MA-09: Lynch To Be Primaried After All?

Well, it looks like organized labor might have been serious about getting after apostate Democrats on the health care issue, after all:

The Phoenix's David Bernstein tweets that SEIU's New England political director Mac D'Alessandro will challenge US Rep. Steve Lynch in the Democratic primary. Lynch's old rival Phil Dunkelbarger is already in the race.

As everyone here likely knows, Lynch was slow in coming around to supporting the public option, and then voted against health care reform, providing a series of utterly incoherent justifications for that.

Of all 34 Democrats who sided with the Republicans on last month's HIR vote, Lynch was perhaps the most perplexing. There was no obvious district imperative, and the only explanation that made any sense was that he wanted to shore up moderate/conservative bonafides in advance of a possible 2012 Senate run against the newly-elected Scott Brown.

When Harmony Wu decided not to run for Congress two weeks ago, it looked like Lynch might avoid a primary, given that Dunkelberger is, according to his campaign website, planning an Independent bid.

The apparent entrance of D'Alessandro provides all kinds of potential peril for Lynch. As a regional political director for SEIU, one has to imagine that he has both solid electoral chops and a fair-sized Rolodex, to boot.

Assuming D'Alessandro is a go, he also has plenty of time to mount a competitive campaign--Massachusetts is at the end of the line, practically, in terms of the primary schedule. The primary for the Bay State is not until September 14th.