There's a story Mike Connolly tells frequently about his first memory of politics. It was around 1988, and he was eight years old, growing up in public housing in Norwood, Massachusetts. He'd just seen a news report about the race between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. "Bush was on a tarmac with all these military and Air Force guys," he says. "In my mind, I started thinking this guy is cool!" He started sharing his enthusiasm with anyone who would listen, until a concerned neighbor, as any good Massachusetts Democrat is wont to do, pointed out the error in his logic.

"A neighbor explained to me very clearly, 'No, don't say that. We're poor, and the Democrats are the party for us, for the people who need help.'"

It was a message that's stayed with Connolly, a six-foot-eight former football player at Duke. Earlier this month, he won his Democratic primary race against longtime State Rep. Tim Toomey. He'll be uncontested in the general election, making him the first Occupy activist to find his way to Beacon Hill.

Though he identified as progressive after his neighbor's intervention, it wasn't until five years ago this month, during Occupy Boston, that Connolly's political activism was realized.

"I had always been interested in politics, but instead of "awakened" I would say it activated me. I was awake during the previous decade, but when Occupy happened that was the moment when it went from being someone reading, watching TV, thinking, to 'I want to take action. I want to organize, march in the streets, and try to actually change the direction of things.'"

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The issues that drove the Occupy movement — in particular, a desire to change the ways campaigns are financed — continue to resonate with his voters in Connolly's district, which includes Cambridge and Somerville, two of the most progressive cities in one of the most progressive states in the nation.

"The desire to want to get big money out of politics was really the hook that pulled me in," Connolly says. "I can recall people like State Sen. Jamie Eldridge coming down and having meetings with us, and talking about things like the Clean Elections Law that we used to have in our state but the legislature did away with."

At the time, the repeal of the Clean Elections Law was seen as an effort by incumbents in the legislature to stymie any potential challengers. More than two-thirds of the 188 state lawmakers on the ballot this year are running uncontested, so the fact that Toomey even had a challenge, never mind suffered a defeat, is seen as a big deal. That's a problem, Connolly says.

"From the very beginning I've been interested in political reform, campaign finance reform. When we don't have competitive races, when challengers don't come forward, I think we lose the sense of accountability and sense of responsiveness that we know so many people would like to see from state government," he says. "I'm really gratified. I think just the example that we've set in this election, I've already been told by other people in the legislature who called to congratulate me, they said the example set in Cambridge and Somerville will send shockwaves around the state."

His campaign this year, which brought in hundreds of volunteers and $47,000 in donations, was a far cry from his first run. Back in 2012, he challenged Toomey as an independent without accepting any contributions, earning him the moniker "No Money Mike."

The Bernie Sanders campaign inspired him to change his approach, he says.

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"If I had any reservations before, for me, the Bernie Sanders campaign for president was basically a political Woodstock. It was like, wow, everything I've ever wanted to see in a campaign I'm now witnessing happening," he says. "I went down to the rally in October at the convention center [in Boston] where he spoke to over 20,000 people. I think witnessing the power of that campaign, that really it's about the message, the organization, and that you can raise money, particularly targeting small-dollar contributions, and make the focus be about the platform and organizing. That's what we did in this campaign."

Sanders' Our Revolution group ended up endorsing Connolly, as did a slew of other groups including the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women.

"We ran a grassroots campaign. I started knocking on doors in March, so throughout the campaign, our focus was we would win if we connected with the voters," he says. "So I made every effort to personally introduce myself, going door to door, to thousands of voters. The other big part of it was, we organized a massive get-out-the-vote operation. We had over 200 volunteers with us on election day."

Every presidential election cycle, there's talk of how third-party and progressive candidates should begin on the smaller stage rather than jumping straight into the national competition. Disillusioned supporters of Sanders might take heart at the example of a candidate like Connolly, who campaigned on the issues of public transit, affordable housing, early education, higher education, school funding, mental health, and marijuana legalization. For all of Massachusetts' reputation as a progressive state, there's always room to move even further left.

"It's been a sense of shock," Connolly says. "It's such a challenge running as a challenger, taking on an incumbent. I just feel really grateful that so many people came together to help make our campaign a success."

Editor's note, 10/5/16 8:15 p.m.: An earlier version of this article stated that Mike Connolly's first memory of politics occurred in 1998, when it was actually in 1988. This has been corrected.

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