Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of electoral competition in the country and one of the highest rates of uncontested primaries. In 2016 73% of legislative seats went uncontested which meant only
22 legislative incumbents faced truly competitive primaries out of the entire legislature.
So much of what we talk about here is about primaries. This site lights up when there is a competitive primary for an open seat. It was highly active in the 2006 and 2008 primaries, but also the place to go for information about Chang-Diaz v. Wilkerson, Carl Sciortino’s first run against an anti-gay legislator, the massive open primary to replace Ed Markey and even the primary to replace Katherine Clark in the State Senate. Some of these were open races, but they were all primaries.
Primaries at the top of the ballot have coattails. In 2018, Rachel Rollins won her DA seat and Nika Elguardo and Jon Santiago beat longtime DeLeo lieutenants because Ayanna Pressley drove up progressive and minority turnout for her marquee race against Mike Capuano in Suffolk County. In 2016, Progressive challenger Mike Connolly beat back long time centrist incumbent Tim Toomey for a Cambridge/Somerville state rep seat in part because centrist Leland Cheung challenged Pat Jehlen for her Medford/Cambridge/Somerville state senate seat, driving up progressive turnout up and down that September ballot.
I think Charley’s most recent thread endorsing Ed Markey is great-it really lays out why he likes the Senator and wants to retain him. It’s very persuasive, but it does not persuade me that Kennedy’s run would be bad for the party.
Alex Morse needs progressive to show up in September to beat Richard Neal. Seth Moulton has two credible challengers already, maybe more. Lynch, Trahan, and Keating have attracted possible challengers. Having a marquee Senate race will activate progressives up and down the ballot for those fights in September.
It’s also a lot likelier challengers run for state legislative seats now if they know they have a high turnout environment next September primary. If you’re worried about wasting money endorse clean elections. If you’re worried about divisive elections endorse cooperative ones in the form ranked choice voting. Otherwise this is what democracy looks like, and with the other party openly flirting with cancelling primaries to protect their authoritarian President, I want our party to embrace them. I think it’s essential to our democratic identity.
No. They’re not.
Care to elaborate?
The conservatives on this site, man. 🙁
I’d rather focus on those who richly deserve primaries or our real job which is beating as many Republicans as possible.
In support of this idea (although I do think there are exceptions), consider this embarrassing misstep from the Markey campaign reported in the Glove today:
The aid apologized profusely for retweeting this appalling thing and hopefully that is the end of it.
But it is clear that Markey’s people are not in fighting trim if things like that happen.
Now the Senator does not (knock wood) face serious opposition in the general election. But if he did, this would be a wake-up call (as I hope it is anyway) and an opportunity to get more focused and disciplined sooner rather than later.
That is one thing that primaries are good for.
I was struck by the immediate, unhesitating, and empathetic response of Mr. Markey directly to Mr. Kennedy, within hours of the incident:
From the Globe piece:
This was an unforced blunder on the part of a staffer that should never have happened. Given that the blunder happened, I think Mr. Markey handled it with grace and humanity.
I wonder how many other elected officials or candidates would do the same.
If that staffer is still on the staff, the empathetic response of Mr. Markey directly to Mr. Kennedy, within hours of the incident are just words. I’m tired of political leaders and their words.
Having managed campaigns, I can assure you that Ed Markey’s heartfelt empathy was NOT just words.
I wish you would do even a little bit of investigation before poisoning a primary campaign with unwarranted cynicism. From yesterday’s Globe report that John Walsh will be leading Mr. Markey’s campaign:
That staffer, Paul Tencher, immediately apologized. We’ve been discussing the appointment of John Walsh on another front-page thread here, and the above piece is linked in my comment there (from this morning).
I’m tired of overly cynical Democrats who are overly eager to find fault with well-performing incumbents. It just isn’t that hard to do a quick web search before publishing a harsh comment like this.
Not the first time that Markey has thrown his staff under the bus https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=57686187&itype=CMSID
“Not the first time that Markey has thrown his staff under the bus”?
I have a few questions:
1. Do you think Herbalife is good for consumers? Do you know anything about the company? Are you familiar with how pyramid schemes work?
2. Do you have any evidence that Mr. Markey knew about the short position of Mr. Ackerman?
3. Assume, just for the sake of discussion, that Mr. Markey did not know that Mr. Ackerman stood to gain and that Mr. Markey’s staff did know. In that scenario, what you call “[throwing] under the bus” I call holding his staff accountable.
What I see is a snarky column attacking Mr. Markey dredged up from 2014, Another thing I see is yet another alleged Democrat repeating ancient, unfounded and since dismissed allegations of a Republican challenger (in this case Brian J. Herr) against Democratic incumbent with an excellent progressive record.
Apparently Mr. Markey should have said nothing about Herbalife and should have done nothing to protect consumers from the pyramid scheme that Herbalife has always operated under. Apparently this commentator also preferred Brian Herr over Mr. Markey, since he is so eager to parrot Mr. Harr’s talking points during his failed 2014 challenge.
Not the first time I’ve seen such baseless insults and attacks from this commentator — in fact, it seems to be his usual commentary style.
The misinformed, rush to judgment, holier than thou purists strike again.
According to this poll taken last weekend, the Democratic voters are not feeling it for Markey.
I’m not surprised that 161 of 808 (that was the spread reported in the poll) registered voters recognized Joe Kennedy’s name and not Ed Markey’s. Conspicuously missing from the poll and from the stories reporting the poll is any information at all on what, if anything, beyond name recognition motivated the respondents.
I don’t think this poll measured whether anybody was “feeling it” for anybody. It that happens at all, it will be after both candidates have made their respective pitches (about a year from now, for the September 2020 primary).
And just to be technical, also the June convention and the caucuses leading up to it. As a statewide race candidates for Senate do need to get 15% of the convention delegates to appear on the September ballot.
I have a hard time thinking Kennedy wouldn’t get his 15%, it’s a harder climb for Riordon and Pemberton. Pemberton has a really cool life story and he’s exactly the kind of person the state party should be recruiting to run for higher office. I am just not sure that this one is the first one he should be running for. He’d be a good foil for Charlie Baker (Black, immigrant, foster kid, executive, gateway city).