Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

[MrDee12345]

As expected.

Oh well. I wish the Dems could have found a better, young candidate, but I guess this is what we're stuck with.

When Biden was running for reelection, I was refusing to vote for him because he was clearly not up to the task.

Markey still seems to have most of his marbles, so I'll just have to tolerate his mediocrity because I'm certainly not voting for the Republican candidate.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Koh comes out on top in crowded primary race to replace Moulton

Koh will face Republican Micah Jones in November. If Koh wins, as he is heavily favored to do, he would be Massachusetts’s first Asian American congressperson.

commonwealthbeacon.org

Dan Koh came out on top in the five-way primary (technically six-way, since one recent dropout was still on the ballot) for the open 6th Congressional District seat that Moulton gave up. Beat the next-highest challenger by 12. This was a real messy race because of the sheer number of candidates competing for oxygen and stalemate among party leaders on who to consolidate around.

Richie Neal in the 1st turned back his first primary challenger in 6 years by 10...a somewhat soft performance for him. At 77 he's the next-oldest in the MA delegation, and other than Markey's combined House+Senate tenure has been around the longest.

Stephen Lynch in the 8th beat his first primary challenger in eons by 13 in a race that oddly had literally zero polling despite a lot of PAC money being dropped this summer behind 39-year-old progressive Patrick Roath. Some folks were smelling blood in the water over Lynch perennially voting to the right of his district's partisan lean and simping up to Trump right after the last election, and vented that frustration through donations to Roath. For naught, I guess...though as a dissatisfied Lynch constituent myself I was glad he at least was forced to break a sweat this time. It needs to become a biennial habit.

Everybody else in the delegation ran unopposed.

 

[JumboBuc]

Ed Markey's seat will next be contested in 2032, when he'll be 86.
Elizabeth Warren's seat will next be contested in 2030, when she'll be 81.

Both of those elections will fall during Michelle Wu's potential third term (2030-2034).

I think it's pretty safe to say that if Wu is re-elected again in 2029, running City Hall will not be her sole focus for very much of that term.

 

[jklo]

Dan Koh came out on top in the five-way primary (technically six-way, since one recent dropout was still on the ballot) for the open 6th Congressional District seat that Moulton gave up. Beat the next-highest challenger by 12. This was a real messy race because of the sheer number of candidates competing for oxygen and stalemate among party leaders on who to consolidate around.

Seems kinda rough that the Establishment couldn't find someone to completely rally around when that person could be around for a long time.

Even if that person is going to do little other than vote however the Party tells them to.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Seems kinda rough that the Establishment couldn't find someone to completely rally around when that person could be around for a long time.

Even if that person is going to do little other than vote however the Party tells them to.

2nd-place finisher State Rep. Tran Nguyen picked up a bevy of late endorsements as the somewhat belated establishment pick, but party leaders basically dickered half the summer away in indecision and it ended up costing them because those endorsements didn't hit until August after a lot of undecideds had already tuned in and started to make up their minds. Koh led in fundraising wire-to-wire because he had steadfast support from his former bosses Biden and Marty Walsh and because he was a somewhat better-known quantity, having lost the 2018 primary in the (then-open) 3rd Congressional by only a half-point when that race went to a recount. But it seems like national interests got their man more than local interests did given the way the state party acted indecisively here.

Open-seat Congressional primaries in Mass. always tend to be a little bit of a shitshow. The absolute squeaker Koh lost in the 3rd 8 years ago had current Rep. Lori Trahan winning with only 21% of the vote, and when Joe Kennedy vacated his seat to challenge Markey in '20 there were even more candidates on the ballot in the 4th with the winner (Jake Auchincloss) winning at only 22%. Our House reps don't tend to gain their supposed lifetime sinecures by very much party consensus at all.

 

[Stlin]

Back in 2018 I was voting in the 3rd, and had voted for Dan Koh - I'm happy enough with him as the candidate. As the runner up by literally 143 votes back then, he certainly should be familiar enough to the establishment. That said, perhaps challengers should take a page from the last sucessful primary challenge, Pressley v. Capuano. Politically they agreed on just about every major issue, they acknowledged they'd basically be the same vote in Congress. But Pressley was who the people wanted to see cast that vote; energetic, good in front of people and the press, exciting, and didn't have a history of baggage. Moulton, to be blunt, is as interesting as lettuce, and has a steamer trunks worth of political baggage, not to mention a political record to the right of Markey? He was the wrong challenger for the seat, especially in 2026 and I'm happy to see him out of office - and frankly, the margin speaks for itself at ~+40. He was more successfully primaried by Joe Kennedy III in 2020 when he won by +11. The more successful primary challengers, Whelen and Roath, primaried their incumbents from the left, combined with other compelling reasons to choose them, and even then it wasn't enough.

Also... I'm not too too worried about the prospect of Sen. Markey passing while in office. Unlike the House, the Governor can appoint a senator until the special election... That seat won't be empty, nor do I think that a special election will go the way of scott brown if the Dems actually try.

 

[St. Botolph Street]

Ed Markey's seat will next be contested in 2032, when he'll be 86.
Elizabeth Warren's seat will next be contested in 2030, when she'll be 81.

Both of those elections will fall during Michelle Wu's potential third term (2030-2034).

I think it's pretty safe to say that if Wu is re-elected again in 2029, running City Hall will not be her sole focus for very much of that term.

Let's hope next time Wu has a more formidable election challenger than Kraft. She's killing the city's development and new housing construction has collapsed under her policies. I'd hate to think what she could do in a third term!