When Jason Poulos launched his congressional bid last winter, he was an unknown candidate facing an unknown political landscape.

He’s since amassed a small campaign army, and he says they’ve knocked on more than 15,000 doors across the Massachusetts 4th Congressional District in his bid to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss in the upcoming Democratic primary.

“We have 300 volunteers who have signed up, and we have a team of about 50 people actively knocking on doors,” Poulos said on Wednesday, fresh off a canvassing event in Millis. “We’re doing text-banking. We’re doing phone-banking. So, we’re reaching voters multiple ways.”

And since he launched his campaign last winter, the national political landscape has seen tectonic shifts, with Democrats winning special elections in traditionally red districts at the same time that progressive populists and candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America are suddenly winning primaries in New York, Colorado, Michigan and Florida.

While not a DSA candidate himself, Poulos is part of that growing list of insurgents hoping to reshape the Democratic party beyond November.

‘The cost of housing is too high’

Poulos, an AI researcher from Sherborn with a Ph.D. in political science, is part of a nationwide movement of progressive candidates challenging sitting Democrats with bold policy demands made popular by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, in the senator’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

What happened with the Republican party more than a decade ago when the Tea Party faction took over seems to be happening with the Democratic party now—a shedding of skin to accommodate a new generation with new focus on big changes—but rather than demanding economic relief with tax and spending cuts, this progressive populist movement calls for a proactive government that makes everyday life more affordable for the working class.

“The cost of housing is too high,” Poulos said.

Housing is one area in which he and Auchincloss agree on the need for proactive policy change. They just differ on what that means.

“I think there are few levers that the federal government can pull, like creating a national housing authority to create new housing supply, and that’s on the supply side,” Poulos said. “On the renter side, we can write a new renters’ bill of rights to restrict exorbitant rental price increases. I think that we have to do more on restricting private equity from buying single-family homes.”

Housing is first on almost everyone’s minds, Poulos said, with things like healthcare and wages coming close behind. America has an affordability crisis.

Poulos volunteered for Sanders’s 2020 campaign in Durham, N.C., while doing postdoctoral work there. He advocated for the senator’s Medicare for All bill, which would put every American on Medicare and render health insurance companies moot.

“I think it’s more of an issue for me now because there’s this threat of AI-related job displacement,” he said. “So, I think it’s even more important to decouple insurance with employment, because we’re in an age now where both blue-collar and white-collar jobs are at risk of being automated. We’re also in this gig economy in which more and more workers are working several part-time or contract jobs, and those jobs usually don’t come with health insurance.”

Poulos is continuing that push in his congressional campaign, as Massachusetts has among the highest family premiums in the country.

Auchincloss has said he prefers a market-based insurance system, with regulations to keep costs down. But for Poulos, the simplicity of single-payer—with everyone on the same system regardless of employment or economic status—is appealing.

“People wouldn’t have to deal with copayments or deductibles,” Poulos said. “Medicare is a popular program, and people generally like it. So I do think it’s a simpler and more cost-effective way.”

Poulos cites reports by the Congressional Budget Office showing that Medicare for All would likely save the nation hundreds of billions of dollars a year when compared to how much the nation now spends collectively on healthcare. And in a more recent analysis, Yale has that potential savings at up to a trillion dollars a year.

“There are savings to be had and it’s because the administrative overhead of Medicare is a lot lower than private health insurance, and then there are also savings because if people are covered, they’ll go to primary care rather than the ER,” Poulos continued. “So it’s cheaper under Medicare for All, and we would be able to expand prescription drug price negotiation to lower prescription drug prices.”

Jason Poulos is running in the Democratic primary for the Massachusetts 4th congressional district. Photo by Alex Gagne Photography

Meeting automation with UBI

Poulos’s drive to put more money in people’s pockets doesn’t stop there. He’s calling for a universal basic income. And he wants the money to come from AI companies and other businesses that replace employees with technology.

“It doesn’t have to just be an AI company,” he said. “For instance, if a shipping company automates their container-handling jobs away using robots, and the business decides to go the route of automation, they can pay into that tariff, and that tariff could go toward something like a UBI.”

For worker protection, Poulos calls for policies that strengthen union bargaining power, starting with the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, first introduced five years ago and reintroduced last winter.

“It’s pretty comprehensive, so it strengthens collective bargaining rights by providing workers with more opportunities to organize,” Poulos said. “And one way in which it does that is by granting legal employee status to contract workers. So, in the gig economy, more and more workers are these higher public workers, and they can’t organize under federal law because they’re not going to classify as employees.”

Pushing back on the Pentagon

In the past three years, Israel has become a proverbial elephant in the room for Democrats, as progressives push back against American support for that country as Israel’s military operations in Gaza continue for a third year.

Auchincloss is steadfast in his support for Israel and blames Hamas for the chaos and humanitarian crisis in Gaza now. Poulos, on the other hand, wants all military support for Israel—including the Iron Dome—to end.

“In my opinion, the United States should not be funding or sending weapons or military aid to Israel,” Poulos said. “We have needs in this country that aren’t being addressed in terms of healthcare, housing and education. Israel is able to provide its people national healthcare, and I believe that our focus should be on the massive needs of our people.”

Poulos said he would support the Block the Bombs Act, a bill that would condition military aid on defensive, not offensive, purposes.

“I know that as a member of Congress, I’m going to be one of many, and so I can’t always force my opinions onto the legislative priorities,” he said. “So, when I see something like the Block the Bomb Act, where I agree with most of it, I would support that and push it through because I think it’s mostly in the right direction.”

One foreign policy topic that isn’t dividing the party is Iran. There is solid Democratic opposition to Trump’s war in Iran, especially as the conflict drives gas prices up and the Pentagon has shown no exit strategy.

Poulos wants the House to shut off funding.

“The Pentagon has not passed a federal audit in the past eight years, so I support efforts to restrict the amount of money that is sent to the Pentagon,” he said. “One way to do that is to impose a cap. Sen. Markey just issued legislation in the Senate to impose a 750 million cap. So that’s half of what was voted on.”

Poulos suggested conditioning Pentagon funding each year on whether or not the department passes an audit.

Congressional candidate Jason Poulos, and members of his campaign team canvass in Newton. Photo by Alex Gagne Photography

Where to go from here

If Bernie Sanders planted the seeds of a movement, candidates like Jason Poulos are its flowers in bloom.

“It does feel like our campaign is a movement, and we can describe it in multiple ways, but I just focus on the fact that our campaign and these progressive left campaigns are winning primaries across the country, and we’re focused on really the same set of issues,” Poulos said as he prepared for another campaign appearance at an evening festival in the district.

Polls have shown progressive ideas like single-payer healthcare and rent control gaining traction as wallets feel the squeeze in  households across America.

In New York, multiple incumbents were defeated by challengers backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In Colorado’s June primary, social justice activist Melat Kiros defeated 15-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette with a platform that includes Medicare for All and ending military aid to Israel. In Michigan, epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed won a Democratic primary for Senate with a similar platform. And in Florida this week, Democratic Socialist candidate Angie Nixon won an upset Senate primary victory over Democrat Alex Vindman.

In the Massachusetts 4th congressional district, Poulos has picked up some noteworthy endorsements: the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Progressive Democrats of America, Revolution Massachusetts and Massachusetts Peace Action.

Auchincloss has own pile of endorsements, from gun safety groups to transit union workers.

Some day, Trump will be gone and MAGA will be a memory. What does the Democratic party look like after this primary, after November and after 2028?

For Poulos, it’s about breaking up with corporate donors.

“It has to start with no corporate PAC money,” Poulos said. “I will not hold or trade stocks while in office. I will vote to ban congressional stock trading. I will vote on a lifetime ban on former members of Congress becoming lobbyists.”

A stock trading ban is another thing the candidates agree on, with Auchincloss having co-sponsored the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which would include such a ban.

But Poulos pointed to the Political Integrity Index—a website that grades members of Congress and 2026 candidates based on their stock trading activities, financial ties to corporate PACS and more—that gave Auchincloss a failing grade, citing the hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate PAC money he’s received this cycle.

“Voters have to know that representatives are going to be on the side of the people and on the side of the workers, not on the side of the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries,” Poulos said.

That Political Integrity Index website also says Auchincloss owns $1.4 million in stocks, but his campaign has clarified that it refers to investments that are part of his wife’s compensation (which is so common that there’s an exemption for it in the Restore Trust in Congress Act) and the congressman does not own or trade individual stocks.

The Massachusetts primary is set for Sept. 1.