The group Boston Indivisible hosted a candidate night on Thursday in Downtown Boston and online for the Massachusetts Eighth District.

Organizers from Boston Indivisible said during and before the start of the night that while Congressional 8th District House of Representatives member Stephen Lynch was invited to the candidates’ night, he chose not to attend.

The night focused instead on his challenger, 38-year-old attorney and voting rights advocate Patrick Roath, coming out of Jamaica Plain. Lynch has held the district since 2013 and held the Massachusetts 9th District from 2001 to 2013.

Roath interned at the Obama White House and served as a speechwriter for former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Roath also chaired the Board of Common Cause of Massachusetts and helped work towards voter education and representation.

Boston Indivisible got Los Angeles Times reporter Ellen Hume to moderate the night. Hume grilled Roath for about an hour all told, both giving him a platform to express the ideals and issues of his campaign, but also to continually ask him if he thinks he's got a shot, and why he thinks so.

“Congressman Lynch, who has been in office almost 25 years, defeated his last primary challenger two-to-one in 2020, and before we get into all the passion and the issues, I think we need to get the elephant in the room out of the way; or maybe the donkey in the room,” Hume said. “How can you possibly win? Have you wooed away any of his union or veteran supporters, because that is the base (Lynch) seems to rely on year after year. So do you have a strategy we can believe in?”

Roath responded that, this time, things are much different.

“I don't want to waste anyone's time; this is a serious campaign to change this congressional seat,” Roath said. “We can win this race. Passion and urgency; that's the elephant in the room and why we're going to win. I think there is a message there that people are ready for that maybe they weren't in 2020 or previous years. This country is going through something totally different. And people respond to that, and I think that opens up new opportunities and avenues for change.”

Roath then emphasized that his funding sources are not coming from certain sources.

“We out-raised the congressman last year without taking a single (political action committee) PAC check of any kind,” he said. “We raised over $600,000, we are not taking corporate PAC money at all, but we are going to continue to have the resources we need to prosecute this. I am a full-time candidate, I have been since last May.”

According to Open Secrets – https://tinyurl.com/bdh4h7d2 – public data is only available for 2024, but Lynch had raised about $720,000, and about half of that came from PACs. Roath was not listed on that site for direct comparison.

Roath went through his experience and what he wants to achieve, which were baseline progressive views that you can look up on his website at https://patrickroath.com

Roath said he was thankful that Deval Patrick and gun rights activist, former Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee and student survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting David Hogg have endorsed his candidacy.

“And his national group have endorsed this campaign as just one of a few that they are going to endorse this year,” he said.

Getting back to Hume's original question, Roath said he would campaign to traditional union and veteran voters where they live.

“I don't know how to do this other than ask those people for their vote and share with them what we're about and offer a different solution,” he said.

One of the many topics the night went through was that of healthcare. He said he supported Medicare for All, as a short answer, but said the issue is extremely complicated and would take time to unravel. He said, however, bottom-line he supports a single-payer healthcare system (a sentiment that's growing – https://tinyurl.com/3wjxutkt ).

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“But how do you pay for it?” Hume responded.

“We might need to raise taxes at some point, and that happens at the absolute wealthiest level, and that's just a reality; we're not going to do what Trump did and just cut the richest people's taxes in the country,” he said.

Roath said another issue he would like to face is to get money out of politics.

“I've kind of come around to the idea of term limits,” he said. “If you are in favor of that, you've got to hold yourself to that. And I'm open to how many it should be, but it should probably be six (terms) that's about 12 years, and that seems about enough time to do anything in Congress right?”

Roath said the complacency in the Democratic party incumbencies is a real issue he wants to tackle.

“It is a really scary moment we're in this country, the existential threat that is emanating from this White House right now in MAGA extremists that are terrorizing our country on the streets of Minneapolis that could very well come to our city next,” he said. “That is the threat that this country faces, and that requires a different style of leadership than what we have been getting from this Democratic party and, very specifically, from the congressman in this congressional district. I just think the approaches that made sense decades ago are not suited to the problems of today. We have to be doing a better job about the scary things this government is doing to our people; we have to do a better job of standing up to Trump.”

But Roath said they can't just be on defense. When asked what Hume said was going to be a tough question, “What would he do to help make life more affordable?”, Roath said he didn't think it was so tough.

“We should be asking every member of congress that question,” he said.

Roath said housing would be the first thing, which is especially acute in Boston and the surrounding areas. “It's just not possible for people to continue living in these communities on normal salaries,” he said, adding he would work on housing supply, down-payment assistance, density and zoning bonuses.

The next facet of affordability Roath said he wanted to tackle was childcare. He said the average cost is approaching University of Massachusetts tuition. “That just doesn't work for working families, I feel like we have to invest federal resources into that problem,” he said.

Third, Roath said, was healthcare, fourth was education, and fifth grocery prices. “I think we could be doing more there as well,” he said. To which Hume replied, “A lot of people talk about it, but it just never seems to get done.”

“Part of what I'm trying to do in this primary campaign is front-and-center those issues,” Roath said.