The most Seth Moulton-like candidate running to replace him just may be a Republican

Hearing Micah Q. Jones explain why he wants to succeed USRepresentative Seth Moulton in the Sixth Congressional District can, at times, sound a little familiar.

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The US Army veteran said he believes in “service more than anything.” Like Moulton a decade ago, he’s a first-time candidate in his mid-30s who touts wanting to work across the aisle.And he lauded Moulton’s “heterodox way of thinking” and willingness to challenge his fellow Democrats.

“That’s an admirable thing, and something I would hope to emulate when needed,” Jones, 37, said.

There’s just one catch: Jones is actually running in a different party. A half-dozen Democrats want to fill Moulton’s North Shore-anchoredseat, but it is Jones, a onetime-Democrat-turned-Republican, who may strike the strongest comparison to the district’s six-term incumbent.

Jones is leaning into a profile that, in another political era, might have looked tailor-made for the North Shore district: military veteran, moderate, and openly skeptical of the ideological rigidity gripping both parties. He himself points to Moulton — who first swept into office by doing the seemingly impossible:knocking off a Democratic incumbent — as a model.

No Republican has held a US House seat in Massachusetts in three decades. But Jones, a two-time Donald Trump voter, isn’t centering the culture-warissues that typically fire up grassroots Republican voters. He’s promising to work with the Trump administration “when it makes sense, [and] push back when it doesn’t.”

His campaign website lists only three “issues” — opportunity, accountability, and security — and the top two priorities he pledges to pursue if elected have both drawn bipartisan support. Jones favors term limits for members of Congress, an idea Moulton, too, backs in his primary challenge this year of US Senator Ed Markey. Jones also supports banning members of Congress from trading stocks.

That type of bipartisan message some in the district said they find compelling, even — and perhaps especially — in a candidate from another party.

“I don’t want someone who is too much to the right, and I don’t want to go too much to the left,” said Michelle Guzman, a Democrat and community organizer who met Jones as he flitted from table to table at a recent North Shore Latino Business Association networking event.

Guzman, still undecided in the race, was curious about whether she could vote for Jones despite her party affiliation.

Who she selects, “comes down to values.” She also applauded Jones’s military background — he spent a year deployed in Afghanistan — saying when “people have seen the world, their horizons open up.”

“Just like Seth Moulton,” she said.

To be sure, Jones is no carbon copy of Moulton, a centrist-leaning Democrat who has alsoat timesembraced progressive positions — he’s called to “abolish ICE” — and has been a fervent critic of President Trump. Moulton has not yet personally endorsed a candidate to replace him, but has said he’d back the Democratic nominee.

Jones is nevertheless embracing a link to Moulton as he runs unopposed for the GOP nomination this September.

“It’s a district that values service … and so I think that if I can kind of keep that continuity between Congressman Moulton, I’d be honored to do that, even if I’m from a different party,” Jones said.

Like Moulton, Jones said he was enraged by the Biden administration’s tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan. But he’s not explicitly campaigning on an anti-war message the way Moulton, who served four tours in Iraq, did.

Jones said he “doesn’t believe in forever wars,” and was glad to see Congress push the White House to seek approval for the war in Iran, even as he agrees with the administration’s stated mission there.

“We are trying to undermine the regime,” he said. “And I do think that that does advance American interests.”

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Jones, once a self-described “Kennedy Democrat,” said he unenrolled from the party while attending Northeastern Law School, which he graduated from in 2019. He registered as a Republican in 2022, according tothe clerk’s office in Essex, where he lives, and has voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries since 2020. Jones said he voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 before backing Trump in 2020 and then again in 2024, when he was frustrated with the fallout from Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.

The shift right reflects his politically split upbringing. Jones was raised in Southern Californiaby his mom, Fern,a Democrat and college librarian and his dad, Eric, a Republican and Los Angeles police officer.

“They really focused on the importance of being involved in the political process, [and] most of all, forming my own opinion,” he said.

After graduating from the University of California San Diego, Jones joined the Army, serving a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan in 2014 and earning a Bronze Star, according to his campaign. After leaving the military in 2016, he moved to Massachusetts, attended Northeastern, and eventually settled in Essex with his wife, Marissa. They have a 3-year-old son, and welcomed their second child, a daughter, in November, about a month after Moulton launched his USSenate campaign, opening the Sixth District for the first time in 48 years.

A former securities lawyer at Morgan Lewis, Jones left his job to launch his campaign in February.

The similarities Jones shares with Moulton may only go so far in a state where Republicans face significant political headwinds.Cash has poured into the race on the Democratic side, both from donors and candidates themselves. John Beccia, a financial technology firm executive, put $2 million of his own money behind his bid as of the end of March, while former White House and Boston City Hall aide Dan Koh hasraised $3.5 million.

Four other Democrats are also vying for the seat:Bethany Andres-Beck, a Middleton health care software engineer; former state representative Jamie Belsito; Mariah Lancaster, a Salem veterinarian and former federal worker; and state Representative Tram Nguyen of Andover. Internal polls some campaigns have released indicate that most voters don’t recognize the names of most of the Democrats in the race.

Moulton’s former chief of staff, Rick Jakious, had also launched a bid for the seat, but dropped out in April, citing the high cost of running for Congress.

While whoever emerges with the Democratic nomination will have to wade through a crowded field, the Sixth District remains firmly blue territory, and The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan publication, considers it a “solid” Democratic seat.

Jones, of course, is still making his pitch. Late last month, he made the rounds as small business owners and guests filed into the parking lot where the North Shore Latino Business Association was hosting the event on a cloudy evening.

Jones drifted from table to table, greeting attendees in a mix of English and Spanish. (He’s fluent after spendinga year abroad in Spain during college.)

Some attendees seemed surprised to learn he was a Republican. Others said himsimply showing up mattered.

“You can be part of whatever party you want to identify with, as long as we can see that it’s somebody that is in the community, is out there doing the work,” said Justin de la Cruz, who works in Lynn’s economic development department. “We want to see that these folks care.”

Gary Locke, a 61-year-old Army veteran from Peabody and an unenrolled voter, said he came away impressed by Jones after talking to him in Lynn, saying “he’s smart, presents himself well, he’s a veteran.”

But Locke, who himself was a Republican for 35 years before leaving the party in 2016 when Trump was elected to his first term, said Jones’s bid is coming at the wrong political moment for a Republican. And if he were to win, Locke said, he fears Jones would be “immediately swallowed up by the MAGA machine.”

“It’s a shame,” he said, “because I could see myself voting for someone like him.”

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