Polls have closed Tuesday evening in the Massachusetts primary election, with residents picking Republican candidates to challenge U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Stephen Lynch, fill an open Governor’s Council seat, and settle a few intriguing court clerk races.
In the GOP Senate primary, John Deaton, a former U.S. Marine and cryptocurrency attorney, beat out two fellow Republicans: industrial engineer Bob Antonellis and Quincy City Council President Ian Cain.
While every Massachusetts House, Senate, and Governor’s Council district is up for reelection every two years, many other positions will not be decided in 2024. The state’s constitutional offices, from governor to auditor, are all four-year terms that will not reappear before voters until 2026.
A pair of county-level law enforcement jobs — district attorney and sheriff — are not set to return to the ballot until 2026 and 2028, respectively. Those highly sought roles often draw bids from well-established public figures, including representatives and senators who want a change of pace — and whose departures often trigger a round of political musical chairs to fill the legislative seats they leave open.
Non-legislative Massachusetts elected offices on the ballot this year include one U.S. Senate position, every U.S. House seat, register of deeds, clerk of courts, and county commissioner.
GOP fields set for federal challenges
Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, does not face any intraparty opposition as she seeks a third term in Washington. She will, however, need to defeat Deaton in November to get there.
Relatively unknown in Massachusetts politics, Deaton faces a steep climb against Warren, a former Harvard law professor who has twice won a Senate seat but came in third in Massachusetts in her 2020 bid for president. She remains popular in the heavily Democratic state.
Warren faced a competitive race in her first U.S. Senate bid in 2012, when she toppled Republican incumbent Scott Brown. She received more than 60% of the vote in 2018. Biden carried the state with 66% of the vote in the 2020 presidential race.
The Republican candidates have staked out different positions so far. In a debate hosted by WBZ News, Antonellis donned a “Make America Great Again” hat to signal his vocal support for former President Donald Trump, who is once again topping the GOP ticket. Cain and Deaton made no such explicit pledge to back Trump.
Immigration policy is another pressure point in the primary. Deaton was the lone candidate who said he would have supported the federal immigration deal that failed earlier this year, when Warren and a few other progressive Democrats joined with U.S. Senate Republicans to block its movement.
Republicans also decided a three-way primary the last time Warren was up for re-election. In 2018, former state representative Geoff Diehl topped that contest, then lost to Warren by 24 points in the general election.
Meanwhile, in a U.S. House of Representatives race, Republicans Robert Burke of Dedham, James Govastos of Walpole, and Daniel Kelly of Boston are in the running to challenge Lynch, a South Boston Democrat who is seeking his 12th full term.
The state Republican Party only fielded contenders against Warren, Lynch, and Congressman Bill Keating (challenged by Dan Sullivan of Plymouth), so the seven other Massachusetts Democrats in Congress — none of whom face primary opponents — are all on paths to cruise to re-election with no opposition.
Governor’s council will gain one new member, or maybe more
The Massachusetts Governor’s Council is supposed to have eight members, but for the entirety of the 2023-2024 term, it has been operating with seven. Former Governor Council member Robert Jubinville resigned in December 2022 — just a bit more than a month after winning re-election — for a lifetime appointment as clerk magistrate of Framingham District Court.
The Massachusetts House and Senate could have filled Jubinville’s seat, but legislative leaders opted to leave the district seat vacant and more than 870,000 residents with no representation on the panel that vets and confirms judicial nominees.
Voters on Tuesday are set to decide aming four Democrats: Tamisha Civil of Stoughton, Muriel Kramer of Hopkinton, David Reservitz of Needham, and Sean Murphy of Bridgewater.
The winner will face Republican Francis Crimmins of Stoughton, who does not have a primary opponent, in November.
Civil has worked as an associate probation officer and as a victim witness advocate, and she describes her cousin’s wrongful imprisonment for 27 years as a key influence on her campaign. Muriel is a U.S. Air Force veteran and a licensed clinical social worker who previously chaired the Hopkinton board of selectmen.
Reservitz works as a trial attorney, and he served on the Massachusetts Judicial Nominating Committee that helps governors select candidates for positions on the bench. Murphy served in the U.S. Navy and now operates his own legal practice.
The Boston Herald reported in June that Murphy spent time in federal prison for an oxycodone distribution conspiracy charge more than two decades ago, and he told the paper the experience is a “conversation and cautionary tale” for his children.
Two other members of the all-Democrat Governor’s Council face primary challenges.
Councilor Christopher Iannella of Boston will need to emerge victorious in a three-way contest against Stacey Borden of Boston and Ronald Primo Iacobucci of Quincy to secure a 20th term. Not all 19 of his previous terms have been concurrent — Iannella served for six years starting in 1985, lost his 1990 re-election campaign to Republican Michael Murphy, then won the seat back in 1992.
The other contested Governor’s Council primary is a rematch, and a heated one.
Public defender and former Senate President Stanley Rosenberg aide Mara Dolan of Concord is once again challenging Councilor Marilyn Petitto Devaney of Watertown for the district representing Boston’s northwestern suburbs.
Devaney is a longtime presence on the council, first elected in 1998, but the race could be close. Two years ago, Devaney won with 50.8 percent of the vote to Dolan’s 49.1 percent.
Dolan has secured a series of endorsements, including from U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Hyde Park) and The Boston Globe’s editorial board.
Republicans are not running candidates in Devaney or Iannella’s district, so the primary victors are essentially guaranteed to win the general election.
Speaking of the Governor’s Council, the panel has a particular influence this cycle on races for other county positions.
Jubinville is back on the ballot less than two years after securing a lifetime appointment, challenging state Senator Walter Timilty III of Milton in a primary for the Norfolk County Clerk of Courts job. Timilty is giving up his state Senate seat to run for the job long held by his father, Walter Timilty Jr., who retired recently.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary will all but lock down the job because no Republican is on the ballot.
Councilor Eileen Duff is also running for a new office away from Beacon Hill. The Gloucester Democrat will face Peabody’s Joseph Michael Gentleman III in a primary for register of deeds in the Essex southern district.
Another clerk race that’s generated a flood of press releases and campaign jockeying is for Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court clerk in Suffolk County. Boston City Councilor Erin Murphy is up against Allison Cartwright, a managing director at the Committee for Public Counsel Services.