SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Seven House Democrats have lost their seats to primary challengers this year. Rep. Richard Neal, the 77-year-old Massachusetts Democrat who was first elected in 1988, is not worried he will join them.
Neal has spent decades accumulating power, and, as the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, he has been able to run the party’s policy apparatus in the House. His campaign says he’s donated or fundraised $5.5 million for competitive races to help Democrats win back the majority in November. And he remains confident that his longstanding ties to voters and his seniority — which is ultimately power in Congress — will make his September primary here against Jeromie Whalen, a 39-year-old public school teacher, an easy one for him to win.
But as several of his Democratic colleagues recently discovered, seniority is not the political shield it once was, as voters this year have shown their willingness to toss out decades of accumulated experience. They have opted instead for generational change.
If he does lose? Establishment Democrats would have a hard time writing it off as just another cranky electorate showing an aging lawmaker the door. Neal’s stamp on major Democratic legislation from his perch on Ways and Means has benefited Western Massachusetts to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. If voters decide that isn’t worth preserving, the problem for the party gets bigger than age. It would suggest that the traditional bargain with voters — keep sending me back and I’ll accumulate power and money on your behalf — may be breaking down.
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Neal isn’t even entertaining the possibility.
“Let’s put this way: I think there’s a tendency for challengers in congressional elections to want the public to come to believe that history started on the day they were born,” he told me in a recent interview. Previous challengers have “really been unable to fracture, nevermind break” his longstanding relationships in the district.
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Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District is easy to characterize as a deep-blue seat of liberal college enclaves ripe for progressive insurgency. On the ground it’s more complicated. The district includes Springfield and its working-class, post-industrial neighborhoods, struggling former mill towns and rural farming communities. There is considerable wealth here, but also deep poverty and communities hollowed out by the opioid epidemic.
Neal’s ability to secure funding for the district has been key to his success even when the headwinds have been bad for incumbents.
“Richie has always maintained a close relationship with the district,” said a source close to the Neal campaign. “You won’t catch him sleeping … but more than that, Richie’s a liberal. Like I think some people on the left want to run a campaign against a Blue Dog but Richie is a pro-labor, pro-worker, pro-Social Security Democrat, and he’s been rock solid on that.”
Neal has only had a handful of primary challengers and even fewer competitive ones. His last real challenge was in 2020 against the young, progressive mayor of Holyoke, Alex Morse, who was backed by Justice Democrats. Justice Democrats spent mightily against Neal, and he still won by double digits.
Confidence from those past wins has carried into this cycle. The lawmaker says comparisons between losing incumbents are the result of the “national media” looking for a narrative where there isn’t one. But some of the similarities between losing incumbents are difficult to ignore.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado), a nearly 30-year veteran of the House, lost her June primary to 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros. DeGette had handily won her primary in 2022 and didn’t even field a challenger in 2024. Rep. John Larson (D-Connecticut) was ousted last week after 14 terms in the House by Luke Bronin, the 47-year-old former mayor of Hartford. Before this year, Larson hadn’t faced a Democratic primary challenger since his first race for Congress, 28 years ago.
DeGette and Larson essentially made the same bet Neal is making now: that voters would value their seniority more than they wanted someone new. Both, like Neal, spent decades building organizations and relationships in their districts. Both argued that their seniority would position them for powerful committee posts if Democrats win the House in November.
Neal isn’t promising voters that his seniority could translate into power. He has already had it and wielded it plenty on their behalf.
“I’ve authored major legislation that has benefited people. I brought back billions of dollars to the state of Massachusetts — not millions, not tens of millions, billions of dollars,” he said. “I mean, I wrote the American Rescue Act with [Nancy] Pelosi, if you look at the Butch Lewis Act on the pension front … I mean, these are the things that clearly are breaking through.”
“It’s interesting to me that the Inflation Reduction Act is the most consequential environmental legislation in American history and it came out of the Ways and Means Committee when I was chairman — $412 billion worth of tax credits, and it’s working,” he added.
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The Democratic Party’s existential crisis over age is especially prevalent this election cycle. Of the Democratic incumbents who have lost, five were over the retirement age.
Enter Whalen, who spends his days driving around in a bright yellow Toyota Cargo Van from 1988 — the same year Neal was first elected to Congress — that looks like it’s held together with Scotch tape, and bears the license plate “VANANA.” His lawn signs match the van’s yellow paint; a billboard over Interstate 91 instructs voters to “trust the man with the yellow van.”
Whalen often likes to say that he’s been alive almost as long as Neal has been in office. His staff skews young too: His communications director, Joey Pisani, is entering his junior year of college and only just turned 20 years old. Whalen is attempting to visit and knock on doors in all 83 municipalities before the election, which means a lot of time in the van.
“The other day when I was driving, Metallica’s ‘Ride the Lightning’ came on,” he said. “I go, ‘Has Richie ever heard this song? Does Richie know who Metallica is?’ It’s just something small but like, is Richie plugged into society? Not just pop culture, but is he plugged into society and concerns and issues in any way that would be something where he would understand what’s happening out here?”
On paper, Whalen reads as engineered in a lab to attract the national groups that have spent years trying to dislodge entrenched Democrats. He supports “Medicare for All,” wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and refuses corporate PAC money (his primary critique of Neal is that his fundraising is driven almost entirely by PAC money). Justice Democrats, which did not respond to a request for comment, once called Neal “the epitome of a corporate Democrat.”
But the national cavalry isn’t running to Whalen. Neal’s victory in 2020 was so decisive, no one has really bothered to try and take him out since.
Now Whalen thinks the district is open to an alternative. While his name ID is likely extremely low, his consistent social media presence has racked up hundreds of thousands of views in the last three months. His campaign is extremely proud of its ground game, citing more than 50,000 voters reached according to internal data. Lawn signs don’t vote, but Whalen signs have been out everywhere since April, where Neal’s only just started cropping up in August. Through Whalen’s travels around the district, he says the Neal true believers just aren’t out here.
“When knocking doors, the most resounding message I’ve heard is, ‘It’s time.’ Richard Neal’s base has always been an older generation of voters, and that base has dwindled as people have passed away, retired to Florida or moved elsewhere,” Whalen said.
Those who are still here, he says, “believe it’s time to pass the torch.”
Voters at his events say as much.
“I’m just not happy with the status quo,” said Claire Murphy, 72, a former Neal voter at a Whalen event. “It’s just time for some new blood.”
Her husband, Bob, interjected.
“Look, we can say ‘Thank you for serving the community, thank you for serving the government, but it’s time for him to hang it up,” he said. “It’s time for new ideas and younger blood.”
Whalen campaigns almost exclusively in T-shirts, shorts and hiking boots but is not above a costume. For a Fourth of July parade in East Longmeadow, he donned a full Uncle Sam getup to run down the route.
Whalen had been thinking about a run since Donald Trump was reelected in 2024. He saved up some money and took a leave of absence from his public school job so he could make campaigning his fulltime gig — his wife works in finance in New York to support them, traveling back and forth most weeks, something he readily acknowledges is something most people can’t do. In February 2025, tragedy struck Whalen’s family when his older brother Chris died by suicide. Six months later, Whalen announced his campaign.
“I made a commitment in the classroom a long time ago to make the world a better place, and now I am making a commitment to my brother’s legacy to do the same,” he said.
He approaches campaigning with the energy of a golden retriever puppy, but things shift when he talks about Chris and the toll severe mental illness can take.
“At the center of everything is joy,” he resolves, wiping tears away. “I think that’s the biggest influence that you can have on the world is just making it a better place, aside from legislation, aside from any governmental procedures or protocol.”
A thousand people showed up for the wake, Whalen says, something he’s reminded of almost daily when people bring up his brother as he knocks on doors in the district.
Joy and legacy might be the touchstones for his campaign approach, but the dynamics of the race hinge around something more concrete: money.
Neal is heading into the final weeks of the primary with roughly $4 million and has already spent around $350,000 on mailers, television and digital advertising — about $100,000 more than Whalen has raised during the entire campaign.
Whalen argues that money isn’t destiny, especially in a cheap media market with no public polling.
“Look, AOC beat Joe Crowley and only raised $300,000 and that was in New York City,” Whalen stressed in an interview during a day of canvassing.
Talking about money also gives Whalen the opportunity to make his favorite Neal criticism. Only a fraction of Neal’s fundraising this year comes from small-dollar donors, and more than half of his money this cycle comes from PACs, according to Federal Election Commission data analyzed by OpenSecrets.
“The money I’ve raised is overwhelmingly going to other Democratic candidates and the DCCC, but I’m not going to disarm,” Neal said in defense. “I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside money spent against me in the race against Morse.”
Neal also brushes off Whalen’s other big criticism: that he is not available in the district.
“I mean, it’s what every challenger says,” he said. “It’s the rhetoric that’s embraced, and generally, there’s not a lot of evidence to support it.”
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There’s no public polling on the race, so the question of who has momentum is really a game of vibes. Nonpartisan district polling is practically nonexistent. In light of Larson’s loss, some more attention has come Neal’s way, especially as another generational fight plays out in the Senate primary between incumbent Sen. Ed Markey, 80, and Rep. Seth Moulton, 47.
A new poll from UMass Amherst showed Markey up significantly over Moulton, and voters seemed to not care about his age, with 91% of primary voters viewing his experience as an asset rather than a liability. But those aren’t tea leaves Neal should read into all that much either, the poll’s director, Tatishe Nteta, said.
“The Moulton-Markey race is a little different because the challenger is moderate and is sort of viewed in the most positive way as, um, ambitious,” he said. “I don’t think those are the dynamics with Neal and Whalen. Senate primary voters in Massachusetts value progressivism over all else.”
The Neal and Whalen race is ultimately a test of if people are going to be willing to give up the kind of “power, influence and bacon” Neal has been able to wield, Nteta added.
The final stretch of the campaign will include a 30-minute debate on Aug. 26, after early voting has begun. Neal, meanwhile, is flexing his ability to show just how entrenched his support actually is.
George Bruce, an 82-year-old Springfield resident, said he was asked to attend a recent African Community Festival, where Neal appeared and was flanked by dozens of Black community leaders, in 100-degree heat to show support for Neal because he’s known Neal his “entire life.”
“He never forgot where he came from, so no matter what color or creed you were, he was always there for us,” Bruce said. “Richie is a strong man, and I appreciate him.”
Timothy Paul, a pastor and founder of a Springfield church, was the first to greet Neal at the festival.
“We’re just here to help him because we remember what he’s done for our community,” Paul said. “And we’re going to help other people remember.”
Neal has the money and the infrastructure and is projecting so much confidence, he’s never uttered Whalen’s name publicly, calling this reporter “perceptive” when it was pointed out to him.
“I think that if one dresses up as a leprechaun, or dresses up as, uh, let’s see, Uncle Sam, you’re trying to create a sensation on social media and that is something that’s generally not gonna get you elected to Congress,” he said.
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