Seth Moulton, age 47, was born in Salem, Massachusetts and currently serves as the U.S. representative for Massachusetts’s 6th congressional district. He announced his intent to run for U.S. Senate with the Democratic Party October 15, 2025. It is his first time running for the office.
Moulton has been a U.S. representative since 2014, having succeeded fellow Democrat John F. Tierney, who held the role for nine terms. Before his political career, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2001 to 2008. He earned a bachelor of science in physics as well as master’s degrees in business and public administration, all from Harvard University. In 2017, he founded political action committee Serve America, which is aimed at electing candidates with national service experience, especially military veterans.
According to Open Secrets, Moulton has raised the most funding out of any candidate for his Senate campaign ($4,125,517). The top three organizations contributing to Moulton’s principal campaign committee were the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Harvard University, and financial services company Fidelity Investments. The day after he announced his intent to run for Senate, he announced his campaign would return previous donations from AIPAC, though a Washington Free Beacon analysis found he only refunded around half of his AIPAC donations since 2024. His campaign committee has received $212,000 from PACS.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. It is part of a series of conversations with the candidates running to serve as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. The other interviews in this series can be found here.
CHLOE CRAFT: Thanks for sitting down with me. We’ll get to the politics, but first, I’d love it if you could introduce yourself as a person.
SETH MOULTON: I’m not someone who grew up interested in politics, but serving four tours in the Iraq War showed me the consequences of failed leadership in Washington. That’s fundamentally why I ran for office in the first place. I’ve been willing to challenge the status quo if it’s not doing the job that we need, whether that’s taking on a nine-term incumbent in my first run for office, or founding Serve America, an organization that’s helped flip 24 seats to from red to blue, or taking on a half-century incumbent now in the Senate race.
CRAFT: There is that half-century incumbent. Why the Senate? Why not just continue as a congressman?
MOULTON: Because I don’t think change can wait. We’re at a time in America when we’ve got a second term of Trump, who is hurting a lot of people all across America and across Massachusetts. Democrats have got to change. We can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep repeating the same mistakes with the same leaders. We clearly need to do better. Massachusetts deserves a senator who isn’t going to go to Washington and vote for Chuck Schumer for Senate leadership, who is going to put forward a positive-looking agenda, including the most progressive and aggressive affordability agenda of any elected official today. Massachusetts deserves a senator who doesn’t just focus on getting himself reelected, but helps elect Democrats all across the country, as I’ve done with Serve America. And we deserve a senator who’s not just going to oppose Trump — although I think we can fight Trump even harder than we are — but who’s going to put forward a positive agenda for Democrats to run on, because when Democrats lead, Democrats win.
CRAFT: You’ve said you believe the Democratic Party needs to change and you want to challenge the status quo. Theoretically, why not run as an independent or third party if you want to disrupt the system? Why run as a Democrat?
MOULTON: Well, I’m very proud to be a Democrat, but I’m certainly disrupting the system by taking on a half-century incumbent and I think that is the kind of disruption that we need within the party. There may be people who want to start a third party, and they’re welcome to do that, but I’m proud to be a Democrat. I just don’t think that the Democratic Party is living up to living up to its potential right now, and we’ve got to help it get there.
CRAFT: Recent polling found that young Americans are increasingly losing faith in the political system, with those expressing low trust being less likely to say they plan to vote. If you were to speak to a young person who’s unsure about voting, maybe it’s their first time voting, what would you say?
MOULTON: That’s a great question. It’s a time when politics really matters in America because our fundamental system of government is under attack by this administration, and it’s a time when everyone needs to stand up and get involved and be counted. Your kids or grandkids might someday ask you, ‘What did you do when Donald Trump was in power?’ Did you do nothing? Did you vote for the status quo or did you vote for change? Did you vote for new leadership? Did you vote for people who are willing to take the fight to Trump and also set out a forward-looking agenda for the country, an agenda that has a distant horizon, that looks far to the future, not just to the next few years? That’s a question that people will want to answer by saying, ‘I did something.’ I voted for something new, maybe even got involved with a campaign, because I want to make a difference in our country. I want to fight for our country when our fundamental values are under attack.
CRAFT: Right now, we’re seeing several attacks on higher education by the Trump administration. Massachusetts is a state densely populated by university students. What are your policies regarding higher education?
MOULTON: First of all, I’ve been encouraging university leaders — including my alma mater, Harvard — to stand up and fight this administration, to not give in, to not be making crazy deals, but instead to stand up for American values, even if it means short term pain because the country is in peril and we need universities to fight for our country and our values. That applies to students too. This is not a time to back down and give in. I’ll give you a great example of a student who’s standing up and fighting, and that’s Marcelo [Gomes da Silva], whom I brought to the State of the Union. He’s not backing down. Even when he gets tweeted at by DHS, he views that as a badge of honour, because we need to fight for our values. One of the lessons I learned in Iraq is that sometimes you need to fight hardest for your country when your country lets you down.
CRAFT: I want to talk a bit about your opponents. Have you met them, and what do you think of them? Is there anything you agree on, or anything you really don’t?
MOULTON: Look, I think Sen. Markey is a very nice man and he has served our Commonwealth for a long time. I mean, he’s been in Washington longer than every other member of the House or Senate except for Chuck Grassley, and we should thank him for that service. We should praise him for that service. But there also comes a time to pass the torch. Now, another one of my opponents is Alex Rikleen and he is another very nice guy. I’ve been very impressed with him on the campaign trail, and he’s someone who’s willing to get out there and challenge the political establishment, and I always admire that.
CRAFT: On the topic of challenging the establishment, I want to talk about something that set you apart, something you did in October. You promised to give back your AIPAC money. Can you talk about that and what that decision meant to you?
MOULTON: I’m an independent thinker, and I also like to have conversations with everyone, and so I’m happy to talk to people on all sides of this issue and to try to keep them in the conversation, but AIPAC and I have had a lot of disagreements over the years. It started with my staunch disagreement with their position on the Iran nuclear deal, which I’ve very prominently supported. The problem recently is that I think AIPAC has become partisan in both Israeli and American politics, and it’s aligned itself too closely with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who I don’t think is acting in our national security interest and often is not even acting in the interests of Israel. I tried to push them to change and to wake up to the reality here, but when it was very clear that they wouldn’t, I decided to return their contributions.
CRAFT: Let’s switch to a couple of light-hearted, quick-fire questions. What is a song that you’ve listened to lately?
MOULTON: Oh my gosh, I’ve been listening to “The Fate of Ophelia” all the time because my kids love it.
CRAFT: Do you have any book recommendations?
MOULTON: I’m reading a new biography on Charles Sumner right now. It’s excellent.
CRAFT: Who’s someone you look up to, in politics or otherwise?
MOULTON: John F. Kennedy is someone I’ve always looked up to because he didn’t lead a perfect life and he had a short administration, but he was always focused on the future and he left a legacy that extended far beyond his own administration or his own life. I think we should be more focused on the future in politics. My two little girls, five and seven, could well be alive a century from now, so that’s my new horizon.
CRAFT: What’s a good piece of advice you’ve gotten lately?
MOULTON: I get advice all the time, but one age-old piece of advice I got from a retired senator way back in college was, ‘When you’re damned if you do or damned if you don’t, always do.’
CRAFT: If people only remember one thing about you, what should it be?
MOULTON: Proud dad.
CRAFT: Thank you for your time. To wrap up, if there’s any question you want to answer that I didn’t ask, I’ll give you that space.
MOULTON: I understand the cost of war. As that is on the front burner right now and on everyone’s TV screens, I want people to know that I understand what it means to be sent to war based on lies. I understand what it means to not be able to trust your commander in chief. And I’m going to fight for our country, for our values, and for you as students and as young people who might get called to an endless war. I think that background and experience really matter right now in politics in Washington, and it should make a difference for the future of our country. To readers, I hope you’ll learn more about my campaign, I hope you’ll consider volunteering, and I’d be very proud to earn your support.
