Richard Neal Has Spent Decades Carrying Water for Corporate America
Richard Neal's career is the story of a low-profile lawmaker keeping his head down, doing the work, and serving the interests of the corporate donors who give him money.
Richard Neal in Washington, DC, 2020. (Mark Makela / Getty Images)
Ask who Richard Neal is, and you’re liable to get two answers.
For card-carrying members of the Beltway and the establishment press, Neal is an old-school DC politician, versed in Congress’s clubby culture of compromise, bipartisanship, and deal-making — “the insider’s insider, a veteran relationship-builder on Capitol Hill,” as the Boston Globe put it in 2017.
But for an assortment of progressive activists, youth-led climate groups, and left-wing reporters, Neal is a potential brick wall ready to halt any attempt at urgent, transformational change pursued should Donald Trump be thrown out of office in November, a brick wall emblazoned, race car–driver style, with an assortment of corporate logos.
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