Lucas: Stephen Lynch delivers for district – what’s wrong with that?

Residents of South Boston should be happy with hometown working-class U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch.

The one-time iron worker is at least bringing home the bacon, as they used to say, despite taking some heat for it.

He takes care of his 8th Congressional district that, while centered in Southie, rambles south to Quincy, Brockton and 18 other southeast communities.

If Massachusetts had more political leaders like Lynch in Congress the two federally owned aged bridges across Cape Cod, the Sagamore and the Bourne, would have been replaced by now.

However, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Eddie Markey, as well as the rest of the state’s congressional delegation, have been unable to secure federal funding to replace the functionally obsolete bridges.

Which is why Gov, Maura Healey has been forced to seek federal money from President Joe Biden on her own. And they are all Democrats.

Lynch, 68, who was born and bred in Southie and who still lives there, has come under scrutiny from progressives (the Boston Globe) for using “earmarks,” to direct federal funds from the budget to projects in his district.

While perfectly legal, Lynch recently won a $2 million grant for the South Boston Community Health Center, which provides health care for the needy, as well as another $1 million for the Gavin Foundation, which provides recovery assistance to people afflicted with drug addiction.

Lynch’s wife Margaret is an unpaid director at Gavin and is director of marketing and development at the community health care center, where she has worked since 1996, five years before Lynch was elected to Congress.

Lynch told the Globe that his wife’s salary came out of the health center’s general budget and was not related to the earmarks. The House Ethics Committee agreed with him.

Lynch has been able to bring home more earmark grant money — $40 million in fiscal 2022-2023 — to his district than any other Massachusetts member of the House.

Some of the earmarks also Include $4.9 million for storm aid to Hull; $2.4 million for the New England Aquarium; $1 million for the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, and another $2 million for sludge hauling; $3 million for the education of home care health providers at UMass, and so on.

Ordinarily the Lynch earmarks, which go to help the needy, would be lauded by progressives.

But in this case, it is being used against him. It is a sign that Lynch, the most moderate of the leftist Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House, is being set up for a progressive challenger.

Some progressives view him as an old, out of touch white guy from a past era who has been around too long and needs to be replaced. Before elected to Congress in 2001, Lynch served in both the Massachusetts House and the Senate.

“Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts,” Lynch once observed, “is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon.”

The observation was right on, but if Lynch said that today the progressives would be seeking his impeachment.

Progressive critics believe that Lynch can be seriously challenged in the 2024 Democrat primary by an outspoken progressive from the minority community, the way Ayanna Pressley beat veteran U.S Rep. Mike Capuano of Somerville in 2018.

Capuano, who like Lynch, was known as a politician who could deliver for his district, Pressley not so much.

But that does not matter with progressives who believe more in straightjacket liberal dogma than in caring for the needs and wishes of the people.

One wonders what modern day liberals would make of the late Rep. Joe Moakley, Lynch’s predecessor.

Moakley, chairman of the House Rules Committee, not only crushed all opposition to get $200 million to build the federal courthouse in South Boston that bears his name but employed half of South Boston to build it.

He saw to it that the federal government also paid $34 million to  Anthony Athanas of the famed restaurant Anthony’s Pier 4, who employed the other half, for the land it was built on.

And then Moakley named the Moakley Bridge, which connects downtown Boston to the Seaport District, named after his wife Evelyn.

Nobody complained.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.