Artist’s interpretation of the Neal-Milleron debate. (still via MGM/Brooksfilms)

The NBC affiliate for the Springfield-Holyoke market is no stranger to local politics. Certainly, WWLP could cover it more, but it is often a stop for candidates and it hosts many debates. Neither the station itself nor Nexstar, the corporate behemoth that owns WWLP, are perfect. However, both have been hit in this cycle’s political crossfire. In both cases, it occurred during the race for Congress.

When Jeromie Whalen, Congressman Richard Neal’s challenger in the primary, slammed Nexstar’s corporate donations, it fit with his broader message about money in politics. Neal’s general election opponent, independent Nadia Milleron, had her own criticism. The moderator was letting Neal talk about her positions.

“If you are the moderator, you cannot allow the other person to say what I believe. I think everything he said about Trump tariffs is correct,” Milleron said after a portion about tariffs. “Neal cannot characterize my positions for me. I am here to characterize my own positions.”

For the most part, that typified the tone of the Wednesday outing between the incumbent and the challenger. Milleron took wild swings at the congressman, lunging at him with easily disproven claims and often flatly addressing him as “Richard.” (To fans and haters alike, Neal is usually just “Richie.”) Neal dodged incoming, landed a few blows, especially on tariffs, and took full advantage of questions that played to his strengths.

Milleron told the press that she was “nervous” because the race was so important. Yet, if her rejection of MAGA is real, then she drew little contrast with Neal substantively—after accounting for the falsities she fired off.

As with her 2024 bid, the mechanics of Massachusetts’s 1^st Congressional district do not favor a non-Democrat like Milleron, an attorney from Sheffield. The debate likely did little to overcome that dynamic.

Neal’s campaign has not made things easier for her. Using some of her takes on social media and her husband’s job in Donald Trump’s administration, the congressman has branded her as MAGA. The accusation plainly bothers her, even though the basis is sometimes her own words.

The 1st District. (via Wikipedia)

The race differs somewhat from two years ago. Milleron raised a relatively scant $353,742, which included $75,000 she lent her campaign. Not surprisingly, she was flattened. This time, she has committed to spending $2 million of her own money. As of posting time, Milleron had not filed the pre-election report due October 22. Her third quarter report states that she had loaned her campaign $500,000. Neal regularly raises millions, a substantial amount of which comes from corporate and union political action committees.

Earlier this year, a jury awarded Milleron and her husband a $49.5 million judgment against Boeing for the death of their daughter Samya Stumo. She was aboard a 737 MAX 8 flying between Ethiopia and Kenya when it crashed. A flaw in the plane’s design caused that catastrophe—and another aircraft in Indonesia—and led to a worldwide grounding. During the debate, she confirmed the judgment was financing her campaign.

Milleron has claimed Neal did nothing to help her. Neal has vehemently denied this and his campaign has detailed the interactions his office had with her. As it happened, Milleron spent little time in the debate arguing Neal was indifferent to holding Boeing to account. She denied Neal’s assertion that he had met with her and requested hearings but said little else about the dispute.

Voters in the district are quite likely to vote for the Democrat, but he has drawn connections between Milleron and Trump. (WMP&I)

While Neal has accused Milleron of distorting facts, at the debate he mostly centered his record or otherwise left Milleron to her own devices. One exception was tariffs. The issue has additional salience because the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which Milleron’s husband Michael Stumo once ran, appears as a partner on Project 2025, which served as the Trump transition playbook. Stumo left the group to work under Christian Nationalist supervillain Russell Vought at the White House Office of Management & Budget.

Milleron got the tariffs question first and claimed the levies on imports do not raise prices.

“You don’t have to pay any extra money for a tariff because it is an incentive for a company to produce products in the United States,” she said, defending tariffs. “If you produce the product here, you don’t pay any tariff.”

The challenge also used her answer to again claim she was not MAGA and did not believe in tariffs that were retributive.

Nevertheless, it provided Neal with too clear an opening to pass up. He bashed her claim that the tariff debate is “false,” and listed off several commodities that had gone up in price as Trump slaps US allies—most prominently Canada—with tariffs.

“Tariffs are a tax on the middle class. She has said that’s a false argument. I disagree,” he said.

We didn’t get our lead image metaphor from nowhere. Milleron’s campaign put out a video of her wielding a sword (originally with 1040 tax form as background). (still from Facebook/Milleron campaign)

A question on taxes let her tout her proposal to eliminate the income tax on those earning less than $100,000 a year. When asked how she would fill the hole—which could be between $300 and $500 billion annually—she claimed tax enforcement could pay for it.

Then she claimed Neal defunded the Internal Revenue Service. That was false. Neal’s committee helped write the Inflation Reduction Act. The law provided the IRS will billions to target high-earners avoiding or evading taxes. Rather, a Neal noted later, the defunding occurred during Trump’s reign.

They did agree on a few things like banning members of Congress from trading stocks and bringing artificial intelligence to heel. Both candidates back raising the cap Social Security contributions to save it. Of course, the mere invocation of the issue gave Neal a chance to feature how the survivor benefits helped him and grounds his support for the program.

Both also want an end to endless foreign wars. However, Milleron falsely claimed Neal had not used his power to stop the war with Iran. She was ostensibly referring to the 1973 War Powers Act, but Neal has voted for the War Powers resolutions to stop the war in Iran since it erupted in February. The exchange had the effect of letting Neal highlight his opposition to the 2003 War with Iraq, too.

The debate offered some clarity on a point that had dogged Milleron for months: whom she would support for speaker. She has publicly declared she would support whoever had the majority. That would seemingly mean a vote for Mike Johnson if Republicans were to prevail somehow. At the debate, she said if her vote were decisive, she would support the Democratic speaker candidate.

“If my vote controlled it, then I would vote for a Democratic speaker because I would be more likely to get these proposals through,” she said.

There was no doubt Neal would support House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, as the rest of the Massachusetts delegation will. He did not directly say what commitments he would want from Jeffries. However, he indicated they were close and met often.

This whiplash between disagreement and agreement—to say nothing of disagreements about where they agree—occurred throughout the debate. It was dizzying and exhausting in ways the primary’s debate was not.

While Neal and Massachusetts Democrats are spending to counter Milleron’s self-funding, the electoral math remains daunting for her. Whalen declined to endorse Neal after the primary, but he also refused Milleron’s entreaties.

However, the district’s Democratic lean will likely prove decisive. Turnout could be high and so anybody with a “D” next to their name—and in this case that is Neal—will have a tremendous advantage on November 3.