By the time the dust settled on the Massachusetts primary election Tuesday, voters were in for a notable surprise despite what was expected to be a fairly low-key day.
Graduate student Evan McKay has claimed victory in his race against longtime state Rep. Marjorie Decker in the Cambridge-based Middlesex 25th Congressional District in what could be a major upset.
The Boston Globe reported early Wednesday that MacKay was leading by just 40 votes, raising the possibility of a recount.
Decker did not concede defeat in the election, but gave an emotional speech reflecting on his time as a member of Congress, the paper reported.
If the results hold, they would be a notable rebuttal in a political culture that favors incumbents, most of whom appear on track to win reelection in November.
And in a race that no one expected, public defender Alison Cartwright declared victory over Boston City Councilwoman Erin Murphy for Suffolk County Supreme Court clerk, according to Politico.
As Commonwealth Beacon reporter Michael Jonas reported, it was a campaign for a job no one had ever heard of, and probably couldn’t explain even if they had.
The hotly contested race for the Governor’s Council also generated drama, with incumbent Council Member Marilyn Petitt-Deveny appearing to lose to challenger Marla Dolan in a rematch of the 2022 Democratic primary.
An unofficial tally showed Dolan receiving 52.2 percent of the vote to Devaney’s 47.8 percent, according to the Associated Press. The news agency reported Dolan’s victory at 1:36 a.m. Wednesday.
It all happened on a night when Secretary of State William L. Galvin was predicting turnout at about 15 percent.
Holding a primary election the day after the Labor Day holiday would seem to be inevitable, even if unintentional, in-person voter turnout would be lower.
Still, Galvin’s office had sent out 992,813 mail-in ballots as of early Tuesday morning. Of those, 468,520 had been returned, the office said in a statement.
But despite those surprises, some things remained constant.
Consider:
The nine Democrats in the state’s House delegation were uncontested, effectively taking the night off even though their names appeared on the ballot.
Meanwhile, two incumbent Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-8th District) and Bill Keating (D-9th District) appear poised to face off against Republican opponents this fall.
In the U.S. Senate race, Swansea attorney John Deaton, who has ties to and strong support from the cryptocurrency industry, handily won the three-way Republican primary.
He faces what is widely expected to be a tough race this fall against incumbent Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
At least one high-profile state legislative race that initially looked like it might be competitive ended in a bang-up contest only to turn out to be nothing special.
In the Somerville-based 27th Middlesex District, incumbent Democratic state Rep. Erica Uyterhoven defeated opponent Katherine Hornby, a former congressional staffer, with 68.9% of the vote, according to unofficial tallies.
Conversations with poll workers and voters around the state initially suggested it was going to be a sleepy day, but by late afternoon things started to move.
At Newman Elementary School in Needham around 4:30 p.m., District D Superintendent Theodora Eaton said turnout had been relatively slow in the morning, but then began to pick up.
Eaton said ballots are still being collected from City Hall after voters placed some in the red ballot box on Highland Street.
In Boston, 35 people had voted at the City Hall polling station by 3 p.m., and 12 had voted at the City Hall Pavilion on Congress Street by 3:25 p.m.
“It got busy for a while around noon,” said Janet Maloof, who has been a volunteer election worker for the past 15 years.
Meanwhile, voters who actually showed up to the polls knew their allocations.
Among them was Christina Fitzgerald, a Roslindale attorney, who came out to vote for Cartwright, who is a candidate for Supreme Court clerk.
“I was happy to vote for her,” Fitzgerald said. “This is an important year to vote because a lot of political issues are going to be decided in the courts.”
Because of this, she added, “good people are making sure the courts are running efficiently.”
Earlier in the day, at Richard J. Murphy School in Dorchester, Vincent Baker, a lifelong resident of the city’s largest neighborhood, had been volunteering for Murphy.
“Erin was my children’s teacher here at school. She’s very organized, a decent person,” Baker told MassLive. “I share her politics, she’s done a great job on council, (and she’s) one of the hardest working people.”
Tuesday was also a reminder that these races are, in some ways, serving as a dress rehearsal for the general election in November, when one huge race will be at the top of the ballot: the battle for the White House.
Things will never get sleepy, and the power of surprise will probably be just as bottomless.
MassLive’s Adam Bass and Ann Brennan contributed additional reporting.
