Brendan Crighton’s time in public life is defined above all by what he learned on the job. “I can’t believe how ignorant I was,” he said of the pivotal internship he had with the former mayor and state senator from Lynn, “Chip” Clancy.
But Clancy showed him how the job is done at the local level: “He walked around with a notepad in his pocket, like the old school politicians did. Everywhere he went, someone would come to him and ask him [for assistance], and he would pull out his thing and write it down, not just say, ‘yeah, we’ll get to that.’ And I think at some point he kind of coached me up on that. It’s just like always, be ready to help someone, but be prepared [to follow through].”
Crighton’s parents, and grandparents, came from Lynn, and though he’s responsible for some far wealthier, less challenged communities in his district, his professional purpose is clearly to serve the city and make it better. He graduated from Lynn Classical, where he was a football standout, and was surprised at how tough it was to play at Division III Colby College. He was also uncomfortable there — an environment so different from how he grew up.
He said sports got him through the discomfort, in the same way it molded his character. He’s not sure he’d have been successful without the influence of teammates and coaches pushing him to be better — diverting him from the various unhealthy options available in the City of Sin.
Once he started making the connection between politics and the possibility of a good career and the chance to contribute to his city’s well-being, he was off and running. The connections of his family — not so much political as just knowing everyone and everyone knowing them — got him a job out of college with state Sen. Thomas McGee. Again, he understood nothing about legislative work, and again he figured it out fast.
“I just learned a ton and just absorbed everything. And once I got the confidence to kind of ask, you know, for additional tasks, I would just say, ‘can I come with you to this event?’ And he gave me the opportunity to say, ‘All right, on this day, I’m going to be in the district. Meet me at this event,’ or then start to say, ‘hey, I can’t be there,’ and started staffing things myself, like common things that legislative aides did. But I just became kind of obsessed with that part of it.”
His natural ability to connect with people, and his family’s network, led him to a successful run for City Council. In 2014 he won an open House seat (read: Democratic primary), the 11th Essex. By the time McGee left his Senate seat to become mayor in 2018, Crighton was so well-regarded by his constituents that he drew no opponents in the Democratic primary to fill the vacancy.
He chairs the Transportation Committee in the Senate, and is known as a chief architect and proponent of the MBTA Communities Act, linking state funding to communities’ willingness to accept affordable housing. His belief in the act comes out of a Lynn lesson: change in community development starts with zoning. Full Profile
== Craig Sandler, Mass. Almanac/SHNS, Oct. 2026