The time has come, friend:
It’s the week we’ve all been waiting for! And, no, I don’t mean sweet Labor Day BBQs and the resulting even sweeter 4-day work week: in case you missed it, the state primary elections were held on Tuesday
And in fact if you DID miss it due to long weekend travel or in the chaos of a September 1st move-in date, that was by design. Our legislators get to select their own primary dates and love keeping attention away from their elections (and young people and renters out of the polls), so they can stay just where they are. And don’t even get me started on Same Day Voter Registration…
But I digress.
We might not have gotten the full AoM candidate sweep on Tuesday, but don’t let that fool you: the results from Tuesday’s primary were extremely heartening for our movement. This past legislative session was the least productive in memory. During the hottest month ever recorded, our legislators fumbled at the finish line and didn’t pass a climate action bill. Instead? Their priority legislation this session was a major tax cut that disproportionately benefits the top 1% and corporations.
If the results on Tuesday night showed us one thing, it was this: voters are rejecting the broken, anti-democratic, anti-accountability, anti-transparency status quo.
Let’s get into it.
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Primary Election Results
We celebrated an enormous victory for our movement on Tuesday night: Act on Mass endorsed candidate Tara Hong won his primary in Lowell against incumbent Rady Mom! We were thrilled to support Tara’s candidacy based on his commitment to accountability in state government and to his community. In fact, Tara has been fighting for State House reform since he volunteered with our Transparency is Power campaign back in 2020. Tara’s win is a perfect example of what is possible when we dare to challenge the State House status quo, and we look forward to supporting him through the November election, and working closely together once elected.
In Cambridge, Act on Mass endorsed candidate Evan McKay’s challenge to incumbent Marjorie Decker is now so tight that the result depends on a recount, with Decker currently in the lead. What Evan and their campaign achieved is staggering: to be within 50 votes of a long-term incumbent who entered the race with a 6-figure campaign bank account is a huge feat and a testament to the rallying power of these transparency ideals. While we await the results of the recount, the fact remains that roughly half of the voters in the 25th Middlesex took a chance on a young, anti-establishment, first-time candidate to loudly proclaim that the status quo wasn’t working for them– and that is a movement we can build on.
In another win for anti-establishment candidates, Act on Mass cofounder Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven fought off a leadership-backed primary challenger who styled herself as a more pragmatic progressive and promised to work with House leadership. (In other words: huge red flags.) In a bold rejection of the Beacon Hill establishment, Somerville voters re-elected Erika with 69% of the vote to her opponent’s 31%, sending the clear message that standing up to leadership is a winning position.
We were also proud to support the candidacy of Heather May, who challenged Rep. Thomas Stanley in the 9th Middlesex district. Although her campaign ultimately came up short, she fought a critical fight for transparency and kept government accountability on the minds of the residents of her district. We look forward to future fights with her as an ally in Waltham and beyond.
While these few competitive primaries were fun to follow, their sparse number is a stark reminder of another grim feature of Massachusetts’ state politics: the least competitive state elections in the country, according to a multi-year analysis by Ballotopedia. Out of 160 House districts, only 26 saw a contested primary on Tuesday; in the 40 person Senate, this number was a mere six!! As for legislative races in which a sitting incumbent was challenged (18/200 ), only two resulted in decisive victory for the challenger, including Tara Hong’s race.
Incumbent advantage takes many forms, including access to powerful endorsements and the ability to maintain large “war chests” of donation money from one election to the next. As I referenced in the intro, legislators also voted to move up the election to Sept. 3rd from the scheduled Sept. 17th date, to a jam-packed holiday weekend. Whatever the tactic, keeping incumbents in office is just one of many ways that Beacon Hill power structures are maintained, while our representatives avoid accountability.
Challenging an incumbent takes great courage, and we were honored to support our endorsed candidates Tara Hong, Evan McKay, and Heather May to do so. And regardless of the outcomes of election day, our movement is stronger because of their campaigns; every phone call, every conversation at the doors that engaged voters about the issues that matter to them and connecting those issues to the broken legislature, grows our movement.
And even better: when we win these races, or get within a razor-thin margin, legislators quake in their boots. If I just saw my colleague Rep. Rady Mom get successfully primaried on the issue of transparency and accountability, maybe I’d think twice before voting against common sense rules reforms.
Our takeaway here is that voters are tired of the sluggish, corporate-friendly, conservative rule of House leadership, and are sick of bearing the consequences. Demanding transparency at the ballot box and making our legislators earn their seats is worth it. We're planning to build on that momentum.
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State House Scoop
Drink Up – 225 Boston Liquor Licenses to hit the scene
When it comes to this legislative session, we’ll take all the wins we can get, and the Legislature served up a new one this week: 225 new liquor licenses for the city of Boston! For those keeping track at home, this is the third agreement to make it out in informal sessions since the end of formal sessions on August 1st, with six major priorities still in negotiations. Most of the new licenses will be restricted to specific neighborhoods outside of downtown, aiming to rectify inequities in access to nightlife that result from Boston’s strict cap on licenses. I’ll cheers to that!
But why is it up to the State Legislature in the first place to dole out liquor licenses to the city of Boston? In most localities in the state and around the country, the number of liquor licenses distributed is decided by local authorities or a state agency. So what gives?
This issue is actually one example of many (seriously SO many) where the Massachusetts legislature reserves powers for itself that, in many other states, are distributed across different levels of government.
A key example of this is that Massachusetts’ towns are unable to tax or borrow themselves, leaving cities from Boston to Pittsfield with little control over their budgets. Even mundane policy changes at the municipal level often require permission from the legislature through “home rule petitions,” which the legislature is (no surprise) slow to move on, except– oh– when it comes to hiring more police.
But back to the drinks. Actually, the state legislature’s control over Boston liquor licenses dates back to the end of the Prohibition era, when a state house controlled by WASP-y “Brahmins” sought to limit the power of Irish-controlled Boston. Attempts at reform have resulted in more liquor licenses but little meaningful change in the balance of powers. Surprise surprise– our legislature is famously not one to give up power easily.
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Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog.
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Syd’s Sprinkles: Graveyard of the 193rd Session — Medicare for All
In this week’s installment of the Graveyard, we lay to rest Medicare for All.
Medicare for All (H.1239/S.744) would have:
- Established a single-payer health care system in Massachusetts
- Provided health care for all Massachusetts residents and individuals who work more than 20 hours per week in the state without premiums, co-pays, or deductibles
- Banned private insurance coverage for services already covered by the single-payer system
Despite efforts to bring this bill to the forefront of legislative conversations from organizations like MassCare, Medicare for All has died in the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing by being sent to “study” (again). Enacting universal healthcare in Massachusetts would not only help communities by making health care more accessible, but it would also help prevent future situations of equitable healthcare being put at stake.
If private for-profit systems dominate our healthcare systems, we face a reality of corporate greed supplanting public interests. Systems like Steward Health Care have taken their profits and invested them into areas such as real estate, rather than putting that money into bettering the facilities that they already ran or paying their staff better wages. Now, communities – which are mostly low-income communities – are facing hospital closures, a loss of their access to medical services, and a loss of jobs for health care workers.
With big corporate companies, there is a risk that patients looking to health care facilities for what can be live-saving services will find that private and for-profit corporations are just that — private and for-profit.
If you are frustrated by the lack of attention this bill has seen, you can channel that energy into a call to your legislator voicing your support for Medicare for All in the next formal session!
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Take Action
Here are some upcoming events you might want to get on the calendar!
Ballot Question Info Session - Thursday Sept. 12th, 7 pm
Our friends at Progressive Mass are hosting a virtual info session this Thursday to cover the five questions Massachusetts voters will be asked to weigh in on this November. Sign up today!
#FreeHer March for No New Women's Prison - Saturday Sept. 14th, 11 am
Our allies in the push to end the construction of a new women's prison in Massachusetts faced frustrating setbacks with the end of this year's legislative session, despite broad support. They're kicking off the fight for this new session with their annual rally on September 14th and a march to the State House! Register below!
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That's all for today. Thank you if you took the time to support any of our AOM endorsed candidates: this movement is stronger because of your voice! Let's keep the pressure on.
In solidarity,
- Brenna
Brenna Ransden (she/her)
Acting Executive Director, Act on Mass