Stephen Lynch (politician)
Stephen Francis Lynch[1] (born March 31, 1955) is an American businessman, attorney and politician who has served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts since 2001. A Democrat, he represents Massachusetts's 8th congressional district, which includes the southern fourth of Boston and many of its southern suburbs. Lynch was previously an ironworker and lawyer, and served in both chambers of the Massachusetts General Court.
Stephen Lynch
Born and raised in South Boston, Lynch is the son of an ironworker. He went into the trade after high school, working in an apprenticeship and later joining his father's union. He became the union's youngest president, at age 30, while attending the Wentworth Institute of Technology. He received his J.D. from Boston College Law School in 1991.[1] For several years, he worked as a lawyer, primarily representing housing project residents and labor unions. In 1994, Lynch was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. During his tenure, his progressive views and advocacy for South Boston helped propel him to the Massachusetts Senate in 1995, when he won a special election to succeed state senator William Bulger.
Lynch won a special election to represent the state's 9th district in the United States House of Representatives in 2001, and has been reelected ever since. His district was redrawn into the 8th district in 2013. He sits on the Financial Services and Oversight and Government Reform Committees. Lynch ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2013 special election for the U.S. Senate, losing to Ed Markey.
Early life, education, and business career[edit]
The fourth of six children, Lynch was born on March 31, 1955, in the neighborhood of South Boston. He was raised with his five sisters in the Old Colony Housing Project. His father, Francis Lynch, was an ironworker who dropped out of school in eighth grade. His mother, Anne (née Havlin), was a night-shift post office worker. Both parents came from fourth-generation South Boston families. He attended St. Augustine Elementary School and South Boston High School. During high school vacations he began working in construction alongside his father. After graduating from high school in 1973, Lynch became an apprentice ironworker. For the next six years he worked on high-altitude structural ironwork throughout the country for various companies, including General Motors and U.S. Steel.[2][3]
In 1977 Lynch was arrested for smoking marijuana at a Willie Nelson concert at the Illinois State Fair, leading to a $50 misdemeanor fine. In 1979 he was arrested for assault and battery of six Iranian students attending an anti-American protest in Boston, a charge that was later dropped.[4] Around this time, he developed "a problem with alcohol", leading him to join Alcoholics Anonymous. (He reportedly left AA after meeting his future wife several years later, but continued to attend occasional meetings through the 2000s.[5][6])
Having personal experience with worker safety concerns, Lynch developed aspirations beyond his trade. When a 1979 blizzard forced his project in Wisconsin to shut down, he spent the extra time taking courses at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Shortly thereafter, his father was diagnosed with cancer, and so Lynch returned to Boston.[2] In the early 1980s, he was elected to the executive board of the Iron Workers Local 7 union. At age 30, he was elected president of the board, the youngest in the local's history. During this time he spent his nights and weekends attending the Wentworth Institute of Technology, from which he graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in construction management in 1988.[2]
That year Lynch led a three-week labor strike, refusing to sign a contract with the Associated General Contractors despite pressure from within his union. The union international ultimately signed the contract without Lynch's approval, causing him to file suit against them. He later remarked, "Nothing I ever do will be as volatile as being union president during those times."[2] The incident forced him to miss the first three weeks of classes at Boston College Law School, where he had enrolled. Nevertheless, he graduated with a J.D. in 1991. After graduating he joined the law office of Gabriel O. Dumont, Jr., representing labor unions and unemployed workers.[2]
Throughout law school and the following years, he often worked pro bono, representing housing project residents at Boston Housing Authority (BHA) hearings.[2] In one high-profile 1994 case, Lynch provided free legal services to 14 teenagers, all white, who were accused of physically attacking a Hispanic teenager and harassing the family of his white girlfriend over a period of six months. Lynch claimed the youths had been "overcharged" and helped some of them avoid criminal charges and eviction by the BHA.[7][8][9]
Lynch was a onetime tax delinquent.[10] In the mid-1980s the city of Boston placed liens on four properties he owned due to several thousand dollars of unpaid property taxes. He owed Massachusetts $2,000 in overdue taxes from 1985 to 1988, and for several years owed the IRS $4,000.[11]
Massachusetts Senate[edit]
When President of the Massachusetts Senate William Bulger announced his resignation from his 1st Suffolk seat in late 1995, Lynch filed nomination papers for the special election to replace him. Bulger's son, attorney William M. Bulger, Jr., also ran for the seat, as did another lawyer, Patrick Loftus.[15] The race grew from the grassroots of South Boston, with neighborhood issues such as development, crime, and education ruling the debate. The candidates declared their mutual respect.[16] Lynch won the March 1996 primary, defeating Bulger Jr. and Loftus 56%–35%–9%.[15][17] In April, he defeated Republican Richard William Czubinski 96%–4%, and he was inaugurated on May 1, 1996.[18][19][20] He was reelected unopposed in 1996, 1998, and 2000.[21]
As a state senator, Lynch continued to lead opposition to the proposed football stadium[22] and vocally opposed a proposal to sell the publicly owned Marine Industrial Park.[23] He opposed a hate-crimes bill that would have made racially charged language a felony, and hearkened back to the 1994 racial violence case as an example, arguing that the bill "attacks merely words" and "prosecutes young people who, in my opinion, haven't developed the responsibility and wisdom to measure their words."[7] On the Senate Transportation Committee, Lynch cosponsored a bill in June 1996 to allow certain Boston residents unlimited access to the Ted Williams Tunnel.[24] In 1997 he was named Senate Chairman of the Joint Committee on Commerce and Labor.[25] In response to a budget crisis in the state's nursing homes, due primarily to Medicaid shortfalls, Lynch filed an unsuccessful bill in April 2001 to increase Medicaid funding by $200 million.[26] While in the Senate, he enrolled at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, from which he graduated with a master's degree in 1999. Massachusetts law prohibits any elected official from holding more than one office. Following his election to Congress, Lynch resigned on October 16, 2001 and was sworn in as a member of Congress on the same day.[3]
U.S. Senate campaigns[edit]
Upon the death of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts state law triggered a special election to be held in January 2010. On September 4, 2009, a representative for Lynch took out nomination papers in preparation of a special election run.[68] After speaking with his family and citing the short time frame in which to conduct a campaign, Lynch decided not to seek the Democratic nomination for the seat.[69]
Lynch announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on January 31, 2013, seeking to fill the seat then held by John Kerry, who had resigned to become U.S. Secretary of State.[70] Lynch's candidacy in the 2013 special election had been portrayed as an uphill battle against Representative Ed Markey, who had a larger war chest and several major party endorsements.[71] A Politico profile compared Lynch's "common-man touch" and moderate views to that of Republican Scott Brown, who won the 2010 special Senate election by connecting with independent voters.[71] Lynch lost to Markey in the April 30 Democratic primary.[72]
Personal life[edit]
Lynch dated Margaret Shaughnessy for 10 years before the two married in 1992. An aide to state Senator Marian Walsh, Shaughnessy was from another South Boston family, one of seven children, and majored in graphic design at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She went to high school with Lynch's sisters, and she and Lynch were members of the South Boston Residents Group.[2][73] As of 2010, the Lynches live in South Boston with their daughter and a niece.[3][73][74] For most of his career, Lynch has been listed in the member's roll as "D-South Boston".
He is first cousins with Boston-based restaurateur Barbara Lynch.[75]