GETTING IN — The race to succeed Rep. Seth Moulton is getting a little more crowded this year.

Mariah Lancaster, a veterinarian who previously worked at the State Department and as a congressional aide, is joining the Democratic primary to fill the North Shore seat Moulton has held since 2015.

Lancaster, a first-time candidate, is running because ”our systems are broken, and American families are struggling, not just here in Massachusetts, but across the whole country… and if we want to fix problems for working Americans, we have to send working Americans to Congress,” they told Playbook. Lancaster’s launch video is here.

The 36-year-old Massachusetts native, who identifies as non-binary, worked for Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum and California Rep. Julia Brownley in Washington before moving back to Massachusetts and settling in Salem last year.

“People are pissed. I'm pissed,” Lancaster said. “I think a lot of folks in D.C. want to believe that this is the same old, same old, that if we just ride out this storm, we'll get to the other side and return to politics as usual, and that is not the world that we're living in.”

It’s a late entrance compared to the rest of field — which includes Bethany Andres-Beck, a software engineer who got in the race before Moulton announced his plans to run for the Senate; John Beccia, a lawyer and financial technology executive; former state Rep. Jamie Belsito; Moulton’s former chief of staff, Rick Jakious; Former Biden White House aide Dan Koh; and Andover state Rep. Tram Nguyen.

But that’s emblematic of what sets them apart in the crowded race, Lancaster said. Save for Andres-Beck, most other candidates kicked off their campaigns within a couple of weeks of Moulton’s Senate campaign launch.

“There's a reason for that, and it's because a lot of them have prior backing — whether it's generational wealth that they could just quickly roll out, or whether it's political alliances that were able to stand them up quickly,” said Lancaster, who has tapped Versus Media to mange TV and digital ads, Valkyrie Strategies to handle direct mail and Upswing Research to run the campaign’s polling.

“[If] we actually want to represent average working Americans, an average working American cannot stand up a congressional campaign in two weeks. It takes time. … I've moved as quickly as a normal person can.”

Full article here