When local high-school teacher Jeromie Whalen took to the stage just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, he was down in the polls in his primary-election bid in the 1st Congressional District. As a packed crowd gathered around him at White Lion Brewing Company in Springfield, he reached for words.
“It’s more than a campaign,” he said. “It’s more than a congressional seat. It’s about giving back to the greater good. And tomorrow, when I’m back in class, I will look back at this night and at this inflection point in American history and know that we etched our names into it with courage, conviction, and compassion because we won regardless.”
Whalen ultimately secured only 46% of the vote, losing to U.S. Rep. Richard Neal in his bid to unseat the Springfield Democrat — one of a handful of left-leaning challengers to fall short of victory Tuesday night. In the 12th Hampden District, incumbent state Rep. Angelo Puppolo handily defeated Democratic Socialists of America-backed newcomer Michael Lachenmeyer with more than 64% of the vote. And in the 11th Hampden District, two candidates failed in their bid to challenge incumbent Rep. Bud Williams on more progressive platforms.
At a moment when leftist and progressive challengers are making waves nationwide defeating establishment candidates, the biggest upsets proved elusive for those seeking to emulate that success in western Massachusetts.
Left-leaning organizers say there were silver linings despite the losses. Whalen, for example, came within eight percentage points of Neal — closer than any challenger has ever gotten in his nearly four decades in office, despite Neal spending 10 times more on his campaign. Progressive U.S. Sen. Ed Markey fended off a centrist challenge from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, and incumbent Governor’s Council member Tara Jacobs won in a landslide over challenger Michael Fenton with a social justice-focused platform. And although Williams won, it was with less than 45% of the vote.
But overall, it was well funded incumbents and more centrist candidates who won the day.
“It wasn’t our night last night,” said Sasha Morsmith, the co-chair of River Valley Democratic Socialists of America. She said across the state, more establishment candidates fended off progressive challenges. “I think we’re seeing that the Massachusetts Democratic Party establishment is still really powerful and that we need to be more organized going forward.”
Morsmith said that the local DSA chapter, which endorsed Lachenmeyer less than a month ago, would typically get involved a lot sooner in a race, drawing on its members’ enthusiasm and growing numbers to canvas on a candidate’s behalf. However, River Valley DSA had focused much of its electoral energy on passing a statewide rent-control ballot question. When the state’s top court threw out that ballot initiative in late June, the DSA threw its efforts behind Lachenmeyer, who had begun campaigning much sooner at the start of the year.
“Our canvassing was much better than the opposition,” Morsmith said. “I think that’s true of the DSA campaign, it was true of the McKnight campaign. But it’s still not at the level to overcome the financial advantage that our opponents had.”
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Progressives’ door-knocking did seem to make a difference, though, in one race in which money wasn’t a primary factor.
In the 1st Franklin District, Greenfield City Council President Lora Wondolowski defeated Corinne Coryat — the former chief of staff to Natalie Blais, who vacated the seat in January — by less than 100 votes. Wondolowski had earned the endorsement of Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution, a progressive group that formed out of the local grassroots canvassing behind Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2016.
Ferd Wulkan, a member of FCCPR’s coordinating committee, said that the group poured its energy into door-knocking for Wondolowski, Whalen, Jacobs, and Markey. And as vote-counting continued into Wednesday in the razor-thin 1st Franklin race, the last town to submit its vote count was Colrain. With the one town to go, Wondolowski’s lead was only around 40 votes, Wulkan said.
“The whole election hinged on who Colrain was going to vote for, and probably our most active canvasser … he lives in Colrain and he was out there all the time,” Wulkan said. “He personally knocked on half the doors in the town … That clearly made a difference and it seemed more dramatic than maybe it was because it was the last town.”
Matt Szafranski is the editor of the Western Massachusetts Politics and Insight blog, where he has covered politics in Springfield and the broader region for two decades. He said fundraising may have been important in some races, but that it wasn’t the most important factor in the state legislative races locally, including Puppolo’s victory.
“Angelo did incredibly well there and that’s partly because people across the district – it’s more moderate in general, but not incredibly so – appreciate the work he puts in,” Szafranski said.
While people may have their ideological differences with Puppolo, they see his strong constituent service and his connections with the Legislature’s leadership, Szafranski said.
And in the 11th Hampden District between the incumbent, Williams, and challengers Nicole Coakley and Johnnie McKnight, Szafranski pointed out that Williams’ financial advantage was largely offset by the outside spending of groups like the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Working Families Party in support of McKnight and opposing Williams.
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Teachers Association declined to make newly elected Massachusetts Teachers Association President Matt Bach available for an interview Wednesday. In a statement, Bach and Vice President Deb Gesualdo — who are part of the progressive, rank-and-file movement Educators for a Democratic Union that has turned the MTA in a more activist direction in recent years — said that campaigns “built on progressive, community-oriented values can win the day.”
“Elected legislators can never forget that they are accountable first and foremost to the voters,” the statement said. “Special interests and corrosive, insider politics must be challenged, and we applaud every candidate who took on the status quo, especially as powerful corporate interests continue to buy political influence.”
Williams did benefit from a fractured opposition, who together captured a majority of votes. A ballot question that is before Massachusetts voters in November could make these kinds of victories a thing of the past. If approved, Question 3 would change primary elections from one-party affairs to what’s known as an all-party primary, where the top two candidates advance to the general election in November regardless of party affiliation.
Szafranski said that could benefit candidates like McKnight, but that higher voter turnout in the general election might benefit incumbents like Williams.
“It’s kind of a crapshoot,” he said.
Money also didn’t play much of a factor in the Governor’s Council race between Jacobs and Fenton, who had strong support from law-enforcement officials like Hampden County Sheriff Nicholas Cocchi and the district attorneys in Hampden and Berkshire counties, as well as other high-profile Democratic officials in Springfield like Mayor Domenic Sarno.
State campaign finance data show that Fenton significantly outraised and outspent Jacobs through the end of July — the most recent data available. In 2026, he raised almost $57,000 and spent a little more than a third of that. Jacobs, by contrast, spent $12,000 — just a little more than she raised in 2026. Jacobs ultimately won with more than 60% of the vote.
Speaking to The Shoestring at the election-night party she shared with Whalen, Jacobs said that she benefited from staying on message and focusing on delivering justice for marginalized and incarcerated people. Fenton, she said, ran a more conservative campaign. She said that voters want genuine, authentic people to run for office — something she said that she and Whalen tapped into. Fenton, meanwhile, highlighted his work as a politician and lawyer — something she said played to her favor.
“People are sick of it and they wanted different,” she said.
Incumbency certainly played a large factor, too. In the seven contested races across the four counties of western Massachusetts, together with the U.S. Senate race, there were seven incumbents on the ballot on Tuesday. All of them secured re-election. That’s a trend that played out across the state, too.
Some academic researchers have found that Massachusetts’ state Legislature has had some of the lowest overall turnover — for electoral and other reasons — in recent decades. In June, two researchers — Jordan Butcher and Semih Demirtas — published an analysis of 30 years of legislative turnover data in the journal State Politics & Policy Quarterly. They found that from 1990 to 2020, only seven other states had a lower turnover rate than Massachusetts. In the 2010s, only three other states had a lower turnover rate.
Beyond the incumbency advantage, money also played a substantial role in Neal’s re-election bid.
Neal, who is consistently one of the top recipients of corporate PAC money in the U.S. House, spent $3 million on his re-election bid, according to Federal Election Commission data. That comes out to around $61 spent for every vote he received, compared to Whalen, who spent just $7 for every vote he received.
For the second time, Neal will now face independent candidate Nadia Milleron in the November general election. Milleron, who has raised only $44,000 so far this election cycle, did not respond to interview requests Wednesday.
Szafrankski said that Whalen’s campaign relied on getting out into the district and meeting voters face-to-face.
And that seemed to work in places like Holyoke — a city where Neal won the last time he faced a Democratic primary challenge in 2020 despite that city’s then-mayor, Alex Morse, being on the ballot. This year, though, Whalen convincingly beat Neal in the Paper City.
Gladys Lebrón-Martínez is the current Ward 1 School Committee representative in Holyoke, where she previously served for a decade as that ward’s city councilor. She endorsed Whalen, and told The Shoestring that he first appeared on her radar when a series of fires burned down several apartment complexes in Holyoke late last year. She said that Whalen showed up with diapers and other essentials for displaced families. Then, she said she saw him knocking doors in neighborhoods where few politicians show up.
“He earned the respect of the people,” she said at Whalen’s election-night gathering. “I think he’s done the work, man.”
But Neal’s spending — including big ad buys in the Springfield area as well as in the Berkshires — blunted the impact of Whalen’s ground game, Szafrankski said. He pointed to how well Neal did across the Berkshires, where he decided to spend big on messaging. And relying on shoe-leather campaigning was already going to be difficult in Neal’s hometown of Springfield, Szafrankski added.
“That ended up working better than some people thought, but it obviously hits a wall,” he said.
Szafrankski also noted that like other progressive candidates across the country, Whalen tended to perform better in more affluent parts of the district.
“They did seem a little bit more open to Jeromie outside of his base areas, which would be consistent with what you saw in New York, what you saw in Denver,” he said. “It just isn’t enough to crack fortress Springfield, but it’s there.”
The experience of New York City, which elected DSA member Zohran Mamdani last year, might be instructive in other ways, too.
Morsmith, the River Valley DSA co-chair, said that the DSA chapter in New York City “got beat a lot before they started winning.” The western Massachusetts chapter, by contrast, only recently started getting involved in electoral politics. She said that after Mamdani’s victory, DSA chapters nationwide — including River Valley DSA — saw an explosion of membership that they didn’t necessarily anticipate. They weren’t totally prepared to deploy that new energy this election cycle, she said.
“Now we know that we’re capable of intervening in state-level races and looking forward to 2028,” Morsmith said. The group might also begin backing more municipal-level candidates, too. “I’m really excited for the type of opportunities we might have.”
Groups like DSA and FCCPR are also active outside of electoral politics. River Valley DSA has supported labor and tenant organizing locally, and FCCPR has done other grassroots and issue organizing work, too. Both Morsmith and Wulkan said that they’ll be turning back to that work.
“One role that I think the left in general has to figure out – we can get people elected, how can we then hold them accountable,” Wulkan said. “Not just to the campaign promises but to the issues we bring up.”
Dylan Vrins contributed reporting to this article.
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.
