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| Rep. Tierney concedes defeat in Mass. Dem primary to political newcomer |
| 2014-09-10 |
| [FOXNEWS] In a stunning defeat, nine-term incumbent U.S. Rep. John Tierney ...Representative-for-life from Massachusetts, first elected in 1997. His priorities include green energy and more student loans... ...perhaps not quite for life, but long enough to grow old, send his kids to college and collect a pension... on Tuesday lost a bitter Democratic primary contest to political newcomer Seth Moulton in the state's 6th Congressional District. Tierney is the first sitting Massachusetts congressman to lose a primary since 1992, when former U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan beat then-incumbent Chester Atkins in the Democratic primary. Moulton, a former Marine and Iraq war veteran from Salem, will face Republican Richard Tisei in the November election. He credited his win in part on voter frustration with Congress. "It's time for a new approach to end the gridlock in Washington," Moulton told supporters Tuesday night. "It's not enough to blame the Republicans for the lack of progress at a time when our country faces so many challenges. And it's cynical to think we must accept it." Tierney, in a brief concession speech, said he was proud of "an amazing 18 years" in office. "It was always about making sure that people had opportunity, that our children had at least the same opportunity that we had," Tierney said. Moulton ran a well-financed campaign and suggested Tierney had been ineffective in Congress. By mid-August, Moulton had raised $1.6 million compared with the $1.9 million raised by Tierney. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 After graduating from Harvard , Moulton joined the Marines in 2001. He served in Iraq and was part of the first Marine company to enter Baghdad, despite opposing the war, according to his campaign biography. "While I believe that the war was a mistake, I don't regret doing what I could to serve our country," Moulton said in his introductory campaign video. These days, with Iraq back at the center of the national conversation amid the rise of the Islamic State, Moulton opposes a new ground war there. His parents were Vietnam war protesters. Boston Magazine has the details: As students at Brown University in the late 1960s, Lynn and Tom opposed the Vietnam War. During her senior year, Lynn joined students at campuses across the country who, as an act of protest, refused to take their final exams. Later, as a law school student at Boston University, Tom marched in an antiwar demonstration. After marrying and starting a family, they wanted to raise Seth and his younger siblings, Cyrus and Eliza, to be independent thinkers. "They had a teacher who preached leftist values," says Lynn, a gregarious woman who wears glasses and her hair cropped short. "I wanted to say, ‘I agree with you, but I don’t want you to tell them what to think.’" As parents, Lynn and Tom’s own open-mindedness had its limits. While the children were growing up, Lynn prohibited them from playing with toy weapons, even squirt guns. ("I gave them plastic fish to squirt at one another," she says.) When Seth informed his parents that he planned to enlist in the Marines, Lynn says, her first thought was: "There was no career choice he could have made that would have made me more unhappy, except if he had chosen a life of crime." 3. He's backed by Stanley McChrystal. The retired Army general, who was dismissed as the top commander in Afghanistan in 2010, bestowed his first political endorsement on Moulton. 4. He probably gives Democrats a better chance at holding the 6th district. Tierney was a lackluster campaigner who was still carrying baggage from his family gambling scandal. Democrats are probably better off with Moulton as their nominee. Republican nominee Richard Tisei, who narrowly lost to Tierney in 2012, would have been able to tie the congressman to the Obama administration and hammer his long stay in Washington at a time when voter fatigue with Congress is rampant. With Moulton, he's running against a fresh face in a district that handed Obama 55 percent of the vote in 2012. 5. That said, Republicans will try to cast him as a Tierney clone. "Seth Moulton may have defeated John Tierney in the primary, but if elected to Congress Moulton would be a less effective carbon copy [than] the inept Tierney. As Moulton said, he agrees with Tierney ‘on all the issues’ and that is exactly what makes him so wrong for Massachusetts families and small businesses," said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ian Prior in a statement. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2014-09-10 15:25 |
| #3 I haven't seen one of those in a long, long time--sane and ethical that is. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-09-10 15:22 |
| #2 Any chance the newcomer is a sane and ethical Democrat? I know, I know. I can dream can't I? |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2014-09-10 11:35 |
| #1 Tisei would have likely won two years ago against Tierney, but a libertarian siphoned off just enough votes for Tierney to win. |
| Posted by: Raj 2014-09-10 10:28 |