When it comes to elections, history is told by the winners. Months of intense campaigning, voter engagement, policy and strategy debate, and more fall out of the picture, and we just look at the ending check mark of victory, no matter how close or how commanding a margin.
But that view can often conceal as much as it reveals, and the recent Democratic primary for state representative in the 25th Middlesex District in Cambridge, pitting longtime incumbent Marjorie Decker against challenger Evan MacKay, is a perfect example.
One can look at the final, certified result and say that — yet again — incumbency rules in Massachusetts. One can even spin it as a resounding affirmation of the incumbent candidate’s theory of change – work your way into leadership, close ranks, enforce State House building norms and power structures, and then use that to cultivate the good will to pass some bills while closing the opportunities for others.
But with Decker emerging from a recount as the victor by just 41 votes, one can also look at the race another way, since if a mere 21 voters changed their minds, we would be telling an entirely different story.
Viewed in such a way, another narrative takes hold. Rep. Decker had the support of US Sen Ed Markey, Gov. Maura Healey, Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll, US House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and a majority of the Cambridge City Council. She can lay claim to 12 years in the Legislature and 14 on the Cambridge City Council, with notable accomplishments. She spent almost four times as much money as her challenger, and had many more organizational endorsements. In spite of all that, her victory margin out of the roughly 7,000 votes cast amounted to just over 0.5 percent.
MacKay, a former Harvard Graduate Student Union president and current teaching fellow, had a clear message: Too much of the State House’s business is being done behind closed doors, controlled by too few people, and we are suffering because of it. That toll includes the policies not passed to address the housing crisis, the climate crisis, widening inequality, and much more. Corporate interests will always be able to find their way into a closed door in a way that regular people never can.
Voters expect more from their elected officials. They expect them to express the same views in public that they do in private. They expect them to be transparent, accessible, and responsive, rather than shielding information that would be publicly available in other states. And they expect that, here in Massachusetts, we should be using our second-largest-in-the-country Democratic supermajority of any legislature to deliver on the wide array of policies that could improve the everyday lives of the people of the Commonwealth.
This legislative session saw fewer bills and fewer votes than any in recent history. I have sometimes described the avoidance of votes by the Massachusetts House and Senate on issues with even the slightest bit of contention as an incumbent protection racket, but that paints only a partial picture. The incumbent protection racket that exists in both chambers is only designed to help the most conservative members, those who do not want to show their constituents just how out of step they are. It does not help anyone else.
Progressives like Rep. Decker will be good team players for House leadership by voting against — and speaking on the floor against — measures like making committee votes publicly available, even though they know that their districts would disagree. They will be good team players and vote for regressive tax packages that their districts would be unhappy with. And they will sell watered-down bills as monumental progress, knowing, again, that their districts would want more but that their conservative colleagues want even less.
As an incumbent protection racket for conservative legislators, this functions smoothly.
But how about for progressives? This same system actually does them a grave disservice.
I know from putting together a legislative scorecard each year and actively following the behind-the-scenes moves of the Legislature that the vast number of representatives who will vote lockstep with the Speaker actually have quite a bit of ideological diversity as individuals. But because the House doesn’t allow, or at least actively discourages, taking recorded votes, there is no way for progressives to show that they are actually fighting for what their constituents care about. This flattening benefits conservatives; it does not benefit progressives.
Progressives are also the ones who shoulder the burden of legislative inertia. Rather than pass the type of ambitious housing and climate policies that would have helped bolster Decker in a hard-fought race, House leadership protected conservative members and special interests and hung her out to dry, just like they did to former representative Jeffrey Sanchez, a Jamaica Plain lawmaker who chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, but was sent packing six years ago by voters in his district.
Many legislators have been grumbling about the chaotic and unproductive end to the formal legislative session back in July, when so many bills were left on the table. The status quo of the Massachusetts State House has not been working for the people of the Commonwealth, but it isn’t working for rank-and-file legislators either.
If legislators want to see a different outcome — and perhaps enjoy a more relaxing summer two years from now when they face reelection — it’s time to start thinking and acting differently.
Jonathan Cohn is policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. The group endorsed MacKay in this month’s Democratic primary.
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