Mike Capuano

Michael Everett Capuano ( KAP-ew-AH-noh; born January 9, 1952) is an American politician and attorney who served as a U.S. representative of Massachusetts from 1999 to 2019. A Democrat, his district included the northern three-fourths of Boston, as well as parts of Cambridge, his hometown of Somerville, and other communities immediately north and south of Boston. Prior to being elected to Congress, he served in Somerville as an alderman and the 33rd mayor. Capuano was born and raised in Somerville. After graduating from Dartmouth College and Boston College Law School, he worked as an attorney and Somerville alderman. After losing two mayoral elections in 1979 and 1981, he worked as legal counsel for the Massachusetts General Court. In 1989 Capuano ran for mayor a third time and won, serving from 1990 to 1999. In 1998 Capuano won a crowded Democratic primary to replace Joseph Kennedy II in Congress and was re-elected nine times. He represented the state's 8th district until it was redrawn in 2013 into the 7th district. In Congress he was a staunch liberal and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He ran in the 2010 special election to fill the seat in the United States Senate made vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy, his Congressional predecessor's uncle, but lost the primary to Martha Coakley, who in turn lost the general election to Republican Scott Brown. In 2018, he was defeated by Ayanna Pressley in a House Democratic primary. In March 2019, Capuano joined the law firm Foley & Lardner, to serve as public affairs director. The same month, he also joined Boston University to teach at the university's Initiative on Cities and help organize the program.