Since state Senator Patricia Jehlen announced in December she won’t seek re-election after 20 years representing the 2nd Middlesex District, candidates have stepped forward from state and municipal bodies and from all three cities in the district. The field includes State Representatives Erika Uyterhoeven and Christine Barber, Cambridge Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem, Somerville City Councilor Matt McLaughlin and Winchester School Committee member Tom Hopcroft.
All of the candidates hold liberal political views. “We’re all progressive, and we share a lot of the same goals,” said Barber. For instance, every candidate told Cambridge Day that housing or broad affordability is one of their key issues.
McLaughlin agreed, saying “every candidate will rightfully claim to be progressive, and I think everyone’s going to try to out-progress each other in this race.”
Meet the field vying to win the Democratic primary on Sept. 1:
McLaughlin: “the working-class candidate”
McLaughlin said his working-class background makes him stand out. “I am from the working class and from this community. I’ve been serving people from the bottom up for decades,” he said. He also cited a history of blue-collar jobs — including in janitorial and food service — and military experience prior to his election to City Council in 2013.
McLaughlin called affordability a decades-long “guiding mission.” “I feel like other candidates, it is a plank in their platform, whereas for me, it is my platform,” he said. That includes looking for policy approaches to create more affordable housing, education, utilities and childcare.
As State Senator, he wants to pull from Somerville’s playbook. For example, the city passed an ordinance in 2024 legalizing triple-decker homes across Somerville; a similar amendment to state code could increase three-family housing across Massachusetts, he said.
For McLaughlin, part of the draw of the Senate is filling in the gaps he’s experienced from the state while on City Council. Somerville’s representatives in the state legislature have filed a number of home rule petitions — bills that, if passed, would grant new powers to the municipality — that have yet to be voted on. Most recently, Jehlen, Barber, Uyterhoeven and Rep. Mike Connolly in January introduced a home rule petition that would give Somerville the ability to pass rent stabilization rules. The bill was referred to the Senate Housing committee in March.
Uyterhoeven aims for “bold” policy
Uyterhoeven was elected to represent the 27th Middlesex District in the House in 2020. Before that, she cofounded Act on Mass, a nonprofit for legislative accountability. She has continued to advocate for legislative transparency, which she called a politically “toxic topic” on Beacon Hill.
She has experience building coalitions to push her priorities, she said, sometimes through resistance, such as when she filed to amend legislative rules to publicize committee votes.
This session’s rules make joint committee votes public and include other measures aimed at heightening transparency, like setting deadlines for joint committees to make recommendations on bills. Uyterhoeven also cosponsored a bill to make those measures law.
But, despite the new rules, hundreds of bills this session failed to meet a vote after the clock on those deadlines ran out, the Boston Globe reported last month.
In the Senate, she wants to push for a “more bold, visionary way of legislating,” which she positioned as Jehlen’s legacy. “I had union endorsements out the gate, and I think I’m very clearly the most progressive in terms of my positions on policy issues across the board,” said Uyterhoeven. For example, she said she is the most vocal of the candidates on AI regulation.
In addition to tackling affordability, she wants to prioritize legislation protecting immigrant communities from ICE and setting guidelines around AI, including disclosure requirements. On her website, Uyterhoeven also said that she wants an open bidding process for government contracts related to artificial intelligence and community councils in which citizens can advocate for preferences on AI.
Barber cites track record on lawmaking
Barber was elected to represent the 34th Middlesex District in 2014. Barber feels that the Senate’s smaller size — 40 members as opposed to the House’s 160 — will enable her to do more.
“What sets me apart is that I have written laws and negotiated them through the House and actually got them signed into law. I’ve done that with the driver’s licenses for immigrants, to cap prescription drug costs and on pay equity,” Barber said, referring to the Work and Family Mobility Act, a 2025 pharmaceutical law, and the Frances Perkins Workplace Equity Act.
Barber said that safety and immigrants’ rights are her top priority. Rümeysa Öztürk, then a Tufts doctoral student, was a resident of Barber’s district when she was detained by ICE for six weeks last Spring. (Öztürk returned to Turkey, where she is from, in April of this year.)
Barber pointed to the PROTECT Act, a bill under deliberation that limits Massachusetts law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE, among other provisions, as an example of her work on the issue. Barber was one of almost 100 co-sponsors, including Uyterhoeven and Jehlen, and authored Dignity Not Deportations, which has been largely incorporated into the PROTECT Act. Cambridge, Somerville and neighboring towns passed executive orders with similar provisions this spring.
Barber also cited affordability and healthcare costs as key issues. On housing, she wants “to push communities across the state to continue building housing to make sure that we have the housing that we need and that it is more affordable.”
Azeem seeks housing, T expansion
Azeem was 24 in 2021 when he made history as the youngest person elected to the Cambridge City Council (Ayah al-Zubi was a few months younger at the time of her election last year). In January, he was elected Vice Mayor.
Despite quickly declaring for the Senate race, he said “I think that no one in Cambridge is upset at me because they feel like I’ve not done enough in my time in office … if anyone is upset with me, there’s because I feel like I’ve done too much,” Azeem said.
When he first ran for Council, he had a list of things he wanted to accomplish, including creating an affordable housing overlay and implementing universal pre-k. “We’ve done more or less everything that was on my list,” he said. (Reporting by Cambridge Day and the Crimson shows that the universal pre-k program is still finding its footing.)
“I think that a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing locally has been to make sure that Cambridge is doing its part. But it’s also time, I think, that … the rest of the state does their part,” he said.
His new list includes passing a bill to allow housing by right near transit, expanding starter homes and triple-deckers statewide, and expanding the MBTA to Arlington and West Medford by implementing congestion pricing.
Hopcroft wants “innovation economy”
Hopcroft, educated as an attorney, was elected to the Winchester School Committee in 2021. He also founded the Net Zero Institute, a decarbonization nonprofit.
Hopcroft said his campaign’s focus on the “innovation economy” brings “fresh perspectives” to a legislature with many long-serving members, not unlike Jehlen’s 20 years in office.
His number one priority would be solidifying the DRIVE Initiative—Discovery, Research, and Innovation for a Vibrant Economy — which would counter federal research cuts by funding university and independent research. Originally proposed at $400 million, the legislature has since proposed reductions that remain under deliberation.
His position on this question is informed by lived experience. Hopcroft’s family members have experienced autoimmune disorders, dyslexia and dysgraphia, he said.
“People are waiting for medical advances. And we are in the best place in the world for those things to happen, especially right now, where we have our leadership in MRA therapeutics and AI drug discovery and quantum computing. We’re on the verge of an acceleration,” Hopcroft said.
Hopcroft wants to concurrently address housing, affordability, childcare, healthcare and energy costs, which he says are interrelated. He wants to do this through transit-oriented housing production, streamlining permitting and expanding financial aid, his website says.
The candidates will participate in a Candidate Forum organized by Cambridge Committee for Transparency and Accountability, ACT on Mass and the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting Hall, 5 Longfellow Park In Cambridge.
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