Somerville reelected state representative Mike Connolly in the Democratic primary held Tuesday, according to unofficial election results, beating first-time challenger Neil Miller, a housing advocate. Cambridge results are due.
At his watch party in Cambridge’s Central Square, Connolly said numbers from precincts in that city showed a similar outcome, though Cambridge is slow to report official results. Miller conceded the race before the numbers were reported by its Election Commission, Connolly said.
The Cambridge commission handed out results at 2:08 a.m. There were 20,206 votes cast in Cambridge out of 70,250 registered voters, for 29 percent turnout. Of the 5,206 ballots cast in his district, Connolly took 3,853, or 74 percent. Miller won 1,342 votes, for the remaining 26 percent.
There were 17,250 ballots cast in Somerville out of 54,377 registered voters, for 32 percent turnout. Connolly took 1,216 votes, or 82 percent, while Miller got 275 votes for 18 percent.
Connolly has held the seat, representing East Cambridge and East Somerville, since 2017. With no known Republican or third-party candidates named for November’s general election, it’s likely that the primary decides the race.
It was Connolly’s first challenge at the polls since 2016, when he beat out longtime state representative Tim Toomey for the seat. Since then, he said, he’s sponsored and co-sponsored “groundbreaking legislation to boost housing production, protect tenants, support homeowners and expand affordable housing. I’ve taken on the most powerful interests on Beacon Hill, and worked to pass many of these ideas into law.”
And while Miller began his campaign with a list of general frustrations with public services to fix, such as the bureaucracy of the MassHealth system and “one of the slowest unemployment systems in the country,” as well as the slow pace of a Massachusetts Turnpike redesign and getting stuck in traffic repeatedly on an MBTA bus, he later focused more on housing, citing criticisms of Connolly in a Wednesday mailer.
Connolly replied at length, noting that “every major housing organization and progressive group that has endorsed in this race is supporting my campaign, from Abundant Housing Massachusetts and Somerville Yimby to Our Revolution Cambridge, Progressive Massachusetts, the SEIU State Council and many others.”
