Photograph by Steven Senne

Seth Moulton was born and raised in the Sixth District of Massachusetts, which includes a big chunk of the Northeastern part of the state, including Salem. He attended Phillips Academy Andover and Harvard University on scholarships and with student loans that he is still paying to pay back today. In 2001, after graduating from Harvard, he joined the United States Marine Corps after the attacks on 9/11, inspired by the younger men who had joined to fight.

He was among the first group to go into Iraq, and served four tours as an infantry officer, including two as a platoon commander and two as a Special Assistant to General David Petraeus.

While still serving, Moulton was frequently interviewed about his experiences as an officer in Iraq by the media, including CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. He was featured in the Academy Award nominated documentary No End In Sight (2007). In the film, Moulton criticized the U.S. government’s handling of the occupation of Iraq.

“And are you telling me that’s the best America can do? No. Don’t tell me that, don’t tell the Marines who fought for a month in Najaf that, don’t tell the marines who are still fighting every day in Fallujah that that’s the best America can do… That makes me angry.”

He left the Marines in 2008 with the rank of Captain, attended Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School Of Government, and then worked in the private sector.

Moulton ran for Congress in 2014, promising to bring new, bipartisan leadership to Washington. He won with 54.5% of the vote. In his first term, nearly 60% of all bills that he co-sponsored had bipartisan support.

Moulton is a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a congressional caucus made up of Democrats who support an agenda that is moderate, pro-growth, and fiscally-responsible. Moulton admitted using marijuana and supports legalization:

“If you’re not buying your marijuana from a dealer who sells heroin, who sells opioids, it’s much less likely to be a gateway drug. The problem is now that it operates in the shadows. There’s no control whatsoever. Someone goes and buys an edible, for example, there’s no regulation about what’s in that. It’s like moonshine under Prohibition.”

He supports a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, stronger gun control, better commuter trains and high-speed rail, and expanding nuclear energy, fixing Obamacare, pro-environment, pro-science, and pro-LGBTQ Rights:

“Equality is the Civil Rights fight of our generation. My brother is gay, and it’s fundamentally wrong that he and I don’t share the same rights just because of who he is.”

In an interview with The Boston Globe last year, Moulton compared the rise of Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. Moulton said:

“To understand how an educated society can elect a demagogue, voters should read the history on how the German people elected Hitler in the early 20th century. The fact is, Donald Trump is putting the future of America at risk. He is opposed to basic American values, the very values that our troops are risking their lives to defend. No one who espouses hatred should be entrusted with the presidency of the United States of America.”

“If members of the administration are essentially conspiring with Russia, either through the 2016 presidential campaign earlier, or now in the administration itself, that’s the very definition of treason.”

By the way, Moulton is 38-years-old, old enough to run for POTUS, and he is single.

“I just don’t want to go to Washington to be the same congressman that everybody else is being.”