The Lowell Sun - Helping People "In My Blood" Barry Finegold relishes a challenge. On the gridiron, in love, in politics. A "no talent" athlete, he wanted to play football at Andover High School. By his senior year, he was a 6-foot-1, 230-pound starting defensive tackle, on his way to playing on the line at Franklin & Marshall College. After college, and some advice from a mentor, he came home to Andover, full of politics. He ran for the town's Board of Selectmen. No one gave him a chance. Some laughed at the 23-year-old kid, daring to jump in the pool during adult swim. He began with five supporters, 40 percent of them his parents. He applied his knuckles to door after door. He maxed out his credit card at $5,000 to fund his campaign. He identified voters and got them out to the polls. By the time he won, he was 24. Within two years, he was at the Statehouse, representing the 17th Essex District (Andover, Lawrence and Tewksbury), the youngest member of the freshman class. The five-term state representative still holds the seat as he runs for the 5th District seat in Congress. Surveying the landscape of a Boston bar one night, he saw a stunning redhead. "Wow," he thought, "who is that?" His buddy happened to know her. Amy. They met briefly. "She completely blew me off," he says. "He took it to be some royal snub," she says. "I was on a date, not exactly looking to meet another guy." Twenty minutes later, on his way out, he slammed his business card onto the bar in front of her. She was taken aback at his boldness. And impressed with his confidence. She kept the card. She called him two weeks later. During their courtship, he visited the store she was managing in Boston and "bought more clothes than I ever have. I mean, $600-$700 worth. I don't spend that much in a full year." They married in May of 2002. He whisked her to Paris, proposed in French. But it began with football, he says. "That taught me if you believe in yourself, you can accomplish something." He can still rattle off the score of every game his senior year. Lynne Brown-Zounes lays down the rules. "No political stuff, no speeches," says the executive director of the Lowell Senior Center. No problem, says Finegold. Finegold, 36, works the center's cafeteria, table by table. He introduces himself, chats individually. Amy, 35, and daughters, 3-year-old Ava and Ella, 1, are there, too. More than one of the seniors notes what a "handsome family" Finegold has. Ava smiles. The biggest presence in the room is Fred Simon of Tewksbury. Simon, 70, born in the Acre, knows not only the political landscape, but just about everyone in the room. Simon introduces Finegold with one meaty handshake after another. He is slowed only by a bum knee, and carries a cane. Finegold asks a 93-year-old woman the source of her longevity. "A lotta lovin' " she says, giggling. Finegold blushes. He buys $2 worth of raffle tickets. Simon hears fate on the loudspeaker. "Table 33, Table 4…" "We've gotta move him," says Simon, waving his cane toward the door. "Bingo starts soon, and we've gotta move unless you wanna get trampled." Ella is antsy. Amy and the girls depart. In Lowell, Finegold also visits the Community Family Inc., a nonprofit, "dementia-specific" daytime care center, and the Olympia Restaurant. As waitresses weave through with plates of food, Simon makes the introductions at the ornate Olympia. Finegold, now a slim 190 pounds but still a gym regular, is hungry enough to eat. Too hungry and he gets "grumpy," says Amy, 35. She was concerned enough about this on Dec. 9, 2005. Though a fierce snowstorm blew as they headed to the hospital, she had the Andover firefighter driving them stop at a McDonald's drive-through window to hold Barry over. Ella was born that night. At the Olympia, Finegold orders a chicken plate. In 1992, his junior year in college, he spent the spring semester at American University and interned at a government-relations firm. He caught the political "bug." He got to know Ben Palumbo, his college roommate's father. Palumbo, 70, is a lobbyist whose rich, 36-year background in Washington D.C. includes chief of staff for New Jersey Sen. Harrison Williams, and campaign director for Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen's 1975 presidential bid. "Barry is very quick on the uptake," says Palumbo by phone from Washington. "I've always considered him to be a highly intelligent young guy, very, very interested in issues and committed to trying to resolve problems. He soaks things up like a sponge." Palumbo recalls Finegold enjoying the current that flows though Washington's corridors of power, "which is very easy to do." And when Finegold asked Palumbo for advice, the sage veteran told the kid, "go home." Rather than working on someone's staff, Palumbo told Finegold, he should consider running for office. Legislators have the power to solve problems. "Staff people are like moonlight, a reflection of the members they work for," says Palumbo. "The moon can be beautiful, but the real energy comes from the sun." Finegold returned home to his summer job. He unloaded trucks at Super Value Warehouse. He thought about the sun. Finegold is a graduate of Massachusetts School of Law. He attended while running for his state rep's seat. He also worked full time at Mercantile Bank in Boston to pay for school. He earned his master's degree in public administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School in 2003. Admitted to the bar in 1998, Finegold is a partner in Dalton & Finegold LLP, which he formed with William Dalton in 2000. His specialty is real-estate law and estate planning. With the campaign, he's "less active day-to-day, but have good partners who step it up." He's up at 5:30, in the gym by 6. If there's a morning campaign coffee, he'll be there before heading to the law office or the Statehouse. He's on the phone raising campaign funds three to four hours a day. That's "the hard part. Every dollar raised has been through calling people. Not through a big national organization. I call old college buddies." Talking to voters about issues, he says, is the fun part. He is "intense" about politics, says his wife. Family is everything. "They're the reason he believes in doing the things he does," says Amy. Finegold says "it has always been in my blood to help people." Both his parents, Michael and Sondra, were teachers, public servants, for 33 years. She was a special-education teacher in the Andover school system, he a music teacher at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill. His dad, who plays sax, clarinet and flute, gave Finegold, who plays trumpet but also enjoy heavy metal, a passion for music. And worked three jobs to help send the kids through college. Finegold's older sister, Joni, teaches at George Mason University. His younger sister, Diana, works for the Federal Trade Commission. They both work in Washington, D.C. Barry would like to make it three. You could tell him he'd be guaranteed victory by showing up at a Friday night event and he still wouldn't do it. Fridays are sacred, not just because the Jewish Sabbath begins then, but because it is "family night" at home. A good meal, a movie, conversation. The political intensity subsides. Saturday night is "date night" for the Finegolds. "And if you want me to be somewhere Sunday, you're going to see my kids, too," he says. Four years ago, Finegold suggested to his wife, a veteran of Boston fashion stores, she should open her own clothing store. "It's your dream, the thing you aspire to," he said. "Why not?" "I can't, I can't," she said. "Yes, you can," he said. She opened Dresscode in Andover. "It's been overwhelmingly successful," he says. "Best of Boston two years in a row." Now it's his turn to "step it up." "Huge" district. Summer campaigning, when people vacation. You knock on doors, and make phone calls and find voters at senior centers and in restaurants. If he survives the Sept. 4 primary and wins on Oct. 16, there's just a year in office. He'll be the newest kid among the 435 members of Congress. He'll start raising money for re-election on Oct. 17. "Politics is like golf," he says. "You have the sand traps, the bad shots. But it's the one or two good shots that make you want to come back and play the next day."

The Boston Herald Finegold shines as campaigner: Mission is to nullify Niki Despite new Internet technology, sophisticated voter-targeting and big bucks for ads, the crux of a campaign is still getting out and meeting voters and volunteers eye to eye. It's a two-way street. The candidate makes his or her pitch. And the citizens get a chance to talk issues and vent. That's what I saw the other day, observing state Rep. Barry Finegold of Andover, one of the Democrats working to overtake frontrunner Niki Tsongas in the Fifth Congressional District special election, as he visited a busy diner and a residential center for seniors. Finegold has the redoubtable Freddy Simon, a former state Senate aide and popular Tewksbury-Lowell activist, in his corner. Simon's pal Paul Panagopoulos said, as they sat with Finegold at a table in Lowell's Owl Diner, "Freddy knows everybody in here plus 100,000 more." Freddy introduced Finegold to some retirees, a fireman, a Lowell housing commissioner, the owner of the Lowell Spinners baseball team, a former selectman from Groton and Tommy Mulligan, a drenched ex-Mass. Electric employee just in from the rain. "I just had my car stolen," he said. "While I was at Mass." As big an issue as Iraq is, nobody talked to Finegold about it in the diner. Instead it was the cost of housing and steep mortgage payments. Health care. The high price of gasoline. Simon asked, "How ya gonna get by if you're making $10 or $15 an hour and commuting to a job where you gotta keep filling up at 50 bucks a pop?" Or, as one man sitting at the counter implored Finegold, "You ought to do something about fairness for fathers" in divorce cases. "I get it," Finegold said of the scuffle the middle-class faces. "My grandfather was a postal worker who scrimped to send his kids to college and my mother and father, public school teachers, worked hard so their kids could go, too." As they left the Owl, Finegold's press secretary Nairi Tashjian told him Simon had suggested they stop by Armen Jeknavorian's Post Office Locksmith shop, since the owner is a leader in the local Armenian community. While Finegold and the locksmith talked, Ms. Tashjian and Jeknavorian's wife, Sossy, started conversing in Armenian. They'd never met, yet soon discovered that "my mother and Sossy were grade school classmates in Lebanon," said Tashjian. Mrs. Jeknavorian was so charmed she was nudging her husband to endorse Finegold on the spot. Armen was charmed, too, but wants to wait for answers on candidate questionnaires. Still, there's pillow talk. At the Blair House for seniors, Finegold didn't just make the usual political pitch. He went around the room, talking and listening to the seniors one by one. And he got an earful on what it means to be old but not rich. A resident named Warren Harding ("Yeah, I'm a former president," he quipped) complained, "You have to be almost broke to go on [eligibility for] MassHealth benefits." He fears he might be sent to the kind of assisted living facility he was in once before. "It was a madhouse," he said. "I had a guy try to crawl in bed with me my very first night." A woman diabetic told Finegold, "I have to take 10 pills in the morning and 10 at night." How do you pay for them, he asked, and she replied, "Just scrapin' by." As he ended his visit, Finegold told them his family legend on how they got their last name. "When my great-grandfather immigrated to America (from Eastern Europe), they asked him for his name at Ellis Island. He thought they said, ‘why you came' and he answered, ‘Find gold.' " And if his great-grandson keeps listening and responding to people at the grassroots and reminding them to remember the "find gold" name at the ballot box, he just might find it himself.

Another Democrat is eager to succeed Marty Meehan as he prepares to leave his seat in the 5th Congressional District. Andover's Barry Finegold made his intentions official on Thursday. NewsCenter 5's Natalie Jacobson reported that with 29 cities and towns in the 5th, Finegold said he will focus his message on the struggles of the middle class. "If gas goes to $4 a gallon — think about it," Finegold told a group of firefighters at a Sudbury fire station. Finegold is a 36-year-old father of two, a six-term state representative, a former Andover selectman and a practicing attorney. "So many people who are trying to send their kids to college can't do so. So many people are trying to pay mortgages and are unable to do so," he said. With gasoline at $3 a gallon, Finegold is pushing hard for alternative fuel development, including hydrogen. "We can send a man to the moon in less than a decade, then why can't we get off our addiction to foreign oil. That's what we need more than ever in Washington," Finegold said. As for the war in Iraq, his message to the Sudbury firefighters and to everyone in the 5th District is that the U.S. needs to get out as soon as possible. "If you look at the history of other countries, what we've learned from Yugoslavia, ethic factions don't get along. We can't be a referee in a civil war, and that's what we're doing right now," he said. Finegold will face four other Democrats in a special primary election the day after Labor Day. Right now, only one candidate has announced on the Republican side — Jim Ogonowski, of Dracut.