The soft-spoken yet articulate John, who declined to give his full name, stays busy raising four children as a single parent and says his main concern for the election is education.

He holds a second job at a wholesale building supply store and works overtime at the fire station to help send his two daughters to a private Catholic school.

“The [public] schools are lousy and I pay a lot of money to send my girls to a private school to get a decent education,” John says.

He’ll be supporting Lynch in the fall, he says.

While the fire-fighter may represent the district that elected Moakley, Sayurra Ozawa, a 24-year-old native of Japan, represents the next generation of the Ninth. She has only lived in her Dorchester apartment for a year.

Though she did not know the names of the candidates seeking her vote, Ozawa hopes that the next congressman will devote considerable attention to making her neighborhood safer.

“I have a lot of Japanese friends who think this is a bad place to live. I know it’s not that bad and people are nice, but there is some crime,” says Ozawa mentioning that her friend’s car was stolen off the street recently.

O’Connor explains that voters are interested in the “bread and butter” issues: they want a congressman who will “bring home the bacon.”