A count on Wednesday of overseas, absentee and provisional ballots in the previous day’s primary elections gave a win to state Rep. Marjorie Decker, which means she would keep her seat. The election will be certified by Saturday, election officials said, but these unofficial results are not expected to change.
The Wednesday count of 7,037 votes gave 3,472 to Decker and 3,431 to Evan MacKay, a Harvard educator and labor organizer, or 49.3 percent to 48.8 percent.
In the first count, stretching from Tuesday evening well into the next morning, MacKay, claimed victory as the next representative for Cambridge’s 25th Middlesex District. The seeming win would have unseated Decker, who has held the district since an election in the fall of 2012 following the retirement of mentor Alice Wolf.
There is no identified opponent in the November general election, so this primary is likely to decide representation for the district.
But the margin was 40 votes out of 6,676 cast for the candidates, giving MacKay a temporary 50.2 percent to Decker’s 49.7 percent in the Cambridge Election Commission’s unofficial tally – not within automatic recount range, but a recount could be requested, commissioner chair Ethridge King said – and Decker, he noted, “is a fighter.”
That was unnecessary. By the start of Wednesday’s count, 263 votes had been added by hand count to the machine-tallied votes from the previous day, causing a shift of 42 votes in the Decker-MacKay race. A search of envelopes for provisional ballots – any “unusual situation” that had to be judged to decide a vote’s validity, election commissioner Tom Stohlman explained – turned up one: It went to MacKay and raised them to 3,431 from 3,430.
The hand count of ballots that for some reason can’t be read by machines at polling places is standard, and every vote count changes from the end-of-Election-Night tallies as they are included. “We’re hand counting other votes, but haven’t added them up [and] to the results from the tabulators until the next day,” said Lesley Waxman, assistant director of the commission. “It happens every single election. It’s just that nobody ever cares unless it’s close.”
“They always think we’re done Election Night. We’re never done Election Night,” Waxman said.
Now it’s the MacKay campaign that could call for a recount. Neither campaign had statements available to the press. “Obviously, we’re not particularly happy with where things are at right now and are deliberating on whether we want to seek a recount,” campaign manager Lee Folpe said. The decision was expected by noon Thursday.
Rare accomplishment
A challenger – and a first-time candidate – tying an incumbent is remarkable in Massachusetts, where most office holders go unchallenged term after term. No one running against Decker since her first election had achieved more than 14.5 percent of the district’s vote since 2014, and MacKay was her first challenger since 2018.
It was still a night for farther-left progressives and incumbent upsets: In Somerville, state Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven kept Somerville’s 27th Middlesex District, according to unofficial results posted by that city’s Election Commission. She faced a challenge from Kathleen Hornby, a former aide to Decker endorsed by the Democratic City Committee with some in Somerville saying Uyterhoeven was too far to the left to be effective legislator.
Mara Dolan, a public defender, unseated 25-year incumbent Marilyn P. Devaney for Cambridge’s District 3 seat on the Governor’s Council. It was a rematch that ended in a 52 percent win for Dolan to Devaney’s 48 percent.
Though U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was unopposed in her primary, she will face a Republican in November: cryptocurrency attorney and former U.S. Marine John Deaton, who won a three-way Republican primary.
Tuesday ended with no post from the Decker campaign or report of a concession or a challenge. The Decker campaign held a two-hour party at the Fresh Pond Beer Garden that The Harvard Crimson reported ended “with Decker and her supporters dancing and appearing to celebrate.” Campaign manager Ryan Telingator pointed to the votes remaining to be counted, the Crimson said.
Citing campaign issues
The MacKay campaign, at a party at 730 Tavern in Central Square not far from the Citywide Senior Center, was exulting in preliminary victory at around 10:15 p.m. based on precinct reports even as the formal count dragged on.
The MacKay campaign’s issues of affordable housing, progressive taxation of the wealthy and government transparency benefited from Decker’s repeated votes against making legislators’ committee votes public and revelations from public financial disclosure records – namely that Decker had been adding to her $114,447 state salary with work for the Boston class-action law firm Berman Tabacco from 2016 to 2023. Her pay is listed only as being more than $100,001, the highest tier on the forms.
At an August forum, Decker acknowledged that committee votes are “public but not accessible” and that she is working to improve transparency and “certainly has nothing to hide,” while saying that as a 14-year incumbent she shared the public’s frustration around State House dysfunction and has “worked to change it.”
The pace of change wasn’t fast enough for MacKay voters, who had been opening doors to campaign volunteers since December under Folpe’s leadership.
Resistance by Decker to adding hours to “Riverbend Park” by closing Memorial Drive to car traffic on Saturdays also resonated with many, as well as Decker’s lack of engagement with Riverbend supporters and being shown by state documents to be advocating against it while presenting herself as neutral.
“This is about our movement”
At the victory party, MacKay thanked supporters for rallying behind them and their ideas for change in a state House of Representatives that in 2023 passed just 0.2 percent of bills introduced to the floor, which a report has called the lowest rate in the country.
“You all had the belief in an organizer. You had the believe in a queer organizer,” MacKay said to cheers.
“In a socialist organizer,” MacKay said to louder cheers.
“In an organizer who rides a bicycle,” MacKay said to even louder cheers.
“We showed that a grassroots movement can take on the might of the political establishment. We can win,” MacKay said. “We showed that the people of Massachusetts indeed care about state politics – that the people believe in transparency, in accountability, in a safe government that works for the many and not the few, that believe that we can tax the rich.”
To continued cheers, MacKay said, “We also are here for so much more than one night or one election. This is not about electing a single human being. This is about our movement.”
A stronger
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In reference to your third paragraph: a “seeming win” does not unseat a candidate. Only an actual win can do that.
So based on the preliminary and final numbers, 235 additional ballots were counted, and of those, 158 went to Decker and 77 to MacKay. The probability of a discrepancy that large if the ballots were representative of the entire essentially 50-50 election is effectively 0 (about 0.000006845%). Therefore, these ballots were not representative, as I had suggested in a previous post might turn out to be the case.
This is why we don’t call very close elections until all the ballots have been counted.
This is great news! Congrats to Decker.
Congratulations to Rep Decker on her re-election. Thank goodness sanity prevailed. No one works harder and more effectively for Cambridge citizens – maternal health mental health, gun control, assistance for low income families, and much more. She stands up for the most vulnerable among us. That’s what she was elected to do.
I’m sad to see the count swing like this, I wanted change. I hope the incumbent sees this close result and changes her position to make the Massachusetts more transparent. As it stands right now, the bills die without any information we can glean on why. We desperately need legislation on climate, transportation, housing, and so many other urgent problems.
Really racking up the 2024 Worst of Cambridge candidates here.
MacKay runs a despicable campaign.
The Bike Lobby gets way too far over its handlebars.
And Cambridge Day incorrectly calls an election
Let us hope that Representative Decker pays attention that almost half the voters were delivering to her in this vote.
Victory by 41 votes is really a very slim margin, and shows that she needs to improve her office’s staff ability to interact with the public transparently and to react to their needs more effectively then they have.
It also shows that the public in general are getting tired of the sort of politics that have been happening on Beacon Hill behind the scenes and want to know what is going on and to have clear and precise information as to who is in support or opposition to various bills and decisions being made, and that they are acting on behalf of the people they represent without conflict of interests that might arise from their other sources of income.
Kdolan, right on the money here. Shocking attack by MacKay benefiting from Harvard for the past 9 years and before that from a well heeled professional family in Florida. Talk about privilege!! Now where did Decker grow up?? Let me think? The projects?? I gather she is not supposed to earn wealth.
My husband I a voted at Cadbury Commons (neighborhood nine). Our ballets did not list any candidates but the incumbants. I was suprised (and disappointed, because I wanted to cast a vote for Evan), but then figured that I had missed the memo and that Tuesday’s vote was a primary and that Evan’s name would be an option in November. I’d like to know how such a thing could have happened, and how many other people used these incomplete and therefore fraudulent ballots? With only 40 votes in Marjorie’s winning favor, this is a big problem.
@BarbaraAnthony I’m not sure how Marjorie Decker dismissing the safety of bikers, arguably the most vulnerable among commuters, is standing up for them [1].
@MIghtyMouse: Evan MacKay didn’t get to choose where they were born and neither did Decker. There have been many great leaders who grew up rich or poor. And MacKay’s work to help form the Harvard Graduate Student Union was done because graduate students had in fact not been “benefitting from Harvard”.
Decker earning wealth isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that she has refused to divulge what she does at the law firm Berman Tabacco. If we were to criticize earning wealth, then many politicians would share that criticism. However, the distinction is that Decker is not transparent about her work at all. In fact, there has still been silence from Decker regarding that source of income/possible source of conflict [2]. To be clear, I value transparency. If we got answers from Decker as to whether this impacts her job as a state representative, I would likely not bring it up as a talking point against Decker.
[1]: https://www.cambridgebikesafety.org/2024/08/26/garden-street-our-safety-dismissed-by-rep-decker/
[2]: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/08/19/between-state-rep-salary-and-consulting-pay-deckers-take-home-is-highest-in-delegation/
to jray: if you voted at Cadbury Commons you probably live in Ward 10 Precinct 3 – which is not in the Decker District – so neither candidate would be on your ballot. Think you are in the Owens District
thank you saj.
Win or Lose, if you agree with his politics or not, Mr. McKay had an incredibly well run campaign. You don’t reach almost a tie vote by running a bad campaign. He should be proud of the results no matter if he ends up in first or second place.