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New super PAC launches, seeking to boost Black candidates in local Mass. races
Reynolds Graves with Gov. Deval Patrick
An ex-staffer to former Gov. Deval Patrick and former City Councillor Tito Jackson is launching a super PAC aimed at helping Black candidates gain office.
Reynolds Graves, who has also worked as a lobbyist and a director of government relations for Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins, has set up the 1866 Action Fund, which pledges to raise and spend money on mailers and drive-time radio ads once they endorse a candidate.
They plan to back candidates through an endorsement process that will include questionnaires. The super PAC's formation was first reported by GBH News.
The super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money but is prohibited from coordinating its efforts with the candidates it supports, is named after the year that the Massachusetts Legislature welcomed its first two Black members, Charlestown lawyer Edward Garrison Walker and Boston printer Charles Lewis Mitchell.
Walker was a self-taught lawyer and abolitionist named for the journalist and reformer William Lloyd Garrison, and Lewis Mitchell served in the Massachusetts 55th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black unit. The year before their election, 1865, saw the end of the Civil War.
“This is an effort to strategically focus on electing Black candidates across the Commonwealth,” Graves said. “This is not just going to be the metro Boston area.”
Graves, 34, interned in the Obama White House and the US Embassy in Cairo, and more recently helped Harvard professor Danielle Allen’s 2022 run for governor and state Rep. Jon Santiago’s 2021 campaign for mayor of Boston. He runs the Graves Group, a public affairs and government relations company focused on clients in education, marijuana, and technology sectors.
His super PAC plans to target seats on city and town councils, select boards, as well as school committees and seats in the State House, district attorney, and sheriff’s offices. The group does not expect to focus on executive posts, such as mayor or the statewide constitutional offices.
“As communities are becoming more diverse, it’s important to elect leaders who reflect the diversity of the community and the changing times,” Graves said
