The Sept. 1 primaries will decide several local races, because many have no Republicans, third-party or independent candidates running in the November general election. With polls open in just a dozen days and early voting underway, campaigns are responding to the pressure.
People’s Pledge ends in 34th
Candidates for representative in the 34th Middlesex seat in Somerville and Medford took a “people’s pledge” in June to eschew dark-money campaign funding from super political action committees – and now the pledge is ended in the district, said Jack Perenick, chair of the Somerville Democratic Party, in a Thursday press release. Will Mbah and Christopher Oates are free to accept super Pac donations and expenditures with what Perenick called the breaking of the pledge by Medford School Committee member Paul Ruseau, who said he would accept around $8,104.07 in spending by the Massachusetts Teachers Association without donating half that to charity as a penalty.
It was a disappointment to Perenick, who noted Thursday that district expenditures had been zero, compared with state Senate races that were costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For example, spending in the 2nd Middlesex is past $650,000 and likely setting a Massachusetts record, Perenick said, “a highly irregular amount of money” resulting only partially from it drawing several candidates and despite two candidates – Christine Barber and Matthew McLaughlin – rejecting super Pac money even without a formal agreement. (Six filed, five ran and the figure is down to four: Barber, McLaughlin, Burhan Azeem and Erika Uyterhoeven.)
There was some surprise that Ruseau was exiting the pledge for money that “was really small potatoes,” Perenick said. “Now we expect to see more money flow in.” Candidates in the 34th Middlesex asked interest groups to save their money because of the pledge; with its end, there may be a rush of spending in the final dozen days before the Sept. 1 primary.
Ruseau supplied a statement Thursday abstracted from a letter sent Monday to the Somerville Democrats:
Dark money spent on elections by corporations and wealthy donors is a scourge in our politics. I signed the Somerville Democratic City Committee’s People’s Pledge because I want to stop corporations from buying politicians and laws that benefit them.
I never expected that the SDCC would use this pledge to try to silence our public school teachers and their unions. I’m grateful to have the endorsement of the Massachusetts Teachers Association to be the next State Representative for the 34th Middlesex.
The MTA independently chose to send voters mail and digital ads saying why they think I’m the best candidate for our kids, our teachers, and our schools. This is not dark money. This is our teachers making their voices heard.
“I would never sign a pledge if I thought it meant that our teachers or any labor union has to stay silent in this election,” Ruseau said, and asked the SDCC on Monday whether its membership saw a distinction between kinds of spending. He updated his statement Friday, after the initial publication of this story: “I did not announce I sought to break the pledge or refuse anything. As of Aug. 21, the SDCC has not responded to my question and has since falsely and grossly mischaracterized my response in the press.”
The Somerville Democrats issued a press release Thursday in response to Ruseau’s letter. It declared the pledge canceled in the district race.
Perenick summed up Ruseau’s position wryly: that the Supreme Court was right in its judgment of the notorious Citizen’s United case about super Pac spending. Oates, who has seen the letter, says he was “truly surprised to see a Democrat argue that money equals speech” and by Ruseau suggesting that the MTA’s expenditure was just supporters “making their voices heard.”
“Rules have to apply to everyone. You don’t get to have an exemption because you like the group that supports you. That’s basic stuff,” Oates said. “Campaign spending is not speech. That should be a baseline understanding for being a Democrat.” Oates said he would continue to follow the pledge.
Ruseau’s campaign, meanwhile, pointed to less controversial news: an endorsement Wednesday from Carl Sciortino, the former state representative in the 34th for a decade beginning in 2004. “I’ve watched him deliver results on the School Committee, and he’s the kind of person you want on Beacon Hill,” Sciortino said. Ruseau noted that he is also endorsed by the MTA and current and former elected officials across Medford and Somerville.
Attacks are short on examples
State representative candidate Evan MacKay answered allegations about their voting record in early August from the campaign of incumbent Marjorie Decker, and now it is Decker’s turn to say she felt compelled to respond to attacks from the MacKay campaign or their supporters – though without making clear what those are. In a Saturday email with the subject line “Enough is enough,” Decker, serving in the 25th Middlesex District since 2013, said that in this campaign she was seeing “more personal and misogynistic attacks on me instead of substantive challenges to my work.”
The campaign was contacted by email Monday with a request for information about the personal and misogynistic attacks, as Decker includes only one example in her email, with the bolding hers:
Just today, an older Cambridge gentleman who does not live in the district but has been a very vocal public supporter of my opponent described me as “an aggressive incumbent.” These are tired, misogynistic tropes used to describe women in leadership, especially women who are willing to fight hard, challenge the status quo, and insist on getting things done.
The campaign did not respond with information, including whether the word “incumbent” was meant to be included as an example of a misogynistic trope, or if there were more examples of personal attacks or misogyny beyond being called aggressive.
It wasn’t a topic during Decker’s interview with Pete Septoff of CCTV, which posted Wednesday. Though Decker repeated that she’s “had an opponent who has said a lot of things that are not true,” the issues she addressed were mainly legislative, and much of the interview reflected Septoff’s focus on transparency. (He is part of the Cambridge Committee for Transparency and Accountability in Government, which hosted a series of political forums this year.)
In an aside, Decker referred to herself as “the disruptor at the House that actually pushes [other legislators] to do things that they don’t want to do, because the majority of the people I serve with come from communities that had a higher voter turnout for Trump in this election than last election.” This is true of Cambridge too, according to official results from the city’s Election Commission: While in 2016 the Trump turnout was 3,323 votes, or 6.2 percent of voters, that rose to 6.4 percent in 2020 (a total 3,519 votes) and hit 8.2 percent in 2024 with 4,159 votes cast for Trump.
Hecht and Provost for MacKay
Evan MacKay, meanwhile, spent Saturday canvassing with supporters and hosted a rally with Claire Valdez, who won her June primary for New York’s 7th Congressional District, and this week touted endorsements by former Massachusetts representatives Jonathan Hecht and Denise Provost. “We represented West Cambridge and Somerville for decades, and we’re proud to support Evan MacKay for state rep in Cambridge,” they said in a campaign text.
Bicycle Safety group for Solet
The Cambridge Bicycle Safety community advocacy group endorsed David Solet on Wednesday in his run for Middlesex district attorney against 13-year incumbent Marian Ryan. The group said its endorsement reflected Solet’s commitment to modernizing the DA’s office “to confront today’s evolving public safety challenges, including dangers on the road”; under Ryan, the office has investigated several bicyclist deaths with results that many riders have found unsatisfying. “Many members of the bicycling community have been frustrated by the pace and limited transparency surrounding serious-injury and fatal roadway cases,” the group said. “There can be lengthy periods with little information, unanswered questions about available evidence, and limited explanation of how charging and disposition decisions were reached.”
Cambridge Bicycle Safety said Solet committed to all reforms it proposed aimed at more timely and consistent handling of serious roadway cases. “He also proposed creating a full-time chief of motor vehicle homicide, strengthening serious-crash investigations, improving coordination with the Massachusetts State Police crash reconstruction unit, intervening more effectively in repeat dangerous-driving cases before they become fatal, improving communication with victims and families and substantially expanding public reporting,” the group said.
Solet, a Cambridge resident, worked under Ryan as a prosecutor and cold-case investigator and has been endorsed by several public safety unions and organizations. A spokesperson for Ryan’s campaign team has said she joins other incumbent attorney generals in refusing to accept endorsements from police unions.
Abundant Housing for Rogers
Yet more endorsements: Abundant Housing Massachusetts has announced support for state representative David Rogers, who is running for reelection in the 24th Middlesex district. Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director at the six-year-old advocacy group, said its reasons are simple: The organization backs candidate that share its commitment to building more homes, and Rogers “has been a consistent leader on pro-housing legislation.”
Rogers was lead sponsor of a law passed last session that guaranteed legal representation to residents facing eviction, and now is lead sponsor of a bill that would set statewide housing production targets for market-rate and income-restricted housing, Kanson-Benanav said.
A campaign’s worth for Connolly
The campaign of Mike Connolly, who is running for reelection as state representative in the 26th Middlesex District against challenger Neil Miller, put out a press release Wednesday with a long list of endorsements (including from Abundant Housing Massachusetts). He “has earned the trust and support of every major organization endorsing in the race, both locally and across the state. The coalition backing Connolly includes over 30 organizations, representing thousands of organizers and activists fighting on the front lines and working on the most pressing issues facing our state,” his campaign said. Jonathan Cohn, policy director at Progressive Massachusetts, called Connolly “the rare state representative who gets an ’A’ every year on our Progressive Scorecard.”
Connolly said he was honored by the backing coming “from teachers and housing advocates to nurses and climate activists,” including from some organizations that “do not offer their support lightly. In some cases, I am the only incumbent, or one of just a few, to receive their endorsement.”
About the race districts
The 2nd Middlesex (a state Senate seat held by Pat Jehlen, in the office since 2005 but is retiring) includes the cities of Somerville and Medford; and parts of Cambridge and Winchester. Sought by: Burhan Azeem, Christine Barber, Matt McLaughlin, Erika Uyterhoeven
The 24th Middlesex (a state House seat held by Dave Rogers, in the office since 2013) includes parts of North Cambridge and Arlington and all of Belmont. Sought by: Nomita Ganguly
The 25th Middlesex (a state House seat held by Marjorie Decker, in the office since 2013) includes the central slice of Cambridge, following Massachusetts Avenue from Central Square through Harvard Square and just past Porter Square. Sought by: Evan MacKay
The 26th Middlesex (a state House seat held by Mike Connolly, in the office since 2017) includes East Cambridge and East Somerville. Sought by: Neil Miller
The 27th Middlesex (a state House seat held by Erika Uyterhoeven, in the office since 2021 but running for Jehlen’s state Senate seat) includes much of Somerville. Sought by: Ben Ewen-Campen, Olivia Gilligan-Corsetti
The 34th Middlesex (a state House seat held by Christine Barber, in the office since 2015 but running for Jehlen’s state Senate seat) includes parts of Somerville and Medford. Sought by: Will Mbah, Christopher Oates, Paul Ruseau
The Suffolk and Middlesex (a state Senate seat held by Will Brownsberger, in office since 2009 and running for reelection) includes the cities of Watertown and Belmont and parts of Cambridge and Boston. Sought by: Daniel Lander, Brandon Wood
This post was updated Aug. 20, 2026, to make the distinction that the People’s Pledge refers to money from super political action committees and to add Paul Ruseau’s statement. It was updated Aug. 21, 2026, with an updated sentence from Ruseau’s statement.
