Somerville's 54-year wait for fully competitive elections is over
A couple of weeks ago, Olivia Gilligan-Corsetti jumped into the race for the 27th Middlesex District. She’s running against Ben Ewen-Campen to succeed Erika Uyterhoeven, who is going for the State Senate district being left by Sen. Pat Jehlen.
With that announcement, we have something that hasn’t happened since 1972.
This year, every person in Somerville has a choice for who will serve them in the State House and Senate.
Tracking competitiveness
I knew that this was a rare event when I realized that Somerville now has all three House districts (34th, 26th, and 27th Middlesex) and its Senate race with contested elections.
Massachusetts has the least competitive legislature in the country. I almost threw out my mail-in primary ballot last year when I saw that nearly every race was uncontested (I felt bad about literally putting my vote in the garbage so I didn’t).
So I went into the state’s election database, PD43+, to check when the last time Somerville had all of its legislative elections contested. Here is the full spreadsheet if you want to look for yourself.
I figured that it would have been 10 or 20 years ago when it happened.
Shockingly, it was 1972.
That means that, since Richard Nixon’s first term in office, there has always been at least one election every cycle where a Somerville voter has not had a chance to change direction.
I also looked into Medford, which my district covers. They won’t be seeing a full sweep of competition, but at least they had it happen in 1984 and 1988, so they’re only on year 38 of their wait for it to happen again.
How to make this happen sooner than 2080
This is not anything personal against the current incumbents, but this situation is not acceptable for a democracy.
Elections should be competitive. Elected officials should have to work hard to deliver. Even if you think your current representative or senator is fantastic, you still deserve a choice.
And we should be honest about the reason why there is competition this year. Sen. Pat Jehlen, after a career in elected office that began with a run for the school committee in 1976, has chosen to retire.
Though no one has publicly said this, I am 99% sure that most of the current Senate candidates would not be running if Sen. Jehlen had opted for another term. I am 100% sure that I would not be running if Rep. Barber were not vacating her seat. It was tough enough decided to devote the time to a campaign for an open seat. The added hurdle of going against an incumbent meant that it would have been prohibitive (I also don’t have many disagreements with Rep. Barber, but in the hypothetical case where I did, I still would be very unlikely to run because of the time it would take away from my family).
But waiting for incumbents to leave should not be what’s necessary to give voters a choice.
That’s why I worked on the Ranked Choice Voting ballot question in 2020. It’s why I am supporting the All-Party Primary ballot question in this year’s election. And it why, if that question fails, I’ll be introducing legislation to bring a German/New Zealand-style district plus party list method and/or Alaska-style Top 4 + RCV to Beacon Hill.
Regardless of the electoral system we choose - and I am more than happy to talk more about the pros and cons of each - the current system isn’t working. Voters always deserve a choice and a baby born when everyone has one should be eligible for AARP the next time it happens.
