Bethany Andres-Beck: The Contender Aiming to Unseat Seth Moulton

Local News

“Politics as usual isn’t working,” Andres-Beck told Boston.com in a wide-ranging interview.

Software engineer and Democratic activist Bethany Andres-Beck recently announced that they would be launching a primary challenge to Rep. Seth Moulton. 

The congressman, who has represented the North Shore since 2015, found himself in hot water last fall after he criticized fellow Democrats for not being “brutally honest” about concerns over transgender student athletes and identity politics. Local activists were so incensed that they began looking for someone to challenge Moulton. 

Now Andres-Beck, who lives in Middleton and works for the health care software company Aledade, is entering the political fray. Although they’ve volunteered for Democratic candidates and causes in the past, Andres-Beck has never sought elected office themself. Andres-Beck is leaning in to their outsider status and issuing a pointed repudiation of the status quo. 

Boston.com recently caught up with Andres-Beck, who identifies as transgender and uses “any/all pronouns,” to learn more about their nascent campaign and why they are hoping to unseat Moulton. 

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Boston.com: Why are you running for Congress?

Bethany Andres-Beck: I think, like a lot of people, I’ve been very frustrated not just with the Republican Party, but with national politics in general. As a software engineer, I’m watching Congress attempt to regulate these new technologies coming out that they don’t understand and don’t have the context to actually address effectively.

Do you mean AI?

Yeah, I think especially AI and automation are affecting people’s daily lives. You see the signs around that say “don’t hire humans,” and that’s affecting our society in ways that we can’t even predict yet. 

How did you come to the decision to run?

It started out with the frustrations, and complaining to some friends. I have a friend who’s involved in politics. He said, “Well, you should run,” and I laughed and then I started thinking about it and exploring it by talking to people. My campaign manager is a former boss of mine and I asked him if he would come on board and he was like, “absolutely.” I spent time talking to people in my community, talking to other Democrats, talking to people in other parts of the district.

I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m not the conventional sort of candidate. I haven’t been running for Congress since eighth grade. But I saw a moment here where people are so frustrated with the corruption and the self-dealing. People are taking money from the same companies they’re supposed to be regulating. It’s not even just a Democrat/Republican thing. People are cynical about politics across the board. And I know the amount of work this is going to take. I know how hard I’m going to have to work for this, especially coming from a smaller town in the district. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I decided that it was worth giving it a shot.

You’ve never run for elected office before. Voters may have concerns over your lack of experience. How will you address those worries?

I’ve held appointed positions. I’m on the affordable housing trust, I’m on our master plan committee here in Middleton. I’ll talk about what I’ve achieved on those panels and then I’ll talk about my professional experience. Instead of being in Congress, I have been working in tech companies, some of which are huge. I organize, I am working with software engineers to build software that’s going to work for users, not just “how do we squeeze out an extra 2% profit this quarter with no respect for what things will be like five years from now,” but “how do we build lasting businesses that are good for the people who interact with us, for the people who need these products?” I’ve been a manager before, I’ve led without formal power. 

I think those experiences give me tools that are different than the ones I would have learned if I had spent this entire time in politics, but that are also very useful working with not just Democrats, not just people who already agree with me, but in finding creative solutions. It’s about finding new ways forward and also being willing to try things that people haven’t tried before. I think politics as usual isn’t working anyway, so being really good at that is not necessarily the most effective thing right now. 

Do you want to address the comments Rep. Moulton made in the wake of the election about transgender athletes and how Democrats should approach the topic?

I think Moulton has the strategy exactly backwards. Spending more time indulging these wedge issues from Republicans does not help the Democratic Party. It just makes us look like we’re being led by the nose. The problem is that college is too expensive and so people are relying on sports scholarships to be able to just get an education. If we were talking about how to make college affordable for everybody regardless of what background you’re coming from, I think those are the issues that people actually care about. We’ve all seen the people who get way too into 8-year-olds playing T-ball, but that’s not the thing that people are worrying about at night.

And the way he expressed it, it just shows how out of touch he is. It’s clear he’s not hanging out with trans people. He’s treating us as though we are something he has seen someone else talk about on TV, and I think if you spent time around Salem, that can’t be true if you’re out and about.

I was more frustrated and offended by the idea that the Democratic party would be that petty. It’s really frustrating watching the party fail to rise to the moment. I don’t think that there’s any substitute for authenticity and it feels like the Democratic Party desperately wants to be liked. I just don’t feel like that’s how you make good policy. That’s not how you build communities. You have to actually know people. 

Another topic where the Democratic establishment may be out of touch with its voter base is on Israel and Palestine. Do you think there’s a disconnect? How do you view that issue?

I certainly support pushing for an immediate ceasefire and a just, lasting peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. We have seen ethnic conflicts that are able to resolve, and we know that the path that Israel is going down right now is not the path to resolution. It seems shortsighted to me to put support for a particular Israeli politician over lasting peace.

It’s challenging for institutions to shift opinions. Institutions have a lot of momentum. They keep going in the direction they were going, and I really credit young people for being willing to stand up and get involved and push institutions when the situation changes. When facts change, institutions don’t automatically shift. When I was in college, protesting the Iraq war was that moment for me. It was incredibly frustrating because it didn’t seem like we were being listened to. 

One of the challenges the party has is having those young people realize that there is a path forward for them in this party. That’s where having people coming into politics for the first time, who also understand that position, is important. It has nothing to do with the state of Israel, and supporting a Democratic state of Israel does not mean that we have to support everything that Netanyahu is doing in Gaza. Those are important things for the Democratic Party to be able to hold at the same time. 

Any other topics you’d like to discuss right now?

We’re seeing right now the looting of America with DOGE illegally dismantling government programs, things that serve Americans. Politicians will talk about the rise of fascism and then go into work as though nothing is actually wrong. A lot of us are still going into work even though national politics is in chaos, but then we go to the protest and then we are organizing in our communities and then we’re doing more things than just that. I want to see politicians act as though this is the crisis it is.

And that crisis is rising authoritarianism?

Certainly the rising authoritarianism, the censorship and attacks on the First Amendment. People are releasing press releases about the bribes that they’re paying. This has gotten ridiculous. If this was a TV show it would be unbelievable. If you haven’t paid attention and you just tune in, you’re like, “How could this possibly be true?” In order to address that, we have to treat it like these are crimes. There is crime going on right now. We need to pursue that with the seriousness that it deserves.