'Who are you?': Moulton believes first campaign is model for presidential bid

SALEM, N.H. — Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton began his remarks to a roundtable sponsored by the Salem Chamber of Commerce on Monday afternoon with a story.

He was a newly-elected congressman on the factory floor of a defense contractor in the advanced manufacturing corridor of his North Shore district, one of the more purple regions of the perennially blue state. He had just toured the facility and commended a group of employees for their work when he opened up for questions. There was silence. He tried again, telling them he was a politician and wanted to hear their concerns, but again, there was silence.

"Finally," Moulton said, "a woman in the back raised her hand and said, 'Who are you?'"

Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton arrived and greeted Salem Chamber of Commerce president Donna Morris at the Searles School and Chapel for a sponsored roundtable on Monday afternoon.

After a big laugh at the punch line from the small crowd of 30-40 people at the roundtable, Moulton said he learned that day to always introduce himself. But the story also worked because the Massachusetts Congressman, who did not qualify for the first or second debates, could have fielded the same question from a first-in-the-nation voter in New Hampshire.

In a recent poll, not a single voter in the Granite State identified Moulton as their first-choice candidate. His name recognition is among the lowest in the field. He has downsized his staff in recent weeks and has repeatedly denied that he is planning to suspend his campaign altogether.

For a three-term congressman, Moulton's political career has already been eventful. He knocked off a nine-term incumbent, a liberal Democrat, in a 2014 primary and supported a failed rebellion against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi after the 2016 election. He regained some goodwill in the party by recruiting fellow military veterans to run in swing districts for the 2018 midterms, but again attempted to unseat Pelosi for the speakership in early 2019.

Moulton returned to his success in that first race, the 2014 primary against former Massachusetts Congressman John Tierney, as a reason to believe in his long-shot presidential bid. "This [campaign] feels a lot like that first one because the response on the ground has been very positive even though, because I got in late, it hasn't been reflected yet in the polls," he said.

With his history of challenging party leaders, he also worked to cast an image of himself as an outsider, not born or bred for public life. "The first thing you should know about me is that this is an unlikely position for me, in politics period, let alone running for president," he said.

While Moulton claimed that he did not grow up around politics, the 40-year-old is a graduate of Harvard College and Andover Phillips Academy, the prestigious boarding school in the Boston suburbs that produced two of the last five presidents: George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Moulton attended as a day student, but his parents, graduates of Brown University and anti-Vietnam War activists, raised him in the seaside community of Marblehead, Massachusetts.

After earning degrees at Andover and Harvard, Moulton later enlisted in the military, served four tours of duty in Iraq and completed a joint diploma at Harvard Business School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government before running for Congress in his mid-30s.

In short, while Moulton put his life on the line for the country unlike many of his well-heeled classmates, he did not come from a blue-collar family or attend commuter colleges on his path to elected office like his home-state rival, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The misleading biography aside, his military background was appealing for Janet Breslin, a retired professor at the National War College in Washington, D.C. and the chair of the Salem Democrats. "I like him a lot," she said after the event. "All of our candidates have different strengths."

In addition to his experience on the front lines, Breslin credited Moulton's ability to reach across the aisle and assemble bipartisan coalitions. The Massachusetts Congressman touted his role in flipping the House of Representatives from red to blue, as he traveled to swing districts nationwide and built "a very diverse coalition" of "every Democrat, independents, Obama-Trump voters and disaffected Republicans." He added that his presidential campaign would follow the same strategy.

"I don't think Trump is going to be that easy to beat," he said. "Now a lot of Democrats disagree, but I think it's going to be pretty tough."

Moulton, an Iraq War veteran, pitched himself as a bipartisan legislator and an outsider politician, with a history of challenging party leaders and working across the aisle.

Breslin indicated that a candidate like Moulton might be more palatable in her Republican-leaning town. Salem voted 57 percent to 37 percent for President Donald Trump in the 2016 general election. "The people who are pro-Trump actually don't want to talk to anybody," she said. "[But] if they were in a room with him, I think they'd find that they'd be very comfortable."

Donna Morris, the president of the Salem Chamber of Commerce, said that Moulton was among the first group of candidates to participate in her roundtable discussion. Former Maryland Congressman John Delaney, author Marianne Williamson and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld have also attended the event. "We are basically hosting any candidate that wants to talk to the business community," she said.

While she explained most candidates "not hitting the business community at this point" — preferring house parties and ice cream socials during the summer — Morris predicted that the leading contenders would start calling later in the year. "The economy drives a lot of people at the polls," she said.

Moulton broadly addressed the economy in response to a question from Morris, but his request for specific follow-up questions fell mostly on deaf ears. The Massachusetts Congressman, who told the roundtable "it did make sense to lower the corporate tax rate but not to 21 [percent], it should be 25 [percent]," mostly answered questions on hot-button social and cultural issues.

In response to a question about abortion, he called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for lying under oath about his judicial record and said that Congress was "scared" of the National Rifle Association in response to a question about school shootings from a school board member.

He also described financier, Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges of sex trafficking before his apparent suicide on Saturday morning, as an example of "rich white privilege" before polling members of the audience on whether they believed the multi-millionaire had been murdered. Four-fifths of the small crowd raised their hands.

"It's just interesting to take the temperature of the room," Moulton said.

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.