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Five Democrats are competing for the open 2nd Middlesex Senate seat, and their campaign finance filings describe anything but a level race.
Together they have raised about $491,000 since Dec. 1 across Somerville, Medford, Cambridge wards 9-11 and Winchester precincts 4-7, according to Office of Campaign and Political Finance filings — all of it chasing the seat Sen. Pat Jehlen of Somerville, in office since 2005, is vacating.
A head start frames the field. The two sitting state representatives in the race entered with a combined $158,659 already in the bank — state Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven with $53,199 and state Rep. Christine Barber with $105,460 — money accumulated over years of lightly contested campaigns.
Every challenger but one is still chasing that gap. The exception is Cambridge Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem. He entered with $1,865 and has already out-raised both incumbents in new money.
A banked reserve and a broad base
Uyterhoeven holds the strongest financial position in the race: $144,886 in cash on hand as of June 30, the largest reserve in the field, built on the lowest spending among the leaders.
She has spent just $39,576 — $7,773 in ActBlue processing fees, staff payments of $6,250 to Magda Mohamed and about $10,250 to Jovana Calvillo, and little else. The filings show a campaign banking for the stretch run.
Uyterhoeven has made affordability the center of her campaign, telling Winchester News the crisis is “a product of the state Legislature prioritizing donors and companies over their constituents.”
Her fundraising base is broad. She has drawn more maxed-out $1,000 donors than any candidate in the race — 60 of them, worth $60,000, in occupations that include five realtors and two real estate agents, four attorneys and four lawyers, and two bankers — while 64% of her 689 itemized gifts were $100 or less and her median gift was $100, all lawful under the state’s $1,000 annual limit.
Hers is also the earliest organized-labor money in the field: Boston Teachers Union, AFT Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Teachers Association's VOTE PAC and several building-trades locals among 16 committee receipts.
New money and old money
If Uyterhoeven’s money is a story about timing, Azeem’s is one about reach.
The Cambridge vice mayor, 29, entered with $1,865 — essentially nothing — and raised $138,478, out-raising both sitting state representatives in new money. His biggest month was June, at $37,652, the opposite of a campaign running out of gas down the stretch.
“Right now, we settle for managing problems instead of solving them,” Azeem told Winchester News.
The itemized base, though, is narrow. Through March 27, where his donor detail ends, Azeem raised $29,078 in Cambridge alone, against $1,050 from Medford and $150 from Winchester.
The names track the city’s technology and real estate economy: $3,350 tied to Google employees, $2,000 each tied to First Cambridge Realty and Radin Corp, and $1,000 from a principal at the real estate firm RCG LLC.
That picture covers only December through March; bank reports show roughly $74,000 more arrived from April through June, not yet broken out by donor.
Barber represents the institutional lane, and her ledger shows it. The state representative, who has held the 34th Middlesex since 2015 and run unopposed in every general election since 2016, entered with the district's biggest war chest and has since spent more than she has raised — $122,905 out against $114,794 in.
About $90,362 of that went to five consultants and staffers, including $24,357 to Skyler Nash, $18,737 to the digital firm D3, $16,000 to Madison Martins, $13,500 to Change Agents and $12,800 to Connection Strategies.
The pattern is a fully professionalized operation drawing down its reserve early. Her support runs through the Democratic establishment: of 48 PAC and committee receipts, about 30 are $100 checks from fellow legislators’ committees, including former House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s, alongside building-trades unions and industry PACs.
“Our communities really deserve someone who can bring progressive results,” Barber told Winchester News.
Local money and a collapse
Matthew McLaughlin has built the most locally rooted campaign in the field.
The 44-year-old, a seventh-term Somerville city councilor, drew $35,274 of his $63,768 itemized total from Somerville alone — more than half — and 65% of his dollars came from within the district, the highest in-district share of any candidate.
His labor backing is blue-collar: Ironworkers Local 7, Sheet Metal Workers Local 17, Teamsters Local 122 and the Somerville firefighters among eight union and PAC receipts totaling $2,350, with no industry PACs.
“What I’m trying to bring is a transformation,” McLaughlin told Winchester News.
Tom Hopcroft, the Winchester School Committee member and former MassTLC chief, organized his committee Dec. 2, 2025, and briefly kept pace before his fundraising collapsed.
After banking $10,818 in December and $14,036 in January, he raised $415 in all of April. His base is unusual: 39% of his dollars came from out of state, tracking a technology network with donors tied to Microsoft ($2,100) and $4,000 each from Kirkland, Washington, and Ithaca, N.Y.
Nine gifts totaling $8,650 — more than a fifth of his itemized money — came from donors sharing his surname, and his $38,926 raised includes a $2,200 committee seed. He took no PAC money.
His hometown of Winchester gave him $5,765 across 29 gifts, still the most Winchester money of any candidate in the race. On equity, Hopcroft told Winchester News, “some boats need to be lifted a little bit more.”
The figures here run through the June 30 bank reports, the latest of the monthly filings the candidates’ banks have submitted since Dec. 1, with itemized donor detail drawn from deposit reports filed quarterly through the spring.
The next scheduled filing — the quarterly deposit report itemizing April-through-June donors — is due July 20, according to OCPF, and will extend Azeem’s donor detail, which now ends March 27.
Because all five are on the Sept. 1 primary ballot, OCPF requires them to file twice a month through the campaign’s final weeks, and the cycle’s year-end summary is due Jan. 20, 2027.
All five candidates are scheduled to appear at a candidate’s forum on Thursday, July 16, from 7-9 p.m., at Somerville High School, 81 Highland Ave., Somerville. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. All are welcome.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
