Second Highest Ranking House Democrat Faces Primary Challenger

Jonathan Paz, a former city councilor for Waltham, Massachusetts, and founder of Fuerza, a group that supports illegal immigrants during Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, announced he is running in the Democratic primary for the state’s Fifth Congressional District, challenging Rep. Katherine Clark, the House Democratic whip and the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber.

Paz’s campaign framed the bid as a generational and message-focused challenge to party leaders. In a campaign announcement video, Paz said: “I’m challenging one of the most powerful Democrats in the House because we need new leadership. Let’s just call it what it is. Our Democratic leaders are failing us. They’re not stopping Trump. They’re not making life more affordable. They’re not building a party for the working class. That’s why we need to rebuild the Democratic Party.”

The race is set to be one of the highest-profile House Democratic primaries of the cycle. Clark is the highest-ranking Democrat currently facing a primary challenger, after a challenger to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries ended that bid earlier this month. The Massachusetts primary will be held on Sept. 1, 2026, before the general election next November.

Paz said his campaign will focus on housing, health care, and immigrant rights. In a statement, he said families are “being squeezed out of the communities they love” and argued that “housing, health care, education—basic cornerstones of a dignified life—are slipping further out of reach.” He also criticized “endless wars abroad” and said immigrant communities face “fear and harassment from ICE every single day.”

Paz pledged to refuse corporate PAC money for his campaign and, if elected, while in office.

Paz said his personal background shaped his politics, saying he was born in Boston and raised in Bolivia until he was 8 and that his family returned to the United States “with nothing.” He said he watched his parents work “two to three jobs” to support the family and said his father was “detained and deported” when he was 14.

Clark has represented Massachusetts’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes Boston suburbs, since 2013.

In the fall of 2022, House Democrats elected Clark as whip, the second-highest leadership post in the caucus. She previously served as assistant speaker, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. Her biography says she is one of only two women to serve as whip and is currently the highest-ranking woman in Congress.

Clark, 62, has highlighted policy priorities including equal pay, abortion access, gun violence prevention, child care, and paid leave, according to her biography.

Before serving in Congress, she served as a state senator, state representative, and on the Melrose School Committee, and worked in Massachusetts state government as general counsel for the Office of Child Care Services and as policy chief for the state attorney general.

A spokesperson for Clark did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Paz’s announcement comes as Democrats are also seeing other high-profile primaries of incumbents, including in New York City, where the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, has launched a bid against Rep. Dan Goldman.

Lander is running with backing from Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and he said in his campaign video that Washington needs more than “strongly worded letters or high-dollar fundraisers.”