Candidates for contested offices on Tuesday's ballot

[ron_newman]

Everyone here knows about the races for President and US Senator, but there are other races on ballots in Somerville and elsewhere. We are also electing a US representative, a state senator, a state representative, a governor's councilor, a clerk of courts, a register of deeds, and a sheriff.

For Congress, incumbent Democrat Mike Capuano faces independent challenger Karla Romero.

For state senate, all of Somerville and Medford are now in a single district. Your state senator is Pat Jehlen, a Democrat, and she has no opponent on the ballot. Her district now also includes some of Cambridge.

Somerville is divided among three state representative districts:

• In ward 1, and ward 2 precinct 1, (and some adjoining areas of Cambridge,) incumbent Democrat Tim Toomey is opposed by Progressive Independent Mike Connolly and Republican Tom Vasconcelos.
• In wards 4 and 7 (and some adjoining areas of Medford), incumbent Democrat Carl Sciortino faces opposition from Republican David Rajczewski.
• In the rest of Somerville, incumbent Democrat Denise Provost is unopposed, after easily defeating a challenger in the September primary.

(If you do not know what ward and precinct you live in, enter your street address into the form at http://WhereDoIVoteMA.com . Some ward and precinct boundaries have changed as a result of the 2010 census.)

For Sheriff, incumbent Democrat Peter Koutoujian faces independent Ernesto Petrone.

For Governor's Council, incumbent Democrat Terrence Kennedy is unopposed.
For Clerk of Courts, incumbent Democrat Michael Sullivan is unopposed.
For Register of Deeds, Maria Curtatone is unopposed, after winning a heavily-contested Democratic primary in September.

I know much less about these races in Cambridge, Medford, and Arlington, so I invite people from those cities and towns to post comments about their contested races.

(All links in this post go to official candidate campaign websites.)

Comments

[squirrelitude]

With regard to Maria Curtatone, I still don't understand how someone can be running unopposed when there are other candidates. I mean, what happened to all the other people in the primary?

[ron_newman]

The same thing that happened to Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, etc. -- they did not win the nomination of their party, so they aren't on the general election ballot.

(You may be thinking of non-partisan city elections, where the top two finishers on the preliminary election ballot face each other in the general election.)

[squirrelitude]

The difference is that Romney still has an opponent, whereas Curtatone doesn't.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

They lost the primary.

If nobody fields a national league team, then the winner of the american league pennant wins the world series by default.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

The other candidates are all in the same party as Maria Curtatone. They didn't win their party nomination and are not their party's candidate.

If they want the job more than they want their party nomination, they could ditch the party and run as an independent write-in challenger, I suppose... but that'd be quite an uphill battle.

[ron_newman]

Or, they could have filed papers to run as independents in the general election, as several of the candidates for other offices did.

But they have to choose one or the other -- run in a party primary, or run as an independent in the general election. They chose to run in the Democratic party primary, and lost.

(They also could have chosen to run in the Republican or Green-Rainbow party primary instead of the Democratic one, but again, they didn't make that choice. Nobody did, which is why the office is now uncontested.)

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I feel like the election system was fairly well covered in this journal during the primaries.

[squirrelitude]

I thought I understood it at the time -- I'll have to go look it over again. :-/

ETA: OK, found it. Ron's comment indicates that a primary-losing candidate can only win via write-in.

[somgirl4.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. It's tough to keep track of everything sometimes in these elections. We often tend to pay more attention to national.

[antimony.livejournal.com]

In my part of Medford (ward 3, precinct 2):

Running for the 5th District US Congressional seat:
Edward Markey (http://www.edmarkey.org/), incumbent Democrat
Tom Tierney (http://www.tomtierney.org/), Republican challenger

Same Governor's Council, Clerk of Courts, Register of Deeds, and Sheriff.

Running for the 23rd District State Congressional seat:
Sean Garbally (http://www.garballey.com/), incumbent Democrat
Joseph Monju (http://www.joemonju.com/), Republican challenger

All the links go to what I think are the official campaign sites. (I googled and picked the most official-looking. The top result for Tom Tierney is a man of the same name making paper dolls in Texas, which I found amusing, if not especially relevant.)

There are four non-binding resolutions on the ballot, which match questions 5, 6, and 7 (http://www.somervillema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BallotQuestionsBrochure2012.pdf) on the link posted for Somerville in an earlier post, plus a version of question 5 that replaces "state senator" with "state representative".

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

I hear good things about Peter Koutoujian from a number of sources. He's a Kennedy School grad and a stand-up public servant. Haven't met him personally but my friends and neighbors think he's the one to back.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

I got one of his mailers, and he had something in there that gives me pause, which is that he promotes programs to use prisoners as labor to outside businesses. I've never liked the idea of that - it seems too much like slave labor to me - and can be used to push down wages on the open market. This isn't really the place for a debate on this, but a lot of the relevant points can be picked up at the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison-industrial_complex

[squirrelitude]

Eeep, that doesn't sound good! I mean, it's good for prisoners to have work to do, but unpaid labor is no good at all. Here's a story I found on the program: http://www.wickedlocal.com/arlington/news/x1797076156/Inmates-spruce-up-Arlington-Housing-Authority

(Sorry for the WickedLocal link, with its popups...)

ETA: On the other hand, I can hardly find any info on Petrone's take on the issues. I might sit that race out.

[squirrelitude]

The ballot seems to indicate that Koutoujian is not the incumbent Sheriff, but rather that the position is vacant.

ETA: But the ballot seems to be wrong! News sources indicate he was sheriff in 2011.

[ron_newman]

My recollection is that Governor Patrick appointed him sheriff after the sheriff who had been elected in 2010 committed suicide while in office. I don't remember anymore if the motivation for the suicide was ever determined. This election is for the 4-year remainder of that sheriff's 6-year term.