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"He doesn't take any race for granted," said Lynch spokesman Scott Ferson. Lynch beat his 2018 primary challenger, video game developer Brianna Wu, with 71 percent of the vote.

Neal, on the other hand, went on the air with his first reelection ad two months earlier than he did in 2018, when he easily dispatched an energetic challenge from another progressive, Springfield attorney Tahirah Amatul-Wadud. The television spot featured a local business in Holyoke, Morse's hometown, thanking Neal for helping secure a Paycheck Protection Program loan.

In Massachusetts, national progressive groups are hoping to replicate their recent success in New York, where races involving Reps. Eliot Engel and Carolyn Maloney remain uncalled pending counting of absentee ballots and Engels opponent, Jamaal Bowman, has already claimed victory.

Like Bowman, Morse is backed by Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement. Morse and Goldstein are both endorsed by Our Revolution, the spin-off group from Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign; Andrew Yangs Humanity First, and Indivisible.

Seeking to tap into progressive energy surrounding Bowman, Morse even went to the Bronx to campaign alongside Bowman on primary day. Bowman in turn urged voters to support Morse in a video on Twitter.

Vote for this man! Bowman wrote in a tweet.

As a result, Morse, Holyoke's first openly gay mayor, raised $110,000 from 2,200 contributions in a single week after the primaries in New York and Kentucky, his campaign told POLITICO. For a candidate that had $140,000 in cash on hand at the end of the last fundraising quarter, that's a significant bump.

The establishment is officially on notice that our movement has momentum. Together, we can build a Democratic Party that prioritizes working people over corporate profits," Morse said when he announced Bowman's endorsement.

If the dynamic sounds a little familiar, thats because it is. In 2018, Ayanna Pressley made history by toppling Capuano in a Boston-area district, just weeks after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stunning upset of former Rep. Joe Crowley. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Pressley in a tweet similar to the one Bowman posted for Morse.

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Like Pressley, who was a Boston city councilor with a strong political organization when she ran, Morse is not a political unknown he's been mayor for nearly a decade.

"He's come up in politics during the social media time, and he's been able to use that well to get his message out," said state Rep. Aaron Vega, a former Holyoke city councilor who is staying neutral in the race.

"Like him or not, people know who he is. It's much different than other people who have run against the congressman who didn't have that level of name recognition and experience. Whether you agree with him or not, or what, he's been mayor for 10 years so he understands how things work and he does his homework. It's definitely a different kind of challenge," Vega added. "Anything's possible, especially in this time."

Still, both Neal and Lynch have the advantage of representing districts that are older and less diverse than the ones that have seen progressive upsets.

"Some of the things in this campaign, or maybe in other campaigns that were very trendy in New York or with AOC two years ago, just don't fly here," said Glazer, who is a fixture in Western Massachusetts politics. She also pointed to the size of the district Neal represents 87 cities and towns that cover nearly a quarter of the states land area, unlike the smaller, and more densely populated districts where progressives won in Massachusetts and New York.

Amatul-Wadud, who lost to Neal 71 percent to 29 percent in the 2018 primary, said national progressive interest isnt necessarily enough to overcome those hurdles.

"After AOC won in 2018, we got a big financial boost, we got a lot more media attention and more volunteers because people felt like that was a sign change could happen where we are," she said. "[T]he challenge still remains the same. This district is very, very different than the urban district of New York 16."

Morses task will be to activate voters in Springfield and Pittsfield, the two cities with the largest number of voters in the 1st District, Amatul-Wadud said. Springfield has seen an historic number of protests against police brutality and racism in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, and not seizing on the moment has been a "lost opportunity," for Morse, she said.

"It's a lost opportunity if they're not taking the bull by the horns and talking about this and proposing solutions each and every day. And I'm not seeing it," Amatul-Wadud said. "This is the moment I wish I had in 2018."

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