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Candidates for Congress keep pitching as voters start casting ballots

Congressional hopefuls campaign at march for affordable housing, one of limited live events this strange election season

A voter dropped a ballot into the box for mail-in ballots outside of Newton City Hall on Sunday.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

NEWTON — On one side of City Hall Sunday, Fourth Congressional District candidates campaigned side-by-side with advocates for affordable housing. On the opposite side, voters were depositing ballots into a specially marked drop box casting their votes in a primary that was still nine days away.

“I wanted to be sure it gets counted on time,” said Newton resident Tyler Brown, who had just dropped off ballots for himself and wife Reiko Sugai-Fernandez. “It’s so much more convenient.”

The unusual primary election cycle has been accelerated by the pandemic. Voters have been weighing competing concerns about the delays in delivery of mail-in ballots against their safety appearing in person at polling places.

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”We haven’t been indoors anywhere since March,” said Alan Cushing, who had just dropped off ballots for himself and his wife, Elaine Bresnick.

Eight candidates are competing in the Sept. 1 Democratic primary to succeed US Representative Joseph Kennedy: Jake Auchincloss, a Newton city councilor and Marine veteran; Newton City Councilor Becky Walker Grossman; Alan Khazei, the founder of City Year, a national service program for young adults; Ihssane Leckey, a former Wall Street regulator; Dr. Natalia Linos, an epidemiologist; Jesse Mermell, a former president of the Alliance for Business Leadership; Ben Sigel, a Brookline attorney; and tech entrepreneur Christopher Zannetos.

The contenders have been campaigning under extraordinary circumstances, with the coronavirus hampering their ability to speak to large groups of supporters or even meet voters door-to-door. On Sunday, while the sun was shining, they headed for what’s left of the campaign trail.

“We’re doing outdoors, in parks and public spaces. We’re not knocking on people’s doors at this stage,” said one of the candidates, Linos, who praised the efforts to engage voters with early voting and mail-in ballots.

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“It extends the period for voting, but from a public health perspective, it makes sense,” she said.

Still, candidates were dismayed by the uncertainties raised about the US Postal Service’s delivery of mail-in election ballots. Secretary of State William Galvin has encouraged voters to hand-deliver their ballots to early voting sites, ballot drop boxes, and local election offices, rather than rely on the US Postal Service, which has suffered delays under cost-cutting measures implemented by President Trump’s new postmaster general. Currently, voters are required to get their primary ballots to their local clerks by the close of the polls at 8 p.m. on Sept. 1.

“I think we’re all disappointed to hear Galvin say actually if you want your vote truly to be counted by mail, you actually should be delivering it,” said Sigel. “It really goes against the whole idea of a mail-in ballot.”

Grossman has sued the state to ensure that all vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by the primary election day are counted — even if they arrive up to 10 days later. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is expected to hear Grossman’s case on Monday.

“What we’re asking for is very simple. Every ballot that is postmarked by Sept. 1 should be counted,” Grossman said in Newton on Sunday. “Donald Trump is actively trying to sabotage the Postal Service and it’s threatening the most fundamental cornerstone of democracy in protecting the right for everyone to vote, to be able to do so safely and to have that ballot be counted.”

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Six of the eight Democrats running for the seat joined a crowd of about 100 activists outside City Hall for a rally for affordable housing that followed a march from Waban Train Station. The event was organized by Greater Boston Teens Against Systemic Racism and Defund Newton Police Department.

Sigel, whose father worked for Housing and Urban Development, noted that he would sometimes accompany him to site visits in Taunton and Fall River.

“You saw the segregation of public housing. I saw it firsthand. We saw what redlining did,” Sigel said.

Today, communities like Brookline, Newton. and Needham still don’t have the diversity they should have, he said.

Leckey, who is the only woman of color in the race, said housing is not only about developing affordable housing but also about protecting tenants’ rights. “This is why I signed onto the Green Homes guarantee, part of the Green New Deal,” she said.

Meanwhile, one of two candidates that a recent poll showed to be leading the race, criticized the other for his record on climate change. Mermell, who won the endorsement of 350 Mass Action, a statewide volunteer network working on the climate crisis, pointed out that Auchincloss had compared an aspect of the Green New Deal to communism.

“It’s about consistency,” Mermell said. “We are dealing with multiple overlaying crises in this country — a global pandemic, racism, climate change, and economic disaster. And I think we want to send someone to Washington who’s got the consistent record to deliver what we need to help move us forward from all of those challenges.”

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Auchincloss said that criticism is part of politics.

“Certainly as someone who’s been setting the pace for the field, I’ve taken a share of criticism,” Auchincloss said. “I don’t take it personally. I focus on a positive message. I think Donald Trump has given us enough negativity to last us a lifetime. My message is standing up to his dangerous and hateful agenda and then building coalitions for the day after he leaves office.”

Auchincloss’s communications director Yael Sheinfeld noted that despite his criticism last year, he supports the Green New Deal, and will be a champion for bold environmental policy in Congress.

“While Jake has concern regarding the feasibility of some points in the Green New Deal, he sees it as the best way to make serious progress on issues of climate and the environment,” she said in a statement. “He supports the Green New Deal, was the first candidate to call for carbon pricing and to release a comprehensive climate plan, and has voted in line with Green Newton’s priorities 100 percent of the time as a city councilor.”

Mermell, a former Brookline Select Board member and onetime aide to former governor Deval Patrick, on Sunday also picked up the endorsement of state Senator Becca Rausch, a Needham Democrat elected in 2018 whose legislative district overlaps with 10 of the communities in the congressional district.

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“Jesse Mermell is the champion I want representing me and my family in Congress,” Rausch said in a statement, noting their shared fights for reproductive health and justice, immigrant rights, economic equity, and dismantling systemic racism. “Whatever the issue, I know that Jesse has the experience, savviness, dedication, and empathy to do the research, ask the questions, analyze diligently, and make the right call.”

The other two candidates in the race — Khazei and Zannetos — campaigned at farmers’ markets in the district on Sunday.


Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at Stephanie.Ebbert@globe.com. Follow her @StephanieEbbert.