There won’t be a Republican on the ballot in Massachusetts’s Seventh or Eighth Congressional District in November, but that doesn’t mean U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Dorchester) or U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch (D-South Boston) will be running unopposed.
Both Lynch and Pressley have challengers on the ballot, and there will also be a write-in campaign in the Seventh district against Pressley.
Lynch’s challenger, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office, is Stoughton resident Jonathan Lott. He is an independent candidate running with the ballot designation “Healthcare Environment Stability.” He is running to the left of Lynch in the race.
Lott is a proponent of Medicare-for-All, a $1,000-a-month universal basic income, and the Green New Deal. His campaign web site does not say how the country would pay for those programs. Medicare-for-All would cost $5.2 trillion annually, the Green New Deal may cost between $5.1 and $9.3 trillion annually, and UBI would cost $3.8 trillion, by some estimate s.
For reference, the federal government’s fiscal year 2019 budget spent about $4.4 trillion against about $3.5 trillion in tax revenue, resulting in (more exactly) a $984 billion deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Lott supports legal abortion. He also wants to tax religious organizations, something some argue would violate the First Amendment. He also wants to strip Scientology of its status as a recognized religion.
However, Lott also supports some positions held by right-wingers. He is for term limits, supports the Second Amendment, wants to make English the official language of the United States, and wants to amend birthright citizenship. Lott wants to make it so that someone born in the United States has to have at least one parent who is a citizen in order to become a U.S. citizen by birth.
Lott graduated from Catholic Memorial in West Roxbury and from the University of Vermont. He has been a teacher in Connecticut, Massachusetts, China, and Saudi Arabia, according to his web site. He ran against state Senator Walter Timilty (D-Milton) in Massachusetts’s Norfolk, Bristol, & Plymouth District as an independent in 2016. He got 22.51 percent of the vote to Timilty’s 63.69 percent, according to Ballotpedia.
Pressley’s challenger on the ballot is Roy Owens Sr. of Boston. In addition, Republican Rayla Campbell announced on Wednesday that she will be running a write-in campaign after falling short of the 2,000 write-in votes she needed to secure the Republican Party’s nomination in the September 1 primary and losing a court appeal seeking to get the requirement lowered.
Owens is a pastor, teacher, football and basketball coach, former NAACP member, and a frequent candidate. He has run for state representative and state Senate a combined 11 times, and has not won a primary, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. He ran as a Democrat 10 times and a Republican once — in the First Suffolk District in 1990. He has also run for Boston City Council on multiple occasions.
Owens is pro-life, supports defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and opposes letting biologically male athletes who identify as female compete in women’s sports.
His campaign web site says that the black community is being destroyed by drugs, murder, abortion, disease, alcohol, and other substance abuses. He supports subsidized low-income housing for the poor, and opposes the expansion of liquor store licenses, marijuana shops, and abortion clinics in Boston.
Campbell is also pro-life, supports president Donald Trump, wants to implement E-verify to stop illegal immigration, backs the Second Amendment, and school choice, and wants to see opportunity zones expanded.
Campbell, 38, is Catholic, a mother of three children, and works from home processing claims for geriatric long-term care insurance clients. She has built a following of more than 9,400 people on Facebook, and attends Republican campaign events throughout eastern Massachusetts. This is her first time running for public office.
Massachusetts Seventh Congressional District — known a the ‘Minority-Majority District.’ Source: Massachusetts Legislature web site
Massachusetts Eighth Congressional District (2012 election through at least the 2020 election)
Massachusetts Seventh Congressional District towns and cities:
Middlesex County:
city of Cambridge (Wards 1, 2, and 3; Ward 4, Precinct 1; Ward 5; Ward 10, Precinct 3; Ward 11) (which includes East Cambridge and parts of North Cambridge)
cities of Everett and Somerville
Norfolk County:
town of Milton (Precincts 1, 5, and 10); town of Randolph
Suffolk County:
city of Chelsea
city of Boston (Wards 1 and 2; Ward 3, Precincts 7, 8; Ward 4; Ward 5, Precincts 1, 2, 2A, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10; Ward 7, Precinct 10; Wards 8, 9, and 10; Ward 11, Precincts 1–8; Ward 12; Ward 13, Precincts 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 9; Wards 14 and 15; Ward 16, Precincts 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11; Wards 17 and 18; Ward 19, Precincts 7, 10–13; Ward 20, Precinct 3; Wards 21 and 22);
City of Boston Wards
Matching Wards With Neighborhood
Ward 1: East Boston
Ward 2: Charlestown
Ward 3, Precincts 7 and 8: South End and Chinatown
Ward 4: Fenway and Kenmore Square
Ward 5, Precincts 1, 2, 2A, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10: Back Bay and Bay Village
Ward 7, Precinct 10: small southern portion of South Boston
