John E. Walsh

John Edward Walsh (April 14, 1958 – November 20, 2023) was an American political consultant and campaign manager who managed Deval Patrick's successful 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial run and Ed Markey's successful 2020 United States Senate reelection campaign. He was chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party from 2007 to 2013 and, from 2020 to 2023, was Markey's chief of staff.

Early life Walsh was born on April 14, 1958, in Brockton Hospital, and grew up in Abington, Massachusetts. He was the second of three siblings born to Irish immigrants John and Peggy Predenville Walsh. His father worked as a janitor at Regis College and had a side landscaping business, and his mother was a nurse's aide. At the age of 26, he was elected to the Abington Board of Selectmen, where he would serve from 1983 to 1993. He also spent three years as a member of the Plymouth County Charter Commission.

During the 1998 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Walsh served as field director of Brian J. Donnelly's campaign. In 2002, he was the campaign manager for the Massachusetts Democratic Party's Coordinated Campaign. Walsh served as Deval Patrick's campaign manager during his successful 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial run and was also the director of his transition team. David Axelrod, a campaign advisor to Barack Obama, described Patrick's 2006 campaign as a model for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

In 2015, Walsh formed Walsh Strategies, a political consulting business.

Walsh was a senior advisor to Setti Warren's short-lived 2018 Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign.

In the fall of 2018, Walsh was a founder and the treasurer of Reason To Believe PAC, an organization established to support progressive Democrats and grassroots political efforts nationwide in the 2018 election cycle.

Walsh managed United States Senator Ed Markey's successful 2020 reelection campaign. Following the election, he became Markey's chief of staff.

Personal life In 1993, Walsh married Donna Akins, an information security compliance analyst. They had one son, Coleman. They also owned a residence in Falmouth, Massachusetts. In 2023, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and died under hospice care on November 20, at the age of 65.