Why Has Mac D’Alessandro Decided To Run A Primary Challenge Against Stephen Lynch (D-MA)?

Stephen Lynch was the most conservative member of Massachusetts' congressional delegation until Scott Brown was elected. Lynch, an anti-Choice Democrat, has leaned in a conservative direction and now he can use Brown as an excuse, as he did when he became one of the only Democratic non-Blue Dogs to oppose the healthcare reform bill. If he thought no one was paying attention, he was in for a very rude awakening. Mac D’Alessandro, SEIU's New England political director decided to take him on. I spoke with Mac on the phone and asked him to introduce himself to DWT readers. If you like what you read, he's now on the Blue America Send The Democrats A Message page. Mac:

I'm Mac D’Alessandro and I’m a progressive Democrat running for United States Congress from the 9th Congressional district in Massachusetts.

Because I’ve decided to challenge a fellow Democrat in a primary, I’d like to share with you a little bit about who I am and why I’ve made this decision.

Something went terribly wrong in Washington, DC a long time ago. For far too long, the only things standing between tens of millions of Americans & small businesses and quality, affordable health care have been insurance companies and a system that puts profit margins ahead of peoples’ health. For far too long, American consumers, workers, small business owners, and taxpayers have been victimized by a system that’s been bought, paid for, designed and run by large corporations and their armies of lobbyists, lawyers, and accountants.

No matter when the Great Recession began or how close they say we are to coming out of it, far too many of our communities continue to suffer its dire effects-- lost jobs, lost homes, lost savings, and lost hope.

I have spent my entire career fighting against powerful interests on behalf of everyday people. I have fought to ensure that those with the very least among us get a hand to help lift themselves from poverty; to ensure that, just because a community doesn’t have big-time lawyers and lobbyists on its side, it isn’t the first, and often only, place chosen to site some noxious facility; to ensure that consumers and workers get a fair shake in a system that often seems more concerned with the Fortune 500 than with the good fortunes of our families and communities.

The fights I’ve waged during my career haven’t been mere academic exercises or do-good abstractions. My wife and I often sit at our kitchen table staring at our household budget and share the concerned glances that ask: how is it that we can be working so hard and just scraping by? Those concerned looks linger when we realize how lucky we are to be just getting by when so many equally hardworking families around us are getting left further and further behind.

My career has been spent outside of Washington, DC fighting for workers, consumers and middle class families such as mine. I am running because I believe that fight must now be taken to the halls of Congress. We can no longer afford for our representatives to be mere votes some or most of the time. Instead, we deserve representatives that will join and lead the fight to ensure that our families don’t get left any further behind.