Research shows that a majority of Americans feel frustrated or angry with the Democratic and Republican parties. However, although the Northeast is home to the majority of elected independent candidates, Massachusetts has seen little traction in electing someone outside the major parties.
This year, independent candidates hope to bring change by attracting some of the state’s unaligned voters.
From state and U.S. Senate to governor, Belmont voters will have options outside of the usual constraints of the Democratic and Republican parties in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
“There’s this kind of common wisdom in our country that the two-party system is inevitable, that it’s permanent,” said Joe Tache, who is running for U.S. Senate under the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “… an intervention that we’re trying to make through this campaign is acknowledging that yes, it is difficult to build outside the two-party system because there are political roadblocks and media roadblocks set up against third-party or independent candidates, but something being difficult isn’t a reason not to do it. If something is necessary, you have to do it no matter how difficult it is.”
In a Boston Globe Suffolk University Poll of 500 voters taken Oct. 14 through Oct. 18, incumbent Democratic Sen. Ed Markey led Republican John Deaton 60 percent to 32 percent. Tache and longtime Belmont resident Shiva Ayyadurai, who holds several degrees from MIT, were both polling at 1 percent, with 6 percent listed as “don’t know.” The poll was released Oct. 20.
In Belmont, there are nearly 12,000 registered unenrolled voters, according to 2025 data from the Secretary of State’s Office.
The governor’s race also boasts an independent candidate. Andrea James, a former criminal defense attorney, said she is running because the mainstream parties do not represent the needs of Massachusetts voters.
“I am the only candidate out of the gubernatorial candidates that actually knows what each one of those situations feels like directly,” James said. “I know what it’s like to not be able to pay my light bill. I know what it’s like to be evicted. I know what it’s like to struggle to feed my kid.”
A lifelong resident of Roxbury, James served a two-year sentence for mail and wire fraud more than a decade ago. She was disbarred in 2010, but said she voluntarily reported herself and gave up her license beforehand.
Since her release, she has been an advocate for women and children, founding The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls in 2010.
A Commonwealth Beacon poll showed James at 3%, while a UMass Amherst/WCVB poll put her at 6%.
Independent candidates across the board tend to struggle to compete with Democratic and Republican candidates for funding and media coverage. In an election where many Massachusetts voters cite affordability as a top issue, candidates said they are relying on local grassroots movements to help spread the word as Nov. 3 inches closer.
“Our people don’t have the continued extra money to just further pad [Maura Healy’s] war chest, and nobody has the $10, $13 million that Mike Minogue has poured into his campaign to make him look legitimate,” James said. “I’m more proud of the $5 and $10 that we have been able to cobble together month after month to keep us moving towards November 3.”
While some third party or socialist-affiliated candidates like New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani have found success running as a Democrat, Tache said the recipe isn’t one that always works — or guarantees –– that officials will hold true to their promises.
“Even if there are good and earnest people running within the Democratic Party, the party itself is an institution, and the institution is not actually set up to represent the interests of its voters,” he said.
He added that it’s building a movement for additional parties that will actually move the state, and even the nation, toward progress.
“I believe rather than trying to build a movement for working people within a billionaire-backed party, we should actually build our own movements, our own parties that can represent our interests as the priority,” Tache said.
Brandon C. Wood is running as an independent in the Suffolk and Middlesex state Senate district, which saw a Democratic primary recount between incumbent Sen. William Brownsberger and Daniel Lander, a former senior aide to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. Brownsberger won by 35 votes.
“There’s no future here for the people of Massachusetts,” Wood wrote in a statement to The Voice. “There is no future for families. The neighborhoods are less safe, and the elected officials are doing their best to deflect from the actual problems.”
Defining Success Against The Odds
While independent candidates face a steep uphill battle, Woods said he is striving for “a complete victory.”
“My campaign manager says even a 30% vote is something to be proud of. I am not of that mindset. Sounds like making yourself feel better for losing. This is a zero-sum game,” Wood said in a statement.
For other independents, “victory” might not mean domination in the polls.
“If I won the election, but then everybody went home on Nov. 4 and said, ‘Great, now we can go back in six years and see what Joe accomplished,’ that would actually be the only way that this campaign could fail, because that means we didn’t communicate our vision and our perspective of how change actually happens,” Tache said.
Listening to voters and sharing their ideas plants the seeds that elections could look different in Massachusetts, candidates argued.
“One of the purposes of our campaign was to show that you could actually win a campaign, whether it’s this one or somebody else who has the courage,” James said.
