On November 4, Seth Moulton ’97 will face Richard Tisei and Christopher Stockwell in pursuit of Massachusetts’s Sixth District Congressional seat.
For the first time since the 1996 Congressional election, the Sixth District has no incumbent in the running. On September 9, 2014, Moulton defeated incumbent Democrat John Tierney, who was seeking his tenth term, in the Democratic Primary election.
Massachusetts’ Sixth District contains most of Essex County and parts of Andover, including Phillips Academy. The district is regarded as a battleground district, according to rollcall.com.
Mary McHugh, Instructor in Political Science at Merrimack College, explained to The Phillipian that the Democrats are currently down 34 seats in the House of Representatives, so this election is crucial if they want a chance to make up some of the seats they are missing. Republicans have a strong lead and are favored in several races, so they are less concerned about trying to gain a seat in Massachusetts and are focusing their efforts on other elections.
The election is too tight to give one candidate a definite lead, but McHugh said that the Democratic Party is “cautiously optimistic.”
The Democrats lost their consistent control of the Sixth District seat after Tierney, long-time district Congressman, became involved in a scandal. Tierney’s wife was incarcerated for one month after receiving money from her brother’s illegal gambling business, according to “The Boston Globe.” The 2012 election between Tierney and Tisei was the closest election since 1996, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Tisei won 47.1 percent of the votes, while Tierney won 48.3 percent of the votes, winning the 2012 race by 4,330 votes.
Tisei won by small margins in the majority of the towns in the district and made up the ground with decisive victories in the largest towns, such as Lynn, Peabody and Salem, which have historically favored the Democratic Party. The 18-year incumbent Tierney lost the 2014 Democratic Primary to Moulton, with sizeable victories in only Lynn and Gloucester. Moulton won all but five towns. Tisei ran unopposed in the Republican Primary.
[Read more on the Massachusetts Primary Elections in this week’s issue of _The __Phillipian_](http://www.phillipian.net/articles/2014/10/30/seth-moulton-vs-richard-tisei).
