When Jeromie Whalen arrived at the Lathrop senior-living community in Easthampton, he was running a few minutes late. He had just pulled up in his trademark incandescent-yellow van and flashed an equally bright smile at residents as he made his way to the community room, where around 40 people gathered to hear him speak.
“I think we’re at an inflection point in American history, and we all know it,” he told the crowd.
Wearing jeans and a Holyoke St. Patrick’s Road Race t-shirt, Whalen looked like somebody who had gotten used to running from place to place. The 39-year-old Northampton High School teacher and Belchertown native had just spent the past week driving his van, which is nearly as old as he is, to all 83 cities and towns across the state’s largest congressional district. He was visiting Lathrop before heading down to Chicopee, where he was planning to knock on doors.
Whalen is counting on that kind of hustle as he seeks to do what other progressives have failed to accomplish before him: unseat U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, an incumbent who has represented the state’s 1st Congressional District for nearly as long as Whalen has been alive. Whalen’s platform is filled with many of the same policy positions as other left-leaning Democrats whose victories have shocked the party this year, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and cutting off weapons sales to Israel.
“We are bombing other countries in an endless war at a billion dollars a day,” he told those at Lathrop. “We need a reprioritization of funding to this country that goes to the services we need rather than the destruction of human lives elsewhere.”
Whalen says he isn’t a democratic socialist, unlike other insurgent candidates who have had success nationwide, and has talked about his desire to work across the aisle with Republicans. In order to do that, though, he’ll need to win first. And that’s something nobody has figured out how to do against Neal, who is running for his 20th term representing the region.
Neal has been at the center of the region’s political power for most of his life. He was raised in Springfield, and after his parents died when he was a teenager, he relied on Social Security survivor benefits. He was elected to the Springfield City Council in his late 20s and successfully ran for mayor of the city at age 34. Five years later, the 18-term incumbent representative at the time, Edward Boland, tipped off Neal that he planned to retire, giving Neal a head start to raise money and campaign. He easily won election — no other Democrat ran against him — and has been in Congress ever since.
A centrist Democrat, Neal has risen through the Democratic Party ranks to become one of its most influential House members. And, if his party wins back the majority in November, he is poised to once again become chairman of the powerful tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. He’s leaning on that experience in his re-election bid.
“If you were to have brain surgery, would you have the doctor who just got out of medical school, or would you have a seasoned surgeon?” he asked in an interview with New England Public Media.
Neal’s campaign declined to make him available for an interview for this article.
In public comments and interviews with other outlets, he has highlighted his work defending Social Security benefits and Americans’ pension plans, and his efforts to help pass other signature Democratic Party legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which he’s called “the most important climate change legislation in the history of America.”
“I have been an effective member of Congress,” Neal said on the debate stage Wednesday. “That’s not in doubt. Time and again, I have been there when the people of this district needed me. I show up, I deliver for this district, and I have stood up to Donald Trump.”
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But just how much Neal shows up has been one of the criticisms that Whalen and other opponents have levied against him. During the debate on Wednesday — the only public forum Neal agreed to this election cycle, less than a week from Election Day and after early voting already began — Whalen said that it has been almost a decade since Neal held an in-person town hall in the district.
“We’ve normalized a do-nothing Congress and the corporatization of this entire American system,” Whalen said. “And who’s the poster child of that? It’s our current absentee congressman who is, percentage wise, one of the top recipients of corporate money in all of Congress.”
Increasingly over his career, Neal has taken large amounts of money from political action committees, or PACs, largely representing corporations. During the previous election cycle, only one other candidate in the U.S. House received a larger portion of their campaign contributions from corporate PACs, according to data from the money-in-politics organization OpenSecrets. Of the $3.2 million Neal received in 2023 and 2024, nearly three quarters of it came from business PACs.
This cycle, corporate PACs continue to fill Neal’s war chest, according to OpenSecrets and The Shoestring’s analysis of campaign-finance data. Of the $2.3 million he has raised to date, more than half of it came from PACs. During the debate with Whalen, Neal said voters should balance that with “the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve raised from working people across the country.”
Neal pushed back on Whalen’s criticisms, saying the latter’s platform was light on specifics and full of platitudes. He instead put forward his accomplishments, saying he has brought back “billions of dollars” for the district, including COVID-era stimulus money and support for the region’s much-anticipated west-east railroad.
“There has not been a life in central or western Massachusetts that has not had a positive impact because of the efforts that I’ve made,” he said. “I’ve been here, I have fought Trump, and I intend to continue to deliver for the people of western and central Massachusetts.”
Neal has said that his policy positions remain unchanged by the corporate money he raises and uses to win re-election every two years. “They buy in or they accept my agenda,” is how he put it at the debate. “I don’t buy in and accept their agenda.” He also uses the money he raises to support the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which party leaders use to fund Democrats running for office.
But his three previous challengers, and others in the district, have questioned why Neal’s agenda is so attractive to big corporate PACs, including those representing industries that stand to benefit from policies before the Ways and Means Committee. He’s been a staunch opponent of Medicare for All, for example, and has backed proposals that are top priorities of the financial and insurance industries.
The top industry PACs fueling his re-election campaign this cycle are in the finance, insurance, and real-estate sectors, according to OpenSecrets. That includes maximum contributions from the PACs representing banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase, for example, and the for-profit health insurance company Humana. Together, those sectors account for a little more than a third of his PAC contributions.
Another 22% of his PAC money comes from the health industry, OpenSecrets found. That includes companies like the medical device giant Abbott Laboratories, HMOs like UnitedHealth Group, the for-profit health care facility operator HCA Inc., pharmaceutical interests like Eli Lilly, and physician specialist groups like the American Society of Anesthesiologists.
Healthcare was a central theme during the candidates’ debate, when Neal highlighted his work on the Affordable Care Act and fighting against Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid. He said he’s for “Medicare for everybody who wants it” while keeping private insurance plans, too. Whalen spoke in favor of a single-payer, Medicare for All system.
“We need solutions now, not putting Band-Aids on the Affordable Care Act,” he said.
Neal has also received donations from controversial PACs that some candidates have vowed to avoid. That includes $1,250 this election cycle from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which donated more to his previous campaigns, and a maximum $10,000 from the employees PAC of the weapons manufacturer RTX, formally known as Raytheon.
When asked about specific policies have been influenced by money in politics, Whalen criticized Neal’s acceptance of AIPAC money amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“He takes tens of thousands of dollars of AIPAC money,” Whalen said. “Don’t get me wrong, you have to separate the Netanyahu regime from the Israeli people and the Jewish communities here, just as you have to separate the Trump administration from the American people. But to be on the right side of history on this, I think that it clouds his judgment by taking AIPAC money.”
Last month, Neal — who previously supported making the act of boycotting Israel illegal — joined the rest of the Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House in voting “yes” on an amendment to cut U.S. aid to Israel. The initiative failed to pass. In a statement at the time, Neal said that the United States “remains committed to our strong, strategic alliance with Israel and will continue to defend its sovereignty and right to exist as a secure Jewish state.” He said providing defensive support to Israel remained a priority, and that the amendment didn’t change “that commitment or our resolve to eradicate Hamas’s reign of terror.”
“We also have a responsibility to ensure that governments receiving our aid meet the standard our values and laws require,” he said. “What we are seeing in the Middle East is not sustainable and demands a new path grounded in peace, security, and the right to self-determination for all.”
Federal Election Commission data show that Whalen has raised far less money than Neal — $335,193 during the election cycle, all from individual donors except for some $12,000 from his own pockets. The vast majority of his donations are from Massachusetts residents.
Whalen has, however, benefited from some $24,000 in outside spending. SF Solidarity PAC — run by Justice Democrats founder and former Alexandria Ocasio Cortez campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti — has paid for phone banking on Whalen’s behalf this month. Neal criticized that spending during the debate.
Neal has been using his money to blanket the district in direct mail and advertising. From July 1 to Aug. 12 — the most recent data available — he spent nearly $1 million on polling, ad buys, campaign consulting, mailers, and other operating costs. After all of that, he still had more than $3 million left in his campaign account.
Whalen spent about a tenth of what Neal spent during that period on advertising, printed materials, events, staffing, and other costs.
Beyond how they’re funding their campaigns, the two candidates are presenting voters with two different styles of leadership.
Speaking to Lathrop residents, Whalen said his “platform, personality, and participation” are what distinguish him in the race. He contrasted his usual jeans-and-t-shirt style, which he said helps him connect with working people and make them comfortable, with what he described as Neal’s “designer suit and Italian leather shoes.”
“It’s also branding for a new generation of leadership at a time in which the Democratic Party drastically needs an overhaul,” he said, describing the current moment as one of low approval ratings for the Democratic Party and Congress alike. “To think that doing the same things over and over is going to elicit a different response, that’s the definition of insanity.”
Neal has described Whalen’s rhetoric as “empty promises” and sloganeering as contrasted with his concrete achievements over the years. During their debate, he highlighted his past work on peace in Northern Ireland and his relationships with prominent Democrats like Joe Biden through his legislative work.
“Bill Clinton sought me out on that on the nuclear disarmament bill,” he said. “Barack Obama called me to find out what I thought of his nuclear agreement that had been reached with John Kerry and himself.”
Whalen’s personal life did enter the public eye when, on Aug. 23, the New York Post ran an article, based on police records provided by an anonymous source, about several alcohol-related charges Whalen faced during his college years, including a drunk-driving arrest at age 23. Whalen accused Neal’s campaign of being behind the “smear tactics,” though he said he had no evidence of it.
Whalen did, though, point to 2020, when former Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse was running against Neal. College Democrats at UMass Amherst sent a letter to Morse — which was quickly leaked and published in the student newspaper — alleging he had made advances on students and disinvited him from future events. Subsequent reporting in The Intercept found the accusation to be a “homophobic smear” of Morse, revealing in an investigation that a student behind the allegations had been motivated to get a job with Neal and that the state’s Democratic Party had advised the students.
Neal’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Whalen’s accusations. He previously had rejected having any link to the Morse incident in 2020.
Whalen has said that his past offenses were the result of “newfound independence and alcohol,” which he said “don’t mix well at a young age.”
“Sixteen years ago I was making decisions and I took accountability for them and I’ve improved my life as a result of those,” he said. Somebody was trying to use that to destroy his character, he said, but he sees it as a story of integrity: growing up and building trust with those around him. He said he wants it to be a lesson to his students today. “I want them to learn from my mistakes.”
There are some issues the candidates agree on, though they often differ in how to solve those problems.
Both candidates have stressed the issue of affordability. Whalen said he’s in support of rent control on the federal level, though he would want to exempt small-scale landlords in favor of regulating corporate ones. Neal has trumpeted his work together with Biden in jump-starting the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic began. His website says he supports “middle-class tax cuts” and expanding the tax incentives for affordable housing.
Immigration has also been a topic both have spotlighted on the campaign trail. Neal has sent mailers across the district saying he has fought against funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an agency he has said he wants to reform. Whalen has called for abolishing ICE.
Polling places are open on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Dusty Christensen is The Shoestring's investigations editor. Based in western Massachusetts, his award-winning investigative reporting has appeared in newspapers and on radio stations across the region. He has reported for outlets including The Nation magazine, NPR, Haaretz, New England Public Media, The Boston Globe, The Appeal, In These Times, and PBS. He teaches journalism to future muckrakers at Smith College. Send story tips to: dchristensen@theshoestring.org.
