a federal immigration system that is “completely out of control,” he said last year in an interview with WBUR.

“We no longer have the ability to regulate and discern who is allowed to enter our country,” he also told the Boston Herald. “We also seem to be uncertain what the consequences will be when someone who is unlawfully present in our country breaks the law.”

The law, he said, “begins to engage on those issues and attempts to bring greater certainty and clarity to that process.”

Roath is among a wave of young Democratic candidates seeking to unseat established members of their party this election cycle.

He got his start working for former Gov. Deval Patrick and has picked up Patrick’s endorsement. In the last decade, Roath has worked as a lawyer while maintaining a “nights-and-weekends commitment” to voting rights work, he said. Among that work is chairing the board of Common Cause Massachusetts, the state arm of a national democracy and voting rights nonprofit.

Roath has also frequently brought up that Lynch is the last remaining Congressional Democrat to vote against the 2010 Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

“That is the opposite direction of what we need right now,” Roath said. “We need to be pushing for universal healthcare. We need to be expanding that, making it more affordable, more accessible to people.”

When the Affordable Care Act passed, Lynch said it didn’t go far enough to challenge the power of private health insurers. In 2017, he voted against a Republican effort to repeal President Obama’s signature health care bill, even as he said it continued to give a “big pass” to the pharmaceutical companies that hiked prices on medication such as EpiPens.

Jay Frasier, the business agent of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103, based in Dorchester, said Lynch appreciates the struggles of working people as living costs in Massachusetts rise.

The two major political parties “have all forgotten about the workers,” he said in late July while campaigning for Lynch in Dorchester. “We want people who know how much a gallon of milk costs.”

Roath found himself in the same section of Dorchester a week-and-a-half later, canvassing with members of the Boston Teachers Union in Adams Village and Ashmont. During his last primary challenge in 2020, Lynch captured more than 70% of the ballots cast in this voting ward.

Speaking with the teachers before they set out, Roath acknowledged that he may be a newer face to many residents, while they may be more familiar with the congressman.

Roath encouraged them, “Be prepared when you’re at the doors to say, ‘I got someone new to introduce you to. Give him a chance.’”

In Massachusetts and across the country, Democratic primaries are exposing divisions in the party and disagreements about its direction in the Trump era. There are aging-incumbent-vs.-new-generation races, as in the case of Markey and Moulton. There are also the centrist vs. progressive candidate fights.

“Most of what I talk about is about the need to rebuild confidence in our democracy and in our country by proving that we can solve problems for people by getting things done on housing, on child care,” Roath said. “That is the main pitch. And I think people are excited when they hear that.”