In a four-page open letter backing his niece Nadia Milleron's long-shot challenge, Nader accuses the 19-term incumbent of "cowardly" inaction and corporate cronyism. Neal's campaign says he delivers for the district.
Pictured: Congressman Richard Neal, Ralph Nader, and Neal's Independent challenger Nadia Milleron.
Ralph Nader says Rep. Richard Neal, the Berkshires' Democratic Congressman, "refused to vote for an impeachment resolution against Tyrant Trump" on September 15, choosing instead to vote "present" with "a minority of cowardly Democrats." The rebuke comes in an open letter Nader sent Neal on Tuesday, October 27, a week before Election Day, in support of his niece, independent Nadia Milleron, who is challenging Neal in Massachusetts's 1st District.
"You remain unwilling to fight for impeachment," Nader writes, after laying out his case against the president. He accuses Trump of using his office to make $2.1 billion in 2025 and writes that he has "deliberately impoverished millions of Americans," including residents of Neal's district who are losing food stamps, Medicaid, and Meals on Wheels. The letter holds up Milleron as the opposite of Neal: she "demands the impeachment of Trump. You declined to vote for the impeachment of Trump."
Milleron is making her second run against Neal, and her position on impeachment comes with a personal complication. Her husband, Michael Stumo, is a leader in tariff policy in the Trump White House Office of Management and Budget. Asked by Rural Intelligence in September whether she would still vote to impeach if it cost him his job, Milleron said she has to vote her conscience.
Nader, the 92-year-old former presidential candidate and consumer advocate, opens by calling Neal "a chronically absentee Congressman" who is spending "millions of your corporate campaign dollars on lying, false and deceptive political ads."
He says Neal has been "a silent legislator on the corporate crime wave sweeping over America." He describes Neal's 38 years in Congress as "Withering Heights" and his campaign as "AWOL."
Nader also turns Neal's central attack on Milleron around. Neal's mailers and ads accuse her of being aligned with MAGA. "You are the one who is too MAGA and remote for western Massachusetts," Nader writes. Neal's campaign sees it differently, as its response below shows.
The vote Nader describes was not on impeachment itself. It was a Republican motion to kill a resolution by Rep. Al Green to impeach Trump. The motion passed 232–147 with 47 members voting present, and lists Neal among 46 Democrats who did. They included House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar, and Massachusetts' own Katherine Clark, who argued that impeachment requires an investigative process Republicans have not carried out, CBS News reported.
Neal has voted for impeachment before. On the House floor in December 2019 he said, "I take no pleasure in today's vote.”
Neal's campaign responded to Nader’s letter, telling the Berkshire Eagle, Neal "is focused on delivering for Central and Western Massachusetts." At the October 21 debate on WWLP 22News, Neal characterized Millaron’s home as a MAGA base pointing to her husband's past role in crafting Project 2024’s tariff policies.
Milleron restated at the debate that she disagrees with the president's tariff approach and would vote to impeach.
In another exchange Neal disputes a claim from Milleron that he was unresponsive to her after the 2019 Boeing crash that killed her daughter. "I was only too happy to meet with her and her husband," he said.
Nader ends his letter to Neal with a challenge. The 22News debate ran 30 minutes, and Milleron says the station offered an hour but Neal asked for it to be shortened. She wants one more hour-long debate before November 3. "What about it?" he asks. "Or do you just want your massive ad buy to define your mostly AWOL campaign?"
