Daniel Lander is a man in a hurry. He talks fast, peppering his speech with words conveying urgency. He’s skipped straight to a run for the Massachusetts Senate because the time for action, he said, is now.
“I’m running for the place (state Senate) where there’s a real opportunity to make a difference, to lift people up and make sure everybody can build a good life here in Massachusetts,” Lander said.
Lander is challenging incumbent Sen. William Brownsberger for the Suffolk and Middlesex Senate seat Brownsberger has held since 2012. Primary day is Tuesday, Sept. 1,
Raised in nearby Huron Village in Cambridge, Lander attends Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, and recalls spending significant time in Belmont Center. He currently lives with his husband in the Fenway area.
Lander may not have held elected office, but his background in politics is extensive. He’s worked for the Innocence Project and at AmeriCorps. He holds a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and spent time in Georgia, working with Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of that state in 2018. He’s also worked for Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her director of LGBTQ+ and youth outreach during her 2020 presidential campaign. When Michelle Wu was elected mayor of Boston, Lander went to work as her senior policy adviser.
“(That’s where) I worked for the last four years,” he said. “Working on tackling our affordable housing crisis, driving down our racial wealth gap and expanding access to arts and culture, among other things.”
According to Lander, over the past decade, it has become more and more difficult for people to stay in Massachusetts. Spiraling healthcare, food, and housing costs have captured most of the attention but everything is costing more.
“The only people who are still here most of the time are people who are living with their parents,” he said. “And that’s true not just for people my age, but for seniors who are on a fixed income and worrying.”
During his interview with The Voice, Lander ran through a list of concerns, including the state of the MBTA, the cost of childcare, the impact of healthcare costs on cities and towns, and a few ways to improve revenue streams and ease the financial burden on working people.
According to Lander, his top priorities are building more affordable housing, which he said goes hand in glove with solving public transportation issues, and fixing the broken status quo.
“I understand that we have the least effective legislature in this country,” he said. “And that, on so many issues, they are sort of content to Band-Aid those problems and kick the can down the road and not work with urgency.”
That urgency, he said, is where he and Brownsberger are most different. In Lander’s mind, the current leadership does not understand the crisis at hand, and fails to react with urgency to the problems facing Bay State residents.
“We need leaders who understand the moment we are in, who are going to work urgently to use everything at their disposal to try and bring down costs, to try and protect our residents,” Lander said
Lander deflects concerns about his youth and relative lack of experience, citing his experience working with Warren and Wu (both have endorsed his candidacy) and his personal outlook.
“Every single person I talk to tells me about how expensive it is to live here,” he said. “And I’m asking them to sort of join me in this work of imagining a much better Massachusetts and saying, ‘It’s finally time for some real urgency here.’ ”
