Election, this Tuesday

[cos]

The Massachusetts primary election is this Tuesday, September 19th.

We have two parties with official ballot status in Massachusetts: Democratic and Republican. Both parties will be holding primaries on Tuesday - but there are no contested Republican primaries in this area. With the exception of Governor/Lt. Governor, Democratic nominees will win every office that Cambridge & Somerville vote on. This is the election that counts, more than November!

You can vote in the Democratic primary if you registered to vote before August 30th, either as a Democrat or as unenrolled (no party). If you registered for a past election, you don't need to re-register. If you moved in the past six months and didn't re-register with your new address, vote at your old address. Find your precinct and polling place at WhereDoIVoteMA.com.

Contested Democratic Races

• Governor: Deval Patrick, Chris Gabrieli, Tom Reilly


• Lieutenant Governor: Andrea Silbert, Tim Murray, Deborah Goldberg


• Secretary of State (technically, Secretary of the Commonwealth): John Bonifaz, Bill Galvin


• Middlesex Clerk of Courts: Bruce Desmond, Michael Sullivan

Research the candidates...

• Visit their web sites.


• For the statewide races, a lot of candidates have videos on YouTube - search for their names


• Look for coverage on the Massachusetts political blogs, starting with Blue Mass Group. Blue Mass Group's blogroll lists all the other MA politics blogs.

I posted this a few days ago on ljmass and massachusetts without my own recommendations, but since there are a number of people on this community who ask me for candidate recommendations, I strongly recommend Deval Patrick, Andrea Silbert, and John Bonifaz for the statewide offices, and I have a mild preference for Bruce Desmond for Middlesex Clerk of Court. There are no other contested races in the Davis Square area (Somerville wards 6 & 7).

Disclosure: I am John Bonifaz's campaign blogger. Bonifaz is a voting rights and election reform leader, running for Secretary. You can read my blog posts at johnbonifaz.com. See also last week's front page Globe article about this race - why won't Bill Galvin debate?

Comments

Re: Uh-oh: can of worms opened

[rollzroix.livejournal.com]

Other than his views on the issues, which I think are quite similar to Andrea Silbert's, I can only tell you about my personal experience.

I know Tim Murray's campaign manager (Joe O'Brien). I actually know him through his wife and mother, with whom my wife and I helped start an organic food coop (http://artichokecoop.org/) in the heart of Worcester's poorest (and most dangerous) neighborhood. Joe and his wife also happen to live in that neighborhood. Joe is (or was) on the School Committee in Worcester and at one time ran for State Rep. He is a progressive community activist who absolutely believes in what he's doing and practices what he preaches. I don't believe he'd be managing Tim Murray's campaign if he didn't believe in him.

That's mostly how I arrived at my assessment of Tim Murray as a "good guy". I admit that I do not know him personally, but I've heard many good things about him from people I trust in Worcester.

I do like Andrea Silbert and cos has obviously done the homework and laid out a convincing case for her. Other than knowing Tim Murray's campaign manager, one of my main reasons for supporting him is that I still believe he has the best chance of beating Deb Goldberg (who, as I said before, I believe to be a weak candidate). Maybe Andrea and her late commercials will close the gap by tomorrow morning but I doubt it.

polls

[cos]

Don't put much trust in these polls, every one so far on the LG race has shown "undecided" ahead of all three candidates. Given that most people will be going to vote for Governor, a lot of those undecideds are going to vote.

You might be interested in hoss's post on Blue Mass Group, LG Poll - inside the numbers. Among the things he found were:

"First, and most obviously, this race is too low of a priority for voters to be able to predict who will win."

"Second, Deb Goldberg's purported lead is not as large as it seems, and her support is not as solid as it ought to be given the money she's spent."

And...
Goldberg and Silbert Way Ahead with Casual Voters
Deval's Voters Favor Silbert (and Murray is last with them)
Deb Goldberg's failure to seal the deal is the biggest surprise (given how much advertising she's run).

... so it seems to me you could make just as good a case for voting Silbert to prevent Goldberg from winning, as you could the other way 'round. Particularly since Deval has the best field operation and the poll suggests that the voters Deval's people pull to the polls vote for Silbert the most and Murray the least.

Enough to make your head hurt? Just remember the simplest part: "undecided" was still in the lead as of the last poll. So just pick your favorite LG candidate, regardless of what you think the other two candidates' chances are.