Call it a big betcha.
John Beccia, a financial technology executive from Lynnfield and one of six Democrats vying for US Representative Seth Moulton’s open congressional seat, is putting at least $1 million behind a television advertising campaign launching Monday. The spot makes him the first candidate in the Sixth District primary to hit TV screens — and is an expensive, early bet that blitzing the airwaves now will pay off come September.
The 30-second spot, titled “You Beccia,” is a play on Beccia’s name (pronounced “betcha”), and introduces the political newcomer as a “self-made businessman who will stand up for middle-class families.”
It also simply introduces him: The ad repeats his name or the phrase “betcha” nine times, or on average, about every three seconds.
“I spent my career bringing businesses, government, and law enforcement together to prevent fraud and protect consumers,” Beccia says in the ad, which also features a bobblehead version of the congressional hopeful.
The co-founder and chair of Washington D.C.-based fintech firm FS Vector and a former executive at crypto company Circle, Beccia has pitched himself as an outsider in a field filled with veteran political operatives or current and former elected officials.
A spokesperson for Beccia wouldn’t put an exact dollar figure on the ad buy beyond saying it’d cost seven figures. But his campaign said he’ll remain “on the air continuously” through the primary, starting on cable, streaming, and digital platforms before expanding to broadcast television next week. Beccia’s campaign this month had put out a call for actors for at least two other ads. (Hit us up if you scored the “suburban Dad at a gas station” role.)
That said, spending this much this early is a change from recent open races in Massachusetts. In 2020, when candidates pretty much had to turn to TV to get their message out during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jake Auchincloss, the first candidate to hit the airwaves in the race to replace former Representative Joe Kennedy III, wasn’t on TV until after July 4th — and even then, he spent less than $30,000 out of the gate.
In the open Third District race in 2018, Dan Koh — now also running for the open Sixth District seat — was running TV ads by early May in what a campaign spokesperson said at the time was a six-figure buy.
Beccia has a cash advantage over most of the candidates in the race (save for Koh) thanks to the money he’s put into the campaign himself.
As of the end of March, Beccia had put $2 million toward his run, a sum that made him one of the biggest self-funders in a Massachusetts congressional race in recent memory. He has reported having up to $101 million in assets, and earning a $1.15 million salary last year at FS Vector.
In hitting TV so early, Beccia is looking to define himself in a field of relative unknown Democrats that also includes Bethany Andres-Beck, a Middleton software engineer; former state lawmaker Jamie Belsito of Topsfield; Mariah Lancaster, a former federal worker from Salem; and state Representative Tram Nguyen of Andover. A handful of internal polls that campaigns have made public show that most if not all are largely unfamiliar to Sixth District voters, leaving a lot of room for candidates — especially those with a lot of cash — to try to sway voters.
BALLOT BUSTER: Republican primary voters’ ballots are set to be a little thinner in September after a state commission on Friday found that hundreds of nomination signatures submitted by two candidates for statewide office were possibly fraudulent, knocking Anne Manning Martin, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, and Michael Walsh, the party’s endorsed candidate for attorney general, from the ballot.
The decision left the statewide GOP ticket with candidates for just three of the state’s six statewide constitutional offices. And while some Republican state committee members began pointing fingers at another GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, Shawn Oliver — who, along with a Democratic party official, challenged Manning Martin’s candidacy — there’s not much known about the man at the actual center of the controversy: Joe Bronske, a Weymouth Republican whom Manning Martin, Walsh, and a third candidate, Anne Brensley, all hired to help collect the 10,000 signatures they needed to get on the ballot.
Bronske, who until recently served as chair of the Weymouth Republican Town Committee, was involved for years in the town’s political scene, according to former mayor Bob Hedlund. But the former Republican state senator said he believes the signature-gathering effort marked Bronske’s “first foray into getting involved in campaigns as a professional.”
“And he probably bit off a little more than he could chew,” Hedlund said Sunday.
It’s unclear how the campaigns came to hire Bronske, who runs a genealogy company which, according to records, is the entity that Manning Martin and Walsh’s campaigns paid thousands of dollars for gathering signatures.
In a letter to members of the Republican State Committee on Friday, Mass. GOP chair Amy Carnevale said the party “did not recommend, employ, retain, or supervise the individual at issue” in the alleged signature fraud scheme, though she didn’t mention Bronske by name.
Bronske did not return a request for comment Sunday, and he did not testify before the State Ballot Law Commission, the quasi-judicial board that issued its rulings Friday.
But he features heavily in its decisions. He’s mentioned nearly 60 times between the rulings, and in its decision on Manning Martin, the panel said Bronske was “likely the signature gatherer for the challenged signatures claiming to be fraudulent.” The commission also took issue with his decision to invoke his 5th Amendment rights during a deposition for the challenge.
“Taking the 5th demonstrates to the Commission that Mr. Bronske has something to hide,” the bipartisan panel wrote in its 21-page ruling.
Both Manning Martin and Walsh have said they plan to appeal the commission’s decisions.
But even those civil cases may not be the end of the saga. The Plymouth County district attorney’s office told the Globe earlier this month that it, too, was investigating the swath of potentially fraudulent signatures. Falsely signing nomination papers — and submitting fraudulent signatures — is illegal in Massachusetts. The punishments range from a $1,000 fine to up to a year in jail.
BERN NOTICE: US Senator Bernie Sanders is endorsing Senator Ed Markey in his Democratic primary against Moulton, the latest progressive politician to throw their support behind the 79-year-old senator.
Markey is “one of the strongest progressive voices in the United States Senate,” Sanders said in a statement shared by Markey’s campaign. “He knows which side he’s on.”
Sanders’ support for Markey, a fellow progressive icon, isn’t so surprising, given the Vermont senator’s leftist politics and Moulton’s position as a more centrist Democrat. But Sanders notably passed on endorsing in the 2020 primary, when Markey faced a challenge from Kennedy. (FWIW, Markey backed fellow Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in the presidential primary over Sanders that year). More on the endorsement here.
ENDORSEMENT ALERT: Jamaica Plain lawyer Patrick Roath is rolling out a slate of endorsements from elected Boston progressives in his bid to unseat longtime US Representative Stephen Lynch in the state’s Eighth Congressional District.
The lineup includes state representatives Jay Livingstone, Sam Montaño, and John Moran as well as Boston city councilors Enrique Pepén and Ben Weber.
Roath “is the active and engaged leader we need and deserve in the 8th Congressional District,” Livingstone said, while Weber described him as “the only candidate for this seat who is willing and able to … take on the challenges and issues my neighbors and I care most about."
The endorsers are a natural fit for Roath, who’s running to the moderate Lynch’s left. But it’s still notable to see any elected officials buck an incumbent. (Just ask Seth Moulton.)
THE DEBATE DEBATE: On Massachusetts’ campaign trail, candidates can’t stop arguing about scheduling time to argue by Anjali Huynh, The Boston Globe: From a gubernatorial candidate running radio ads urging his opponent to face him, to US Senate hopefuls appearing in a strange cross-party debate without the incumbent, a pattern is repeating itself this election cycle: Candidates are demanding to take on their better-known or better-liked competitors, with varying levels of success. In many cases, those eager debaters are being met with silence. That’s only made them louder.
ON THE MOVE: Lawmakers released a new version of Governor Maura Healey’s economic development bill last week, per the Globe’s Jon Chesto. The new version dropped Healey’s proposal to use a slice of the state’s pension fund to bolster local companies, but kept a proposed change to the state’s noncompete law.
State Senator Barry Finegold also wants to add a provision that would require large AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to identify and mitigate serious risks they pose to people or property. Anthropic threw its support behind the legislation Friday. The bill has a hearing set for Thursday.
HEALTH SCARE: MassHealth officials knew residents could lose coverage under Trump requirements. It’s worse than they initially thought. by Marin Wolf, The Boston Globe: MassHealth officials knew some 300,000 residents could lose coverage under tough new Trump administration requirements. But they recently learned that up to another 110,000 people — parents, children, elderly adults, and people with disabilities — will have to fill out additional paperwork to prove they are eligible for the state’s low-income health insurance.
For the first time, Mass. colleges will offer three-year degrees by Emily Piper-Vallillo, WBUR.
Despite Trump’s obstruction, Warren remains upbeat about housing bill’s fate by Adam Reilly, GBH News.
It just got easier for Mass. nursing homes to add beds to rooms by Jason Laughlin, The Boston Globe.
With eyes on soccer, Boston’s White Stadium work advances by Grant Welker, Boston Business Journal.
Boston teachers, aides brace for coming layoffs by Mariana Simões, The Boston Globe.
Experts bet World Cup wagers will bring Mass. big tax revenue — and public health worries by Patrick Madden, WBUR.
Thanks for reading The Scrum.
This newsletter was edited and produced by Matt Stout.
Have a question for the team? Email us at thescrum@globe.com.
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Kelly Garrity can be reached at kelly.garrity@globe.com.