A forum has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday between candidates for the 25th Middlesex District seat, incumbent state Rep. Marjorie Decker and challenger and labor organizer Evan MacKay. It is set for the Citywide Senior Center, 806 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square, Cambridge.
It is organized by the Cambridge Democrats, also known as the Cambridge Democratic City Committee, but is not announced on the organization’s website or social media, none of which seem to have been updated in at least several months. The event also cannot be found on a city calendar. It is unknown what steps were taken to publicize the event beyond candidates’ social media. A call to organization leader George Varghese was not immediately returned.
Tuesday’s primary will decide who holds the seat for the next two-year term, as there is no challenger from another party to compete in a general election.
A member of the committee emphasized in a call that the event was a forum, not a debate, and Lee Folpe, campaign manager for MacKay, clarified what that meant: The candidates won’t question or address comments to the other directly. Instead, each will be asked questions in turn while the other candidate is out of the room.
That tracks with a campaign season that has been fought through surrogates writing letters to the editor, solo events – on Tuesday, Decker was the guest at a popular speaker series held at the home of residents Lori and Eric Lander – and a nearly daily delivery of mailers and flyers on doorsteps.
“We’ve been trying to organize a debate since April. The Decker campaign was not responsive,” said Folpe, responding to a Wednesday call. “I was pushing for a debate. A lot of us were, because a debate allows for more opportunity to compare the candidates directly.”
The Decker campaign has not responded to requests for comment in the past weeks.
Backers of Decker point to her legislative accomplishments over the past 14 years, while supporters of MacKay have drawn particular attention to what they call Decker’s lack of transparency.
Transparency, and transparency about it
A mailer to Cambridge voters more than a week ago drew particularly strong reactions from several local progressive groups and MacKay. The challenger charged Decker with “trying to muddy the waters as she seeks reelection with voting finishing in two weeks.”
The mailer says Decker “proudly voted” for a change to make House committee votes “publicly available.” In a press release Aug. 20, MacKay and the progressive groups said Decker has voted frequently against measures to increase transparency in the House.
The clash centers around Rule 17B in the House rules, which allows any committee member to request that votes be made public. That rule applies only to votes made in person and omits electronic polls that are emailed to committee members. Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Mass, said “anyone who interacts with the State House knows that these votes don’t occur in person: They occur in electronic polls emailed to members of the committee. So that’s a gaping loophole.”
Over the past several years, amendments were brought to the House floor five times to try to close this loophole, either by including electronic votes in the existing disclosures or by publishing votes on the House website. According to the press release, Decker voted against these amendments all five times.
Cambridge Day reached out to the Decker campaign for a response, but got no reply over the course of more than a week.
Legislative session
The groups’ complaints of misinformation came just days after it was reported that Decker received an annual salary of more than $100,001 from 2016 to 2023 for unspecified work at Berman Tobacco, a class-action law firm. This amount is in addition to her taxpayer-funded salary – which was $114,447 in 2023.
As an elected official, Decker was required to list this additional employment on an annual Statement of Financial Interest, but it does not appear on her LinkedIn page or campaign website. The information resulted from a resident’s filing of a public records request.
Brenna Ransden, acting executive director of Act on Mass, a nonprofit that monitors the Legislature, said Decker “has repeatedly spoken and voted against measures to make committee votes public, despite 94 percent of voters in her district instructing her to vote in favor of such reforms,” citing results from a ballot question in the 2022 election.
“This campaign literature contains calculated disinformation meant to obscure her antagonistic history of preventing good governance and transparency reforms from passing,” Ransden said.
Frustrations over transparency fit within the broader context of overall dissatisfaction with a lack of progress in the House. In 2023, the House passed just 0.2 percent of the bills introduced to the floor, the lowest rate in the country, according to a report from the policy and global intelligence firm FiscalNote. Citing a 2021 study from Brown University, the MacKay campaign press release said “the lack of transparency in the committee process is one of the main reasons why the state has failed for over a decade to pass meaningful climate and environmental legislation.”
Folpe said she hoped the issue of transparency would be among questions asked Thursday at the forum.
This post was updated Aug. 28, 2024, with information from Lee Folpe and some corrections and updates throughout on the topic of Thursday’s forum.
A stronger
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Very interesting that Decker never seems to have the time to give Cambridge Day an interview or comment, but always has time for the Boston Globe. Why does she ignore the local paper from our city?
“Cambridge Day reached out to the Decker campaign for a response, but got no reply over the course of more than a week.”
“The Decker campaign has not responded to requests for comment in the past weeks.”
“the legislator’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, though a staff member said the request was “elevated” to the representative. “[1]
“Decker and her campaign were contacted May 16 by email and phone for an interview about election issues and fundraising, but did not respond.” [2]
[1] https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/08/19/between-state-rep-salary-and-consulting-pay-deckers-take-home-is-highest-in-delegation/
[2] https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/05/28/deckers-first-primary-challenger-since-2018-mackay-demonstrates-fundraising-strength/
meanwhile at the Boston Globe they apparently can get an interview:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/08/28/metro/incumbent-massachusetts-house-lawmaker-unseating/
@ianhuntisaak Totally agree with you. Especially when her website says, “Whether you’ve got questions, comments, concerns, or just want to say a quick hello, Marjorie wants to hear it.Let her know what’s on your mind, and she’ll be in touch” [1]. I really hope that Marjorie Decker is confronted about her lack of response when she touts herself as a communicative representative.
[1]: https://www.decker4rep.com/contact
It seems like both candidates are more interested in lobbing personal attacks through their supporters and surrogates on cambridge day- makes me want to vote for neither. It seems like you’ve got same policies and one who’s maybe a jerk but experienced, one who’s maybe not a jerk but inexperienced is about all I can gather?
Can anyone point me toward substantive differences in policy? because otherwise it seems like they’re 99% the same.
The 4th paragraph from the end refers to the results of “a ballot question in the 2022 election.” A link to the word “results” reveals what the vote totals were for two questions on the Middlesex legislative District. ballot but does NOT say how the ballot questions were worded. Without that info, it is impossible to know what it is that “94% of voters” “instructed” Rep. Decker to do.
@agilegranny here is the text and voting results:
“Shall the representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of changes to the applicable House of Representative rules to make each Legislator’s vote in that body’s Legislative committees publicly available on the Legislature’s website?”
https://electionstats.state.ma.us/ballot_questions/view/7417/