BOSTON – As Seattle Seahawks fans look to win their second-ever Lombardi trophy in Sunday’s Super Bowl showdown, New England Patriots fans are aiming to win their seventh. And just as importantly to many, they’re hoping to “finally” end what they call their “long” and “agonizing” six years of losing.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be on top again soon enough,” said Aidan Lafferty, 24, with the swagger of a 20-something who grew up with the Patriots winning, and winning again.

“It’s the starting of a dynasty, again!,” gushed 24-year-old George Zabalou, nursing a beer a few tables away at the Game On! sports bar where walls are covered with banners, photos and jerseys all attesting to the city’s embarrassment of sports riches. Starting in 2001, Boston’s four major sports teams delivered 12 championships in 18 seasons, including the Patriots’ six Super Bowl wins.

Those lucky enough to grow up during those years when Boston called itself “Title Town” never went more than two years before getting to skip school again for another championship celebration.

“It was like parades on parades on parades,” said Jenna Freni, 24. “It was awesome.”

Frenzi’s friend Angel Galiotzakis, 23, nodded. “Growing up, I didn’t know that going to the Super Bowl wasn’t a normal occurrence.”

Jenna Freni, 24, (left) and Angel Galiotzakis, 23, spent their childhood celebrating Patriots Superbowl championships. Sharing drinks at the Game On! sports bar in Boston, they’re hoping this is the year New England starts winning again. “We’ve suffered enough,” Galiotzakis smiles.

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So, it was quite the shock to many when star quarterback Tom Brady left, the Pats parades paused, and fans found themselves suffering through a painful Patriots drought, — for those of six long years.

“Dude, I was in a dark place,” said Lafferty. “I was like, ‘Is it always going to be like this? Are we not going to win for … ever?’”

Another Pats fan Joe Reynolds says it was a rough time for him, too. “It was like, ‘What’s going on?” he said from his home in Cambridge. “This is like a huge drop off from what I’ve come to expect.”

“There is a clear connection between the Patriots losing and your use of antidepressants,” added his wife, Emily Borges.

But listening to Pat’s fans complain about their suffering is what’s insufferable to NFL fans from, well, basically everywhere else.

“Oh! Get over yourselves! It has not been that hard,” scoffed Noah Seligson, a fan of the New York Jets with a much, much longer history of suffering. “The Jets haven’t made the Super Bowl since 1969! Boston fans should grow up and feel fortunate for what they have.”

Andrew Lawrenson, who lives in New England but roots for the Miami Dolphins, said Pats fans don’t know what real suffering is. The Dolphins’ last won a Super Bowl in January 1974.

“Patriots fans drive me crazy,” Lawrenson said. “They’re all obnoxious and like to run their mouth off. The Patriots deserve to suffer a little more. They’ve had 20 years of greatness, they can have at least 10 years of misery.”

George Zabalou, a security guard at the Game On! sports bar in Boston, says he loved “the bragging rights” that came from being a New England Patriots fan during their winning years. Now after six “horrible” seasons, he’s hoping for a Pats win, and what he believes will be another dynasty run.

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Zac Vug, who hosts the online sports talk show Take Back With Zac, calls New England the “most spoiled franchise in the universe.”

“Oh my god, their attitude is horribly disgusting,” he said.

Even some Patriots faithful – of a certain age — will admit that an attitude adjustment might be in order.

New England superfan Keith Birchall, 58, has been around long enough to remember decades of the Pats losing and when the team was mocked as the Patsies. That’s kept him more grounded than the “entitled” young fans today, he said.

He still seethes at the young fans who couldn’t bother going to this year’s Wild Card game, taking it for granted the Pats would win and they’d have a chance this season at an even bigger game.

“That’s just cockiness and entitlement,” Birchall said. “They don’t get it. They have no idea how bad we once were.”

As for the hate coming from rival fans, New England diehards brush it off as just jealousy. As Pats fans love to say, “They hate us cuz they ain’t us.”

And they’re not entirely wrong.

“I do! I hate ’em cuz I ain’t ’em,” concedes Vug, whose LA Chargers have won a total of zero Super Bowls. “I’m a man of Christ. I have to admit my shortcomings. I am a jealous human. I envy what the Patriots have. I envy the ease of their life. It’s just a perfect sports relationship. And all I have is pain and suffering.”

You’ll hear no such confession, however, from Seattle Seahawks fan Jason Hibbs.

“We don’t want to be them,” he snapped. “They’re obnoxious!”

But a moment later, Hibbs offers a caveat: it wouldn’t be all bad to be hated.

Seattle Seahawks fan Jason Hibbs is one of many around the nation who find it infuriating to hear Patriots fans grousing about the “long-suffering” years since they last won a championship. Hibbs is hoping the Seahawks beat the Pats and “shut up” their “obnoxious” fans.

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Suzanah Schoen

“It means you’re winning,” he said. “In a few years, maybe everybody hates us because we’ve won two or three times. I want to be hated for once. That would be a fantastic feeling.”

Yup. Just ask any Pats fan and they’ll tell you, winning is totally worth it.

Virginia Democrats unveiled a proposed US House map Thursday that aims to give their party four more seats in the latest effort to fight President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, even as an ongoing legal challenge makes use of that map for the midterm elections far from certain.

The map would dilute Republicans’ hold in Virginia’s conservative areas while giving Democrats a better footing in the districts they would like to flip. And it would give Democrats nationwide a boost in the redistricting battle for the House ahead of the November elections.

But in January, a Virginia judge ruled that Democrats’ proposed constitutional amendment for redrawing the state’s U.S. House lines was illegal. It was a blow to Democrats’ plan to let voters decide on the amendment in a referendum in April. Democrats are appealing in the case, which appears headed directly to the state Supreme Court.

The state is currently represented in the US House by six Democrats and five Republicans who ran in districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan legislative commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census.

Earlier Thursday, the state’s top Democratic legislators said they would unveil a map drawn to help Democrats win 10 of the 11 seats. Data from recent past elections attached to the proposal posted online Thursday support that possibility. A congressional primary is currently set for June.

Virginia Republicans have rebuffed Democrats’ efforts to redraw the House map, pointing to a recent yearslong push for fair maps in the state. In 2020, voters supported a change to the state’s constitution aimed at ending legislative gerrymandering by creating the redistricting commission.

Virginia Democrats, who decisively flipped 13 seats in the state House and the governor’s office last November, have long said that efforts to redistrict the state would level the playing field after Trump pushed to redraw House districts in Republican-controlled states such as Texas.

“These are not ordinary times and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines while it happens,” state Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas told reporters earlier Thursday alongside House Speaker Don Scott. “We made a promise to level the playing field, and today we’re keeping our promise.”

In other states, the redistricting battle has resulted so far in nine more seats that Republicans believe they can win in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and six that Democrats think they can win in California and Utah. Democrats have hoped to make up that three-seat margin in Virginia.

Mike Young with Virginians for Fair Maps, a Republican-backed group opposed to the redrawing, called Thursday’s proposal “an illegal, hyper-partisan gerrymander drawn in backrooms hidden from the public” and one “that completely disregards common sense.”

Redistricting initiatives are still being litigated in several states, and there is no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they have redrawn.

While Virginia’s redistricting push hits hurdles, Maryland lawmakers have advanced a new map that could enable Democrats to defeat the state’s only House Republican, after Democratic Gov. Wes Moore urged them in person to do so, though obstacles remain for enacting such a map there.

TRENTON, N.J. — The race in New Jersey between a onetime political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders and a former congressman was too early to call Thursday, in a special House Democratic primary for a seat that was vacated after Mikie Sherill was elected governor.

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski started election night with a significant lead over Analilia Mejia, based largely on early results from mail-in ballots. The margin narrowed as results from votes cast that day were tallied.

With more than 61,000 votes counted, Mejia led Malinowski by 486, or less than 1 percentage point.

All three counties in the district report some mail-in ballots yet to be processed. Also, mail-in ballots postmarked by election day can arrive as late as Wednesday and still be counted.

Malinowski did better than Mejia among the mail-in ballots already counted in all three counties, leaving the outcome of the race uncertain.

The Democratic winner will face Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, who was unopposed in the Republican primary, on April 16.

Malinowski served two terms in the House before losing a bid for reelection in a different district in 2022. He had the endorsement of New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim, who has built support among progressive groups.

FILE – Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski speaks during his election night party in Garwood, N.J., Nov. 8, 2022.

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Mejia, a former head of the Working Families Alliance in the state and political director for Sanders during his 2020 presidential run, had the Vermont independent senator’s endorsement as well as that of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York. She also worked in President Joe Biden’s Labor Department as deputy director of the women’s bureau.

Both Malinowski and Mejia were well ahead of the next-closest candidates: Brendan Gill, an elected commissioner in Essex County who has close ties to former Gov. Phil Murphy; and Tahesha Way, who served as lieutenant governor and secretary of state for two terms under Murphy until last month.

The other candidates were John Bartlett, Zach Beecher, J-L Cauvin, Marc Chaaban, Cammie Croft, Dean Dafis, Jeff Grayzel, Justin Strickland and Anna Lee Williams.

The district covers parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey, including some of New York City’s wealthier suburbs.

The special primary and April general election will determine who serves the remainder of Sherrill’s term, which ends next January. There will be a regular primary in June and general election in November for the next two-year term.

Sherrill, also a Democrat, represented the district for four terms after her election in 2018. She won despite the region’s historical loyalty to the GOP, a dynamic that began to shift during President Donald Trump’s first term.