After Years in Campaigns and City Hall, Daniel Lander Runs for State Senate

On most Martin Luther King Jr. Days while he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Daniel A. Lander ’14 followed the same routine: gather a few friends, pile into his car, and head to the Cambridge YWCA for a day of volunteer work.

More than a decade later, the habit of organizing people around a cause has become the centerpiece of Lander’s political pitch.

In December, Lander launched a campaign for the Massachusetts Senate seat representing Allston and parts of Cambridge, challenging longtime incumbent Sen. William N. Brownsberger ’78. Brownsberger — who holds the third-highest leadership position in the chamber — has not faced a challenger since 2014.

Lander, a West Cambridge native, said his interest in public service grew out of the values he was raised with in Cambridge.

“It was always a deep value that my family had, that I've held, of needing to try and leave the world better than I found it,” Lander said.

Several of his friends and colleagues said that sense of responsibility has long shaped how Lander approaches community work.

“He was always the guy in our friend group pushing the rest of us to get more involved and pay attention to what was going on,” said Josiah B. Bonsey ’14, Lander’s college roommate. “That’s always been who he is.”

Lander first began organizing volunteers as a freshman at Harvard in 2011, when he became a coordinator for his mother’s nonprofit, Many Helping Hands 365 — a role he continues to hold today.

Politics soon followed.

As a high school senior, he interned in Washington for then-Sen. John F. Kerry. The summer before starting college, he worked for the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

While at Harvard, Lander joined Elizabeth A. Warren’s 2012 Senate campaign as a fellow and later returned to her team during her 2019 presidential run.

Lander, a Currier House resident at the time, graduated in 2014 with a degree in History and Literature. He left Cambridge to work as a paralegal in New York City, then returned home to work for Just A Start, a nonprofit affordable housing developer, before enrolling at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He then went back to New York to manage city councilor Gale Brewer’s successful 2021 campaign.

Much of Lander’s recent career has unfolded inside Boston City Hall.

He interned for former Boston mayor Martin J. Walsh in 2017 and later served as a senior adviser to Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 from 2022 until stepping down to run for Senate.

In that role, Lander helped coordinate policy initiatives across city departments and worked on the city’s distribution of federal pandemic relief funds through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Michael J. Nichols, president of the Downtown Boston Alliance, said Lander helped direct funding toward efforts to revive downtown Boston after the pandemic, including programs to fill empty storefronts and bring artists back to the neighborhood.

“I think much of the success that downtown Boston has had in the last four years have Daniel’s fingerprints on them,” Nichols said.

Nichols pointed to post-pandemic activities Lander helped organize to “coax skeptical office workers back downtown to have them view the neighborhood as worthy of their time.”

Kara Elliott-Ortega, Boston’s chief of arts and culture during Lander’s time in City Hall, said he quickly grasped how cultural programming fit into broader city policy.

“We’re always trying to make the case for arts and culture, and it’s not always the first thing people think of when they think of city government and the services of city government,” she said. “So it was really great to connect with Daniel, who just instantly understood what we were trying to do.”

After years working on campaigns and inside government, Lander is now trying to win office himself.

His campaign has emphasized direct voter outreach across the district, which includes Belmont, Watertown, Allston-Brighton, and parts of Cambridge.

The race also presents a financial challenge. Brownsberger currently holds more than $300,000 in campaign funds, while Lander has just under $80,000 on hand and has declined donations from political action committees.

Instead, Lander said his strategy centers on meeting voters face-to-face.

“I’ve got coffees at a million places, and really building this campaign, person by person, conversation by conversation, making a case that we can do more,” Lander said.

That approach has already resonated with some residents.

Watertown voter Xin Peng said that after speaking with both candidates, Lander’s “genuine” and “listening” approach set him apart from his opponent.

Elizabeth D. Bartle, who co-founded Many Helping Hands 365 with Lander’s mother, said Lander’s decision to run came as little surprise.

“I think his biggest strength will be going door to door and letting people get to know him personally as a human being,” Bartle said. “Because once they do, they see this very energetic, very committed, very kind, smart person who wants to really take on this role and make change.”

Lander said the conversations he has had with voters often focus on issues ranging from housing affordability to federal immigration enforcement.

But he said many voters are expressing a broader frustration with the pace of government.

“We’re just seeing a lot of enthusiasm for a government that actually wants to work urgently to solve our problems and isn’t stuck defending a broken status quo,” he said.

—Staff writer Wyatt T. Zurline can be reached [email protected].