Eighth District Congressional candidates – incumbent Stephen Lynch and challenger Patrick Roath – participated in a public forum last week held by the League of Women Voters (LWV) Massachusetts Chapter.

The forum was moderated by LWV Massachusetts Co-President Courtney Henderson, who lives in Fall River and is not a constituent of the 8th Distirct. The event was presented in conjuction with the LWV Norwood, LWV Boston, LWV Stoughton/Sharon, LWV Westwood/Walpole/Dedham, LWV Weymouth and LWV Massachusetts.

The forum focused on several topics facing the federal government, mostly orbiting the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and what they would do to fight them, but also on local issues, like affordability, housing and medical costs (though these did intersect with the president’s agenda during the forum).

The main difference between the two candidates – as they agreed on many singular issues – was that Roath was pitching that he was full of new ideas to bring to congress, while Lynch emphasized that experience was needed to take on the current Republican party.

“It is about providing a compelling optimistic message that resonates across this country and builds majorities, and I am convinced that the path forward is going to look different from the past,” Roath said. “We cannot keep retreading the same thing, we cannot keep sending the same people down and we cannot trust that the system that’s got us here is going to continue to deliver.”

A big issue that caused some apparent consternation between the candidates was that of funding. Roath contended that Lynch gets a lot of money from corporate political action committees (PAC), and Lynch contended that Roath also took money from PACs.

And there is a bit of truth to both of these claims. Lynch, according to records on the Federal Elections Commission website, did collect a lot of donations from unions, as he says below – https://gvimes.link/lnchdntns – including the Plumbers and Pipefitters, United Food and Commercial Workers International, the Carpenters Union, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers PAC, the Employees of RTX Corporation PAC (RTX is Raytheon) and the Teamsters.

“Let me be clear,” Lynch said. “The PACs that I accepted money from are the Ironworkers,” he said. “When I was an ironworker, and they still do it today, it was 9 cents an hour, $3.60 a week. That’s their PAC. My opponent has had four mailings, you’ve probably got them all, and they’re all from PACs that he’s working with.”

But Lynch also took donations from corporate PACs, like the Blackrock Funds Services Group LLC PAC (which appears to be a subsidiary of the international conglomerate, Blackrock Inc.). The FEC also stated he took money from the TD Bank US Holding Company PAC and the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company PAC.

“We need to take corporate PAC money out of politics,” Roath said. “This campaign is not taking corporate PAC money.”

While there were no corporate PACs specifically in Roath’s FEC filings, there was $2,800 that appeared to be donated by META in 14 $200 donations – https://gvimes.link/rthdntns. Roath’s campaign stated these are in fact not donations, but rather that one of the campaign’s cards was compromised and the apparent thief used it for $2,800 worth of purchases from Facebook/META. The receipt of those funds was actually a refund, according to the campaign. The purchases can be seen at https://gvimes.link/rthfb

Roath also received much of his donations from individuals, though much of that was channeled by the organization ActBlue, which describes itself as “the fundraising infrastructure behind Democratic politics.” Lynch also had some donations go through ActBlue.

Affordability was a big issue during the forum. Lynch and Roath went back and forth on it in several questions, with Lynch focusing on reversing Trump’s tariffs and other actions to reduce costs, while Roath had more long-term solutions for reducing prices.

The conversation came to a head when the Medicaid/Medicare/Social Security question came up. LWV asked both candidates what they would do to protect those three institutions, with Roath answering first.

Roath said figuring out how to expand Medicare and Medicaid to more U.S. residents would help reduce healthcare costs with preventative medicine. He said for Social Security, making it easier for more people to come to the United States, increasing the work force and getting a positive ratio of current workers versus retiring seniors would help to make, not only Social Security more financially viable, but the country as a whole.

“We need to make this country easier for people to live in and have families and want to participate in the workforce, and fixing healthcare, childcare, housing cost,” he said. “That is the long-term solution to fixing all of this.”

Lynch went on to point out Roath's work with Ropes & Gray LLP, which has had numerous large-scale business transactions, including several with Bain Capital LP and the Nippon Steel purchase of U.S. Steel.

“That’s rich,” he said. “Let’s talk about for-profit healthcare and the impact that has had on the cost of healthcare in this country. You seem to have forgotten what you’ve been doing for the last 10 years. There is a quote from Don Quixote. ‘Show me your company, and I’ll tell you what you are.’ My opponent has been working for Ropes & Gray for the last 10 years. Ropes & Gray is famous for two things: one, they bust unions for a living. Two, they push for-profit healthcare like Cerberus Capital and advise for-profit healthcare providers in taking over not-for-profit hospitals in sucking the federal money out and paying off their investors. That is a horrific system that should not be allowed in this country. Yet that is the business that my opponent has been in the last 10 years. And that is the honest truth.”

Lynch’s solution, at least when it comes to healthcare, is to eliminate all for-profit healthcare.

Ropes & Gray have a Wikipedia page dedicated to its large-scale cases and deals: https://gvimes.link/rpsgry

While it’s true that Roath has had most of his donations from individuals and not PACs or organizations, several donating individuals listed their employment in the donation filings, and 10 of them are/were employed by Bain Capital, two employees of Draft Kings, and one from Lockheed Martin.

A total of 96 employees of Ropes & Gray donated to Roath’s campaign.

“I know you object to the law firm work, and that’s fine, but I’m really proud of my background actually,” he said. “I got started working in politics working for (former Massachusetts Gov.) Deval Patrick, I did practice law, I chaired Common Cause, I’ve been in the Justice Department as a Law Clerk, in the State Department as a Fulbright Fellow, Campaigns, the White House, and I’m really proud of it, happy to discuss it, but none of it had to do with for-profit healthcare.”

Roath then pointed to a bill, apparently the Break Up Big Medicine Act from Congressperson Elizabeth Warren – https://gvimes.link/brkbgmd – as an example of what a current congressperson could do in office to help bring down costs. He said he would co-sponsor that bill immediately once in office, and he said Lynch has yet to do so.

For immigration reform, Roath said it “could include sensible controls at the border, but it must include a pathway to citizenship for people who have been in this country a long time to become citizens, that’s so important.”

“What we cannot do, is buy into the Republican attempt to weaponize immigrants in this country,” Roath said. “To make them seem like the villains, and blame all our problems on them. Everything from housing to anything you can think of. It is an attempt to turn our communities against each other.”

Roath went through Lynch’s voting record, including the creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2001, to fund the organization and voting in favor of a U.S. House of Representatives Resolution that, in part, thanked ICE – https://gvimes.link/ushseres

“That is an agency that has outlived its purpose, it’s exceeded its constitutional prerogative, it should be dismantled, the people involved in pressing those masked agents onto our streets should be prosecuted and jailed,” Roath said. “It’s not that we can’t have domestic immigration enforcement, if you have that in your mind, we can do that, but not at that agency as it exists today. It has to go.”

Lynch defended his record.

“First of all, I am an original co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, to allow children to become citizens in the U.S., at a time where that was not a very popular act,” he said. “That was probably 20 years ago, and I have been a supporter of that ever since. Trump has used the immigration issue to turn us against each other. He really has. When Trump says, “Immigrants are poisoning the blood of our nation,' your Nazi alarm should go off.”

Lynch said ICE’s founding was set at the U.S. border. While that’s still technically true – ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol jurisdiction is 100 miles from the coastline or border – many international airports are also within those two organization’s jurisdiction.

Lynch said he believes ICE’s current operations are illegal.

“Let me be clear, I have repeatedly voted to defund ICE,” he said. “One of the major pieces of legislation that we have put forward on our watch after Alex Pretti and Renee Goode were killed was to force, well completely reengineer ICE. Force them to take their masks off, force them to put name plates on, force them to put body cameras on and force them to comply with the law. Get them back on our border and out of our neighborhoods, and return a sense of stability where ICE is no longer a threat in our communities.”

For the full recording of the forum, go to https://gvimes.link/lnchrthfrm

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