"The Yes on 4 Campaign Faked Veteran Leadership of the Ballot Committee"

By Graham Moore

The list of problems with the Question 4 campaign is long, and this postmortem will examine the major issues in depth one by one.

Part 1 (released on October 17, 2025) analyzes the decision to run a policy out of touch with public opinion as indicated by polling, against the recommendations of the Massachusetts ACLU and Dewey Square Group strategists hired by the campaign.

Part 2, initially released in installments as Part 2.1, Part 2.2, and Part 2.3 (on October 21, October 31, and November 6, 2025), analyzes the campaign’s costly handling of a polarizing psychedelics activist and underground practitioner.

Part 3 (released on November 8, 2025), analyzes the campaign’s decision to divert resources to a new nonprofit, co-founded by a close associate of Yes on 4’s campaign director, while polling behind.

Part 4 (released on November 17, 2025), analyzes the campaign’s decision to portray itself as led by a local female veteran who had suffered PTSD while the official campaign director was a non-veteran, white male, with no history of serious mental illness, operating from 3000 miles away in California.

WHY THE CAMPAIGN FELL SHORT

4. The Campaign Faked Veteran Leadership of the Ballot Committee

A Campaign Director—with a Catch

Although local veteran Emily Oneschuk was initially characterized by the ballot committee in a December 2023 press release as “grassroots outreach director,” it was not long before she was portrayed as a central strategic leader of the campaign. As early as January 2024, then New Approach deputy policy director Jared Moffat introduced Oneschuk to me as the ballot committee’s campaign director, as reflected in a January 8 text exchange. There was no pushback or correction in response to my written characterization of Oneschuk as “campaign director” and, in fact, Moffat affirmatively claimed she would be “leading.”

Ironically, Moffat would eventually become Yes on 4’s official campaign director himself while remaining based in California and, to my knowledge, never identifying himself as the campaign director publicly.

Officially, Oneschuk’s title became “grassroots campaign director,” as she clarified to me on January 9, 2024, but this was not supposed to reflect greatly diminished strategic or operational authority. I was told by Moffat that Oneschuk, who had no prior campaign experience, would be the ballot committee’s public-facing strategic and operational leader, while a more experienced professional would handle the nuts and bolts behind-the-scenes.

Moffat told me that this complementary, non-grassroots campaign director had not yet been hired. In fact, in a text thread on January 30, Moffat indicated the campaign had not started interviewing for the position in response to me floating a candidate. As late as February 21, in response to Oneschuk giving me the impression the ballot committee had selected a candidate, Moffat texted: “Long story short we have not hired a new campaign director. Emily [Oneschuk] was probably thinking of Stefanie [Jones] but she hasn’t been hired and would not be overseeing the whole campaign.” Sometime in the next few months, Moffat told me the decision was made to use existing staff to fill the non-grassroots campaign director role, but I only received notice Moffat had become “campaign director” in September 2024 when he Bcc’d me on an email to prospective donors.

Consequently, for the first half of 2024, my understanding was that Oneschuk practically was “the campaign director,” albeit an unconventional one. This was reflected in my contemporaneous correspondence, including with Oneschuk herself. In a January 31 to February 1, 2024, email thread with Oneschuk regarding a potential role with the campaign, I thanked Oneschuk for being “a campaign director beyond my wildest hopes” and she not only did not correct me—she replied with enthusiasm: “We are going to crush it and I’m psyched.” A couple months later, in an email to a friend, I described the ballot question campaign as “the campaign led by Emily Oneschuk, the grassroots campaign director for Massachusetts for Mental Health Options.” As late as June 6, 2024, in a text exchange with me, Oneschuk personally approved a public description of her “grassroots campaign director” role as being “the campaign’s central organizer.”

Correspondingly, Oneschuk was referred to in the media as leading the campaign. On January 24, 2024, Marijuana Moment characterized Oneschuk as “a Navy veteran and campaign director for Massachusetts for Mental Health Options.” On March 27, 2024, the Boston Globe wrote “Oneschuk directs ‘Massachusetts for Mental Health Options.’” On March 28, 2024, the State House News Service described Oneschuk as simply “the campaign director for Massachusetts for Mental Health Options” (emphasis in italics mine). From the beginning of 2024 onward, Oneschuk was publicly presented by the ballot committee as both a high-ranking organizational leader and a spokesperson, even long after she relinquished leadership internally.

At first, there was some congruence with Oneschuk’s title and her role. Moffat claimed to me he thought Oneschuk was growing into her director position as the campaign picked up steam in 2024. Although Oneschuk wrote that Dewey Square Group consultant Lynda Tocci was “the head honcho of the overall campaign” on January 31, that did not seem literally true or necessarily permanent, given the prominent role of New Approach and a potential new non-grassroots campaign director, and Moffat emphasized to me in private conversation that Oneschuk had substantial authority she could choose to exercise. Furthermore, to my knowledge, Oneschuk demonstrated leadership in her early outreach and recruitment efforts. As she claimed to me, Oneschuk was given little guidance by the ballot committee in the first months (and she was largely “ignored” initially, contributing to her decision to briefly resign), yet she still crossed the state, winning over key supporters with a candid style of her own. Along with Moffat, she was instrumental in the campaign’s inclusion of Jamie Morey and me as volunteers and then staff. By the end of June 2024, however, Oneschuk had ceased being a full-time staff member, let alone an operational or strategic leader of the ballot committee.

An Impossible Ask

Going from having no campaign experience to becoming an effective, full-time campaign director, even handling only part of a single organization (the “grassroots” part), was a huge lift under ideal circumstances. And Emily Oneschuk was tasked with launching two organizations (Open Circle Alliance and the ballot committee) at the same time, facing numerous headwinds.

Prior to being hired by the campaign, Oneschuk had been out of the conventional workforce for an extended period, so she had to simultaneously transition into full-time employment and a public-facing, upper management position in a new, notoriously high-stress profession. Furthermore, while she had some public speaking experience, Oneschuk had never experienced anything like the demands of her spokesperson role for the campaign, which included revisiting her most traumatic experiences in front of strangers, sometimes more than once per day, multiple days a week. Additionally, she faced the unique pressures of being a female public figure with a rising profile, targeted by political vitriol. On top of this, she had to contend with the novel, psychological weight of being substantially responsible, as a visible leader, for the failure or success of a movement in which lives hung in the balance. And, assuming Oneschuk provided me with an accurate view of her treatment, she had to do it all with minimal assistance if she was to fulfil the ostensible duties of her role.

Jamie Morey and I never saw any indication that Oneschuk was seriously trained to run a campaign or mentored to provide strategic input. And she never claimed otherwise. My proposal that I be a “strategist” was rejected because, in the words of Oneschuk, “strategy was [Dewey Square Group’s] job.” Morey and I were operational leaders through election day because we were not hired to be strategic leaders. As it appeared to me, Oneschuk was nominally elevated to be a strategic leader but treated as a task rabbit and spokesperson, quickly burnt out from a lack of adequate psychological and managerial support. To my knowledge, Oneschuk repeatedly informed the campaign’s true strategic leadership in 2024 that she wanted to quit the campaign, even though the ballot committee almost doubled her base pay from $6,000 per month to $10,000 per month by June and dramatically scaled back her responsibilities.

I initially thought Oneschuk was “the best person that could have been hired as campaign director” because I was impressed by her uniquely multifaceted intelligence, uplifting energy, and stated values and because I naively thought she would be robustly supported as an innovative strategic leader based on assurances from Jared Moffat. I also greatly underestimated the psychological strain of budding celebrity, campaigning, and pouring one’s heart out to crowds over and over. Retrospectively, Oneschuk was not an appropriate choice to be the campaign director of a winning statewide campaign on account of her lack of experience, even though she was capable in multiple ways. This was especially true given that the Massachusetts ACLU and the ballot committee’s Dewey Square Group strategists thought the campaign was a longshot at baseline because of low polling.

A Frightening Task

In her first months as campaign staff, there were three projects Oneschuk was encouraged to work on that were particularly disruptive. The first of these was outreach to local activist James Davis, whose actions toward the campaign for months had appeared to be in bad faith.

The first time Oneschuk met Davis in late 2023, Davis painted such a dark picture of political realities, warning that Oneschuk would be used as a puppet with nefarious intent, that Oneschuk promptly resigned from the ballot committee.

After being persuaded to return to the campaign with assurances of the best intentions from Jared Moffat, Oneschuk met with Davis again. This time, according to Oneschuk, Davis suggested to Oneschuk that she was being inappropriate by offering him a hug, and he also told her she would be responsible for veterans dying by suicide if she continued working for the ballot committee.

Even after Oneschuk, a veteran who had publicly disclosed she struggled with PTSD and was a victim of sexual assault, allegedly received this jarring hostility from Davis, the ballot committee did not pivot away from courting him. Rather, “head honcho of the overall campaign” Lynda Tocci, along with ballot committee public relations strategist Jennifer Manley, held a meeting with him, purportedly to try to win him over. A few weeks later, during the ballot question’s legislative hearing on March 26, 2024, Oneschuk thanked Davis, by name, for his psychedelics activism in her public testimony. After the hearing, Davis repaid Oneschuk’s kindness by physically confronting her, and loudly berating her, in front of multiple witnesses.

A similar incident occurred three weeks later. On April 16, 2024, Oneschuk was lambasted at a reception by a Davis affiliate, who compared New Approach to “the Nazis,” within sight and earshot of multiple witnesses. Oneschuk, traumatized by the violent death of her brother related to his radicalization by neo-Nazi ideology, told me she was shaken by the encounter, and she considered filing a complaint with the individual’s employer (although she ultimately decided against doing so).

About a month after this, Oneschuk learned that Davis had allegedly impersonated a veteran online to attack her service record in an email to NBC Boston (she learned about the email in May, far in advance of the public reporting because of the campaign’s early notice). Despite the ballot committee’s true strategic leadership being aware of at least a substantial part of the aggression toward Oneschuk, the campaign did not publicly defend her and tried to contain awareness of Davis’s alleged wrongdoing, seemingly contributing to him remaining politically active for the length of the campaign. To the extent the actions of Davis and his affiliates caused Oneschuk anxiety, it was exacerbated, if not entirely caused, by her unnecessary proximity to Davis in trying to appease him, as encouraged by the campaign.

A Second Directorship

Starting in March 2024, Emily Oneschuk began organizing a new nonprofit, Open Circle Alliance, in collaboration with Stefanie Jones and Rebecca Slater. My understanding from my contemporaneous conversations with Oneschuk is that she considered her work cofounding Open Circle Alliance to be compensated by her salary from the ballot committee and to be facilitated by the campaign as well. Open Circle Alliance, once established, appeared to operate as an extension of the campaign, by virtue of both its close collaboration with ballot committee staff and Oneschuk’s dual role as a campaign official and the nonprofit’s director-treasurer and resident agent.

As previously noted, transitioning into an upper management position for only one organization in a new field is a huge lift. Cofounding another, distinct type of organization in a new field simultaneously is even more difficult. While Jared Moffat may have genuinely desired for Oneschuk to become a strategic leader of the ballot committee, accomplishing that goal was undermined by Oneschuk having to manage two, purportedly independent entities.

A Literary Detour

On April 4, 2024, Emily Oneschuk received an email from famed author Michael Pollan, praising her testimony at the recent March 26 hearing. Pollan had listened to Oneschuk’s testimony thanks to New Approach executive Graham Boyd, who had sent the recording to Pollan. Relatively soon after this, Oneschuk was introduced via Pollan to a publisher and received a book deal for a memoir.

This book deal led to another action by the campaign’s true strategic leadership that seemed at cross-purposes with the goal of cultivating Oneschuk into a campaign director: Lynda Tocci connected Oneschuk with a writing coach and, to my understanding, was supportive of Oneschuk writing her memoir during the campaign, which Oneschuk did, further dividing her attention. In a May 20, 2024, text message, she characterized working on the book as: “HARD.”

A Predictable Crash

By May 2024, to my knowledge, Emily Oneschuk was juggling a part-time job at a dive shop, writing a memoir, being a director, treasurer, and resident agent of a new nonprofit, and being a campaign director and spokesperson for the ballot committee, all with the approval of the campaign’s true strategic leadership. The four simultaneous projects were not conducive to her leading the campaign as Jared Moffat had claimed he intended for her to do.

And, by June 2024, the myriad pressures on Oneschuk appeared to make it impossible for her to lead the campaign. On June 5, she left for a nearly two week vacation in Japan. A little more than a week after she returned to Massachusetts, Oneschuk stopped being Cc’d on the weekly report sent to leadership. The next, and final time, she was Cc’d on the report was on October 25, months later. Starting in early July, Oneschuk stopped regularly attending campaign all-hands meetings. She attended no all-hands meetings in August, during which time she spent over a week attending an ayahuasca retreat in Brazil, and then finally resumed attending the meetings on September 17. Starting in July, she was removed from the regularly scheduled outreach team meetings with Jamie Morey and me. Oneschuk informed me over the phone that her new effective role was doing whatever Jennifer Manley wanted her to do and essentially nothing else. To my knowledge, from that point forward, Oneschuk did not resume a leadership position for the campaign, did not regularly work full time for the campaign, and served primarily as a spokesperson through election day, while continuing to earn her $10,000 per month base salary. The ballot committee never publicly acknowledged this transition and continued to characterize the campaign as being led by a local veteran.

This was problematic both because of its intrinsically deceptive nature and because the ballot committee’s use of Oneschuk had functioned like a bait and switch for grassroots supporters. One of the most important reasons for having a bonified local advocate in a senior leadership role was having someone with substantial emotional skin in the game “watch the store,” so to speak. I saw no indication that the Dewey Square Group consultants and Moffat in California thought they would be much affected one way or another by decriminalizing psychedelics in Massachusetts. For Morey and me, the campaign was about decriminalizing us, decriminalizing our loved ones, so much more than fattening our bank accounts or resumes. It did not feel good to have our lives, and the lives of the people we cared about, in the hands of individuals who did not share our struggles. Moffat had appeared to understand this when he pitched Oneschuk’s leadership to us at the beginning of the year. Oneschuk was supposed to be our eyes and ears on the inside, keeping the campaign honest. Instead, she was used as a cudgel to keep us out of the backrooms. The message we implicitly received from Moffat during the summer was: “Oneschuk was hired to be a grassroots strategic leader and you two were not; I cannot replace her with you two now. I did my best to give you representation on the inside, and it is not my fault Oneschuk could not hack it. What can I say?”

In light of the numerous shortcomings of the ballot committee, it is my opinion that the loss of the campaign was, to a large degree, downstream of not having individuals who felt the life and death stakes of the issue in their bones driving the initiative strategically.

Even though the campaign’s official messaging, delivered straight from Jennifer Manley, claimed Question 4 would “give veterans, patients with end-of-life distress and people who are suffering access to this life-saving mental health tool” (emphasis in italics mine) actually acting as if Question 4 was life-saving was regularly met with derision and umbrage by certain campaign officials.

For example, when I underlined the seriousness of Oneschuk abruptly cancelling scheduled debate prep by noting the “lives of people I care about hang in balance,” Moffat, texting me from out of state, replied that I was “going to far.”

If the election results were anything to go by, Yes on 4’s strategic leadership did not come close to going far enough.