Dozens of legislative candidates emerged from Tuesday’s primaries with little standing between them and a seat on Beacon Hill in January.
Out of 200 districts, 155 have a primary winner who will face no major-party opponent in the general election, meaning the primary winner is virtually guaranteed the seat, barring a successful write-in or independent campaign.
That’s over three-quarters (77.5%) of the races that have been largely decided already, with 142 going to the Democrats who won their primaries and 13 to Republicans — those totals including winners of both contested primaries and unchallenged races.
Of the candidates who won intraparty battles this September and will now cruise to seats in January, all are Democrats. There were 32 primaries in which a Democrat beat a member of their own party Tuesday and faces no opposition in November.
Meanwhile, there were only five contested Republican primaries in the state. In each of them, a Democrat waits on the general election ballot.
The Democratic primary winners of two open Senate seats are all but guaranteed a spot in that chamber next year.
Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven came out on top of the most crowded primary in the field for the Second Middlesex District, vacated by Sen. Pat Jehlen after holding the Somerville, Cambridge, Winchester and Medford seat for over 20 years. The vacancy in one of the state’s most politically active districts drew two sitting representatives, Cambridge and Somerville city councilors and a Winchester school committee member into the race.
Uyterhoeven assumed her House office in January 2021 and is known as one of the most progressive members of the Legislature. She has championed government transparency, labor rights and Medicare for All. Before getting elected, she co-founded Act on Mass, a transparency group that has led the push on several government accountability measures, such as making legislative committee votes public. Uyterhoeven worked as a field organizer for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign and has done antitrust economic consulting.
No Republican has thrown a hat in to represent the district, giving Uyterhoeven a likely clear path to the Senate.
A similar situation is playing out in the other open Senate seat, where Rep. Kate Lipper-Garabedian won handily against two Malden city councilors to represent the district Sen. Jason Lewis is vacating.
Lipper-Garabedian joined the House in 2020, winning a special election in March following a tenure on the Melrose City Council. In the Legislature, she has served as the chair of the House Committee on Ethics and as House chair of the Emerging Technology Legislative Caucus.
As an attorney, she specialized in education law and worked as chief legal counsel at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education from 2015 to 2020. She’ll take over the seat from Lewis, who has long served as the Senate’s chair of the Joint Committee on Education, and endorsed Lipper-Garabedian.
Persis Yu makes a third new senator who will likely join the chamber come January, after beating longtime incumbent Sen. Michael Rush in the primary on Tuesday and facing no November challenge.
Yu, a Hyde Park civil rights attorney and consumer protection advocate, positioned herself as a more progressive alternative to Rush, who had served in the Senate since 2012. She is the deputy executive director at the Student Borrower Protection Center, and also spent a decade as a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
She edged out the incumbent 51.1% to 48.9%, according to the Associated Press’s count. She claimed victory on her social media pages around noon Wednesday.
As of Wednesday late afternoon, uncertainty still swirled over whether a fourth new nominee would have a clear path to the Senate.
The high-profile contest between Sen. William Brownsberger and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu-backed challenger Daniel Lander was down to a nail-biter as of 4:30 p.m. With 98% of votes counted, both candidates held 50% of the vote, according to the AP.
In raw numbers, Lander was up 20 ballots — 12,088 to Brownsberger’s 12,068.
Brownsberger is the highest-ranked Democratic who faced a primary challenge this cycle — one of only two members of leadership who faced opponents, in addition to Rush, who lost his election to Yu. Brownsberger’s race is being eyed as an important data point in a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment that has surged recently.
Whoever wins when the ballots are all tallied will face a much easier November with no opponent to run against, and will be virtually guaranteed to represent Suffolk & Middlesex voters next session.
Other senators who won their primary contests and face no Republican challengers include Sen. Nick Collins of the First Suffolk and Sen. William Driscoll of the Norfolk, Plymouth & Bristol District.
In the House, 26 Democrats emerged from embattled primary elections and will now cruise toward January without a November challenge.
Those include the winners of seven open seats.
John Drinkwater claimed victory in the 17th Middlesex, the seat former Rep. Vanna Howard vacated earlier this session when she won a special election to the Senate; Leila Bhatti Migliorelli won by a considerable margin in the 32nd Middlesex, the seat Lipper-Garabedian left open for her Senate run; in Barber’s old 34th Middlesex seat, Will Mbah came out on top; and Uyterhoeven’s former seat representing the 27th Middlesex was claimed by Ben Ewen-Campen.
In the Sixth Norfolk District where Rep. William Galvin is stepping down, Lisa Lopez beat out two competitors. The First Barnstable District was also up for grabs, as Rep. Christopher Flanagan opted not to run for reelection amidst criminal allegations from federal prosecutors of wire fraud and money laundering. That seat went to Democrat Christopher Lambton.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the results of the First Franklin District were too close to call. With 99% of votes counted, the AP had not called the election for Greenfield City Council President Lora Wondolowski (50.6%) nor former Rep. Natalie Blais’s legislative aide Corinne Coryat (49.4%).
Whoever wins the primary will go ahead to January without facing an opponent in two months.
Drinkwater is a labor leader with the Painters & Allied Trades District Council #35 and former member of the Lowell City Council. Migliorelli was a city councilor in Melrose, and has worked at Tufts University for 20 years, most recently as the director of donor relations.
Mbah is a four-term at-large Somerville city councilor, and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Somerville. He immigrated to the United States from Cameroon and has a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School. Another Somerville City Council member, Ewen-Campen is also an evolutionary developmental biologist. Lopez is an attorney, who has served as the chief legal officer for global medical device company Haemonetics Corporation for 25 years, and is a member of the Canton Select Board.
Lambton is the chair of the Dennis Select Board, a Cape Cod oyster farmer, and former public school teacher. He was also a contestant on reality television show “The Bachelorette” in 2010, where he was a runner-up to the winner. Since then, he has also appeared on HGTV, including hosting a landscaping show with his wife, Peyton.
In the First Franklin, Wondolowski is the president of the Greenfield City Council and was the founding executive director of the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters. Coryat, a resident of Deerfield, served as a legislative aide to Blais, who vacated the seat earlier this session, leaving it open for the contested race.
Democrat Celina Reyes of Lawrence is the only challenger who beat an incumbent in the House who will now not face competition this fall.
Reyes secured a landslide victory over Rep. Francisco Paulino, in the week after Paulino was arrested and indicted on eight federal counts of wire fraud and three counts of unlawful monetary transactions in connection with an alleged scheme involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic-related relief funds. He pleaded not guilty.
The rest of the Democrats with an easier fall are all incumbents, who successfully fended off members of their own party and now face no further challenge for their seats.
They include: Reps. Jim O’Day, Mary Keefe, Bud Williams, Angelo Puppolo, Marjorie Decker, Mike Connolly, David Rogers, Tara Hong, Samantha Montaño, Patricia Duffy, John Barrett III, Dawne Shand, Patrick Kearney, Jeffrey Turco, Richard Wells, John Lawn, Michelle DuBois and Richard Haggerty.
Winners of the five contested Republican contests include: Gabriel Boomer Amaral, who just edged out Manny Silva to take on Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues to represent the First Bristol & Plymouth district; Jesse Gelais will challenge Democrat Rep. Steven Ouellette for the Eighth Bristol House seat; and Christopher Lyons now faces Rep. Margaret Scarsdale in the general for the First Middlesex.
Chester Tam earned the GOP nomination for the Ninth Bristol district — the only district where voters in both parties got to vote in a competitive primary this September. The Democratic primary is still being counted, with a close race between Edward Pacheco and Stephen Medeiros.
The only Republican incumbent who faced a primary challenge, Rep. John Gaskey, secured his place on November’s ballot by edging out Carver Select Board member Mark Townsend, and will now face Democrat Sarah Hewins in November.
Sam Drysdale is a reporter for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at sdrysdale@statehousenews.com.
