A PRO-DONALD TRUMP Massachusetts Republican who barely lost a primary battle for state Senate earlier this week says she is not accepting the result and is calling for a recount.
“I strongly believe I won this race. More importantly, I strongly believe I owe it to the thousands of grassroots conservative voters who cast their ballots for me, that I must continue to fight for them,” said Kari MacRae of Bourne in a lengthy press release.
MacRae squared off Tuesday in the Republican primary against Rep. Mathew Muratore of Plymouth, with the victor getting the chance to battle Rep. Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat from Falmouth, for the state Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Susan Moran. MacRae called Muratore “the hand-selected candidate of the GOP establishment.”
According to the most recent data, Muratore received 7,005 votes and MacRae 6,951, a difference of 54. Fernandez ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
The possibility of a recount in a Republican primary is unusual, given that the Republican Party in Massachusetts has trouble even finding candidates willing to run for office. In Tuesday’s primary, 28 of the 40 Senate districts and 116 of the 160 House districts had no Republican candidates. Only the Muratore-MacRae race in the Senate and five races in the House had more than one Republican candidate vying in the primary.
To secure a recount, MacRae must submit a petition signed by 75 Republicans in the district by noon on Friday. Recounts will then be carried out in the Senate district’s communities of Plymouth, Plympton, Pembroke, Kingston, Bourne, Sandwich, Mashpee, and Falmouth. It’s a time-consuming process that could leave little time for whomever emerges as the victor to focus on Fernandes.
In a statement, Muratore said he won’t be distracted. “We have spoken to experts and our attorneys and it’s highly unlikely that a margin of this size would change on a recount – counter to what my primary opponent is suggesting,” he said. “Our campaign is focused on the general election and defeating Dylan Fernandes.”
Muratore has been elected five times to his House seat, starting in 2014. MacRae ran for Senate against Moran in 2022, losing by a margin of 56.3 to 43.6 percent.
In Tuesday’s primary, unofficial results show Muratore won Kingston, Plympton, and his hometown of Plymouth, where he prevailed by more than 1,000 votes. MacRae won in Falmouth, Mashpee, Pembroke, Sandwich, and her hometown of Bourne.
MacRae in her statement said she was up by 581 votes at midnight on Tuesday but then learned that Plymouth would not release its vote totals until 3 a.m. She said those totals, once they were released, showed her behind in the district by more than 50 votes.
“Needless to say, I was deeply disturbed by the substantial irregularities in the Plymouth vote-counting efforts,” she said, although she didn’t specify what the irregularities were. Officials at the clerk’s office in Plymouth declined to comment.
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