Suffolk and Middlesex District voters must make a choice they have not had to make in more than a decade: who their state senator will be.
Belmont Democrat Will Brownsberger has held the seat since 2012 after being voted in during a special election to fill Ed Markey’s seat. He has not faced a Democratic challenger since 2014 – until now. Daniel Lander, a former aide to Boston mayor Michelle Wu who grew up in Cambridge’s Huron Village and Central Square, announced in December that he hoped to unseat Brownsberger.
As the Sept. 1 primary date approaches, voters from the district – which includes West Cambridge, Allston, Brighton, Fenway, Watertown and Belmont – will decide whether to keep their veteran senator or elect a newcomer half his age. The winner will advance to the Nov. 3 general election against conservative Brandon Wood.
The Independent spoke with both candidates about their campaigns, political accomplishments and priorities if elected.
Will Brownsberger
Will Brownsberger felt he had to take a stand against his colleagues.
The Massachusetts House of Representatives voted to increase the mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses in 2011. Brownsberger, then a third-term representative from the 24th Middlesex District, broke with the majority of his colleagues – one of 11 representatives to oppose it, he recalled in a recent interview.
While the Legislature passed a compromise bill the next year that lowered some mandatory minimum sentences, Brownsberger thought it wasn’t enough. In 2018, while in the Senate, he led the effort to pass a reform bill that he said helped dramatically lower the state’s incarceration rate.
“There’s a lot that we’ve done to change people’s lives,” Brownsberger said.
As a Democrat in a district painted in blue, especially one that hasn’t faced a challenger within his party in more than a decade, Brownsberger has not had to do much to stay in power. But the 69-year-old senator said he sees himself as a public servant for the people who put him on Beacon Hill. He’s fought for affordable housing, immigrant protection and redistricting that increases representation for people of color in the state.
Now the Senate’s president pro tempore, who supports the president and steps in if they are absent, Brownsberger said he’s gained invaluable experience and built strong relationships with voters and colleagues. He’s confident in the work he’s done and hopes voters will see that Sept. 1.
“I know that I’m effective as a result of the close relationships across the spectrum of people that I work with,” he said.
Brownsberger is a deliberator. He scrutinizes every bill that hits the Senate floor. He publishes detailed blog posts on his personal website explaining why he does or does not support certain policies. “I do my homework,” he said.
Government transparency has been important to him during his entire legislative tenure. He independently researched the Legislature’s spending during his time as a representative because he was concerned about how hard it was to see how the body spent its money.
He was given a windowless office on the fifth floor of the State House, which he perceived as punishment.
It also led to the creation in 2015 of CThru, a database that launched the next year with public information about state finances and state employee payrolls, and improvements to the Legislature’s procurement process.
Brownsberger has also fought for more transparency in MBTA pension funds and the transit agency’s operations.
He has joined other Senate leaders in fighting attempts by state auditor Diana DiZoglio to audit the Legislature, though, saying he supports an audit but not this way. “Do you really believe it makes sense to put somebody from the executive branch in charge of a witch hunt into legislative activities of all kinds?” he said.
Many Massachusetts residents want the audit – 72 percent of voters backed it in 2024. They feel frustrated with a perceived lack of urgency or effectiveness on Beacon Hill, especially in the face of federal funding cuts by president Donald Trump. People have pointed to the low count of bills that make it off of the floor and onto governor Maura Healey’s desk.
This frustration is part of the reason there may be nine ballot questions voted in November, some of which have already sparked considerable controversy. Brownsberger said he thinks that going over the House and Senate’s heads is a “terrible way to legislate, because it’s one-sided.”
“Some of these things … just haven’t gotten through the Legislature for a reason,” he said, using same-day voter registration as an example.
He defended the Legislature’s perceived inefficiency, saying the body should be measured by more than just what he considers inaccurately framed stats. He pointed to the state’s high education rankings, the high percentage of people with state health insurance, the legal protections offered to queer residents and the fact that the state government has never shut down as markers of effectiveness.
“Many of these things go back to legislative action,” he said. “And many of them are things that I personally have had to do with. And so I would like to be judged by results as opposed to advocacy organizations’ statistical constructs.”
Daniel Lander
Michelle Wu tasked Daniel Lander with getting dogs into beer gardens.
A federal law prevented pets from entering areas where wine and beer were being poured – for food safety purposes. Many Bostonians complained to the city about the inconvenience.
The Boston mayor gave Lander the job of finding a work-around – not the most pressing issue, Lander admitted, but one he knew he could fix. (His solution: a permit system in which beer gardens pledged not to allow dogs into the kitchen.)
“If you were able to think creatively and not accept the first ‘no’ you get from someone, you can make our city a little bit better, a more joyous place to live,” Lander said.
Lander, 35, wants to bring that attitude to Beacon Hill, to end stagnation in the Legislature. He wants to bring a sense of policymaking urgency to solving issues that plague Cambridge, Boston and the state – high costs of living, gaps in public transportation service and a lack of housing, among others.
He supports policies such as rent stabilization and a transfer fee on the purchase of new buildings. The long-term solution, in his eyes, is to rethink how state housing authorities function instead of relying solely on private housing development. “The people around the Boston Housing Authority, the people around the Cambridge Housing Authority, they want to become public developers. What they need is the state partner to make it happen, and that’s what I want to be,” Lander said.
Working under Wu, Lander led the charge on initiatives that required creativity. The creation of 290 North Beacon St. in Brighton, a combined music rehearsal space, community space and public housing unit, preserved space for the arts after another studio was evicted, and provided more housing in an area of the city starving for it. The Boston Family Days program has given more than 85,000 people free access to museums and events – local gems such as the New England Aquarium that families might not otherwise be able to show their kids.
Lander worked closely with Wu for four years, but he said he’s not going to Beacon Hill to push her agenda. While goals of improving transit and access to childcare may overlap, Lander knows they represent different groups. “The district is 50 percent Boston, 50 percent not Boston,” he said. “I’m going to focus on the issues that matter to me and to my constituents.”
The young progressive understands that he comes from a privileged background. His father, MIT professor and founder of the Broad Institute Eric Lander, had a reported net worth of $45 million as of 2021. But he said he has worked to understand the perspectives of others from less privileged backgrounds throughout his career – starting his career as a paralegal for the Innocence Project, which defends people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, and later working closely with low-income housing tenants through the nonprofit developer Just A Start as an AmeriCorps fellow.
Economic inequality became evident to him early on when he lived on Inman Street in Central Square, where there were unhoused people in poverty alongside extreme wealth and large houses. He set out to bridge that economic gap while at Harvard, and working on Elizabeth Warren’s senate and presidential campaigns. He wants to continue that in the state Legislature.
“My job … is to listen first and to be really thoughtful and curious about experiences that are not my own, and then alongside those folks, try to build power and try to change our society,” he said.
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