Facing His First Primary Challenge in Six Years, Rep. Auchincloss Finally Cosponsors a Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United
May 24, 2026
Six years into the job, Jake Auchincloss is finally facing a Democratic primary opponent. State officials confirmed last week that both Auchincloss and I have cleared the 2,000-certified-signature threshold to appear on the September 1 ballot — making me, as the State House News Service reported, Auchincloss’s “first primary challenger since his initial election in 2020.” The Newton Beacon noted the qualification as well.
Three days into that pressure becoming public, Auchincloss did something he had refused to do for the previous sixteen months: cosponsor a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Here is the timeline.
- May 19, 2026 — Fig City News publishes a profile of our campaign that notes Auchincloss had not cosponsored any of the four constitutional amendments to overturn Citizens United pending in the 119th Congress.
- May 20, 2026 — The story is updated with a statement from a representative of his office: the congressman “has co-sponsored legislation to overturn Citizens United.”
- May 21, 2026 — Auchincloss is added as a cosponsor of H.J.Res.122, the Citizens Over Corporations Amendment.
He had been the last Massachusetts House Democrat to put his name on any of the four 119th-Congress amendments to overturn Citizens United — sixteen months after the first one was introduced, with the entire rest of the rank-and-file delegation already signed on. He had also written in his Substack newsletter that Citizens United makes elections “more like auctions than contests” and called for “boot[ing] big money out of campaigns.” For sixteen months, the rhetoric and the cosponsorship sheet did not match. After one news cycle of public scrutiny, he closed half the gap — for one of the four amendments.
He remains a non-cosponsor of the other three: the We the People Amendment (H.J.Res.54), the Free and Fair Elections Amendment (H.J.Res.119, lead-sponsored by fellow Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern), and the Democracy for All Amendment (H.J.Res.121).
A serious commitment to overturning Citizens United looks like signing onto all four — including the McGovern amendment, the strongest of the set, which would prohibit (not merely permit Congress to regulate) corporate election spending. A serious commitment also looks like declining the PAC checks from the industries those amendments would unleash limits on. Auchincloss has taken over $707,000 in PAC money this cycle alone — more than the rank-and-file MA Democrats who cosponsored these amendments years ago, combined.
This is what primary accountability looks like. Without a challenger, sixteen months of inaction would simply have continued. With a challenger, one news cycle moved the needle for the first time in this Congress.
The Fourth District deserves a representative who is committed to ending the corruptive influence of big money in politics on Day One.
For the full background — the four amendments, the PAC-money pattern, and the rep-by-rep comparison across the Massachusetts delegation — read the original December 16 post.
Jason Poulos is running for Congress in Massachusetts’s 4th District in the Democratic primary on September 1, 2026. He is not accepting money from corporate or crypto PACs, AIPAC, or DMFI. Learn more at poulos.house or volunteer to help reach voters before September.
