Congressman Seth Moulton

Seth Moulton was first challenged to serve our country by the pastor of his college church, Peter Gomes, who told him that it’s not enough simply to salute the flag—everyone should find a way to serve themselves. As a result, Seth joined the Marines in 2001, days after graduating from college and months before the attacks on 9/11. As the leader of an infantry platoon, he was among the first Americans to reach Baghdad in 2003. He served four tours in Iraq, a war he disagreed with and spoke out against—but he was proud to go, so no one had to go in his place.

After returning home from Iraq, Seth earned graduate degrees in Business and Public Policy, and worked in the private sector in Texas to build the country’s first high-speed rail line. But it wasn’t long before he was called to serve once again—this time in his hometown in Massachusetts.

Seth ran for Congress, and won, on a platform of bringing a new generation of leadership to Washington—becoming the only Democrat to unseat an incumbent in a primary in 2014.

Every day since, Seth has worked tirelessly to deliver change to Washington. In his first term, he was named the most effective freshman Democrat by the Center for Effective Lawmaking. And despite the fact that he’s spent most of his time in Congress in the minority party, he’s passed legislation to make government work better, including the Faster Care for Veterans Act, and he has focused on modernizing government so it’s more accessible for all Americans.

In our changing global economy, Seth has worked to position our country to compete and win, and he has used his position in Congress to grow his district’s economy. He has proposed an ambitious national service plan that would call on a new generation of Americans to serve their country while learning new skills and money for college or job training. And he has focused on transportation issues, given how central they are to our economy, pushing the state of Massachusetts and federal officials to build an affordable, reliable regional rail system.

After President Trump’s election in 2016, Seth recognized America needs more leaders who have faced tougher challenges than running for office or standing up to President Trump. So he started Serve America to help change Washington by electing more service-driven leaders to Congress. Seth and his team mentored the candidates, raised millions of dollars for their campaigns, and went door-to-door alongside them in tough, Republican-held districts across the country. On election night, that hard work paid off: twenty-one of Serve America’s candidates won, accounting for almost half of all Democratic pickups in the House and flipping districts that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016.

Seth is a leader on foreign policy and national security, making sure Americans are safe at home and secure abroad, and he is focusing on improving how we take care of our veterans when they come home. When it comes to reforming the most vital pieces of our democracy, Seth has taken strong positions that have solidified him as a progressive voice by calling for a new Voting Rights Act and abolishing the Electoral College and Senate filibuster. And he has advanced the national conversation on mental health by becoming the first presidential candidate in history to speak personally about mental health when he described dealing with his own post-traumatic stress after the Iraq War.

Seth grew up in Marblehead and now lives in Salem with his wife, Liz, and daughters Emmy and Caroline.