Massachusetts — 8th District

Roath is challenging Lynch in the primary for Massachusetts 8th Congressional District.

Like in many races around the country, Roath, 39, is making an argument for generational change in his bid to unseat the 71-year-old congressman, who has served since 2001.

Roath might need young people to turn out to win.

Amid a crowd of Patrick Roath supporters, a trio of high school students hovered with a tripod and a tiny microphone.

“Why Roath?” Hunter Gustie, 17, asked another young supporter.

Gustie, along with fellow Westwood High School students Isaac Shamon and Rhys Fennell, have been making social media videos for Roath since December. They won’t be old enough to vote in the upcoming primary, but they were inspired by Roath’s grassroots campaign and progressive policies and wanted to help. On Aug. 13, they were participating in a standout before a forum between Roath and Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., at Chapman Middle School in Weymouth.

Roath is challenging Lynch in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts 8th Congressional District. Like in many races around the country, Roath, 39, is making an argument for generational change in his bid to unseat the 71-year-old congressman, who has served since 2001. The winner of the primary is likely to win the general election in the safe Democratic district, which includes some of Boston and the South Shore, like Quincy, as well as Brockton and Norwood.

In many of those aforementioned races, like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, young people have driven candidates to victory. Roath is backed by Leaders We Deserve, a group founded by David Hogg that aims to elect young progressives to Congress, and says he has many young people volunteering for him.

He might need those voters to win, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

“The age issue probably doesn’t play at all in that district. The ideology issue could, and you would need a lot of young people to jump in and vote that way,” Paleologos said. But it won’t be easy: younger voters are less likely to vote, he continued, and the way the calendar lines up this year is also an impediment – the Massachusetts primary is on Sept. 1, before many colleges are back in session.

Will young people affect the election?

At the standout, Roath’s side was filled with many young supporters.

“I mean, if you look at the volunteers we have here,” Gustie said, gesturing around him when asked if young people will play a role in the election. “I think this is going to be an election that’s decided by young people.”

Some of those people he was referring to were Matthew Fruci, a 19-year-old student at the University of Connecticut, and Joy Sulzinsky, a 21-year-old student at Suffolk University. Fruci said he was drawn to Roath in part because he is a new face and supports term limits, while Sulzinsky said that the “current status quo is unsustainable.”

Lynch’s side wasn’t devoid of young people, though: Johnny Bell and Connor Dunbar, both 20, said they were supporting Lynch because of his support for unions. They were there with their union, Plumbers Local 12, which has endorsed Lynch. But they also said they value the congressman’s experience, and do not see his age as an issue.

The candidates’ supporters’ words mirror their own. Roath, a lawyer and former aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, said that he’s running because the problems the country is facing requires “change in the Democratic Party.”

“We can talk about my opponent too. You know, someone who's you know been a career politician since I was about five years old and has been in the Congress for 25 years,” Roath said, going on to criticize Lynch for votes he’s taken against the Affordable Care Act and for the Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented people arrested for crimes like theft or shoplifting. “I just think there's a different kind of leadership that the moment demands than what he's offering.”

Lynch is running for his 14th term in office. Born in raised in the South Boston public housing projects, he became the youngest president of the Iron Workers Local 7 at age 30 and later served in both the Massachusetts state House and Senate. Lynch draws on that background to stress his experience and reliability.

“That’s not a new argument,” Lynch said of Roath’s message of change. “There's value in having institutional memory and people who can actually have relationships with people on the other side and try to actually get some things done.”

Roath said he has a lot of young volunteers, and the campaign has been leaning into social media. That’s an important tactic if you want to connect to them, Paleologos said.

“If Lynch isn't in tune with that, he's not on those, then he's not going to get his share of the young voters that he thinks he's deserving of,” Paleologos said. “But my sense is that Lynch and other incumbents in Massachusetts are going to lean on the people they know who know will vote. Older people, union members will vote. Women.”

Lynch said it is important to get young people on board.

“I think it's important to represent everyone,” Lynch said. “It goes back to having a mix of legislators and, like I said, we've got a lot of young members right now.”

Parallels to CT race?

Just a couple days before the forum, in nearby Connecticut, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin defeated longtime Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., in another win for a generational change candidate.

In his victory speech, Bronin shouted out his younger supporters, calling them his “not-so-secret weapon.”

Roath’s campaign sees Bronin’s victory as a great sign for them; they said that they saw their biggest day of fundraising the day after the Connecticut primary.

“There's a tremendous amount of appetite for fresh faces, for new ideas. You know, sometimes it's in the Bronx, sometimes it's in Denver, sometimes it's in Hartford, Connecticut, right?” Roath said. “I think that that that sentiment is incredibly broadly shared right now in the Democratic Party for sure. And I think there are a lot of voters in this district who do as well.”

But Lynch makes a distinction.

“He was the mayor of Hartford. He had a record of leadership,” Lynch said. “It’s different when you have someone with no experience, someone with a lot of experience.”

Paleologos said that Larson’s loss may be “directional” to a potential trend but not necessarily directly “correlated.”

“Each state is different and the communities within these CD's are vastly different,” he said.

Roath thinks that he’s been able to excite younger people and is hopeful about his campaign’s ability to motivate them to vote. But at the end of the day, Roath knows he needs all voters, not just young people, to come out for him.

Low turnout elections, as primaries tend to be, provide an opening for an upset, Paleologos said. The New York Times put Lynch on their list of most vulnerable Democrats to progressive challengers in July, and Roath has seen some momentum in the final weeks of the campaign: a poll from Leaders We Deserve found him closing the gap between him and Lynch, and the Boston Globe endorsed Roath on Aug. 24. But it will still be difficult – Lynch has only had a couple of opponents over the last several cycles, and none have come close to defeating him.

“The bottom line is, nothing’s impossible,” Paleologos said.