Two years ago, labor organizer Evan MacKay came within 41 votes of unseating state representative Marjorie Decker in the 25th Middlesex District seat she’s held since 2013. Decker and her supporters went all out this year to keep it from happening again and succeeded: On Tuesday, according to unofficial election results in a Democrat primary, the gap between Decker and MacKay widened this year to 505 votes.
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, and 7,712 ballots cast in the 25th Middlesex. Decker drew 4,104 of those, or 53 percent, with MacKay getting 3,599, or 47 percent of the total.
With no known Republican or third-party candidates named for November’s general election, it’s all but certain that this primary decides the race.
The two campaigns had election night parties not far from each other in Central Square – the Decker campaign at The Phoenix Landing, the MacKay campaign at 730 Tavern, where by shortly after 11 p.m., the up-and-down patterns of votes over the course of the night were beginning to look more down than up. The speeches reflected that sense.
“I really want to thank you for being brave and for putting yourself out there,” city councillor Ayah Al-Zubi said, speaking to a densely packed crowd of volunteers and supporters. When a group photo was organized by the next speaker, it was “to remember every single person in this room, no matter what happens.”
This wasn’t like 2024: Massachusetts incumbents usually romp to reelection, and MacKay was a first-timer – yet came close enough in votes that they felt comfortable declaring a win on election night.
That was premature. MacKay’s 4o-vote lead was turned around the next day after a hand count of some ballots, and Decker wound up ahead by 41 votes. In a Sept. 4, 2024, recount, Decker maintained that lead, coming out ahead 3,471 to MacKay’s 3,430.
Decker fought hard this time, with a relentless ground campaign and seemingly endless contacts with voters online, by phone and by mail.
The district includes the central slice of Cambridge, following Massachusetts Avenue from Central Square through Harvard Square and just past Porter Square. Decker signs became almost ubiquitous, and mailers from the campaign arrived with frequency – in a tally to a single home in Neighborhood 9, the Decker campaign and independent expenditure groups sent or dropped off 17 this season through Thursday, compared with four from the MacKay campaign through Friday. Decker’s closest competitors were in the 2nd Middlesex District, where Christine Barber had nine mailers and Erika Uyterhoeven had eight. Burhan Azeem sent six in that race. All other candidates trailed, most delivering one or two over the months of campaign season.
Outside support for Decker alone amounted to nearly $130,000 by Thursday, when The Harvard Crimson posted a story about the Progressive Cambridge Independent Expenditure political action committee established in July, “drawing six figures in donations in less than two months” and nearly $108,000 in “advertising and other campaign activity supporting Decker – including mailers, digital advertisements, staff time, and a mobile billboard truck.”
Voters saw themes similar from 2024, when MacKay arrived with critiques of Decker’s approach to transparency and Decker highlighted her legislative accomplishments since 2012, when she took up the mantel and seat of mentor Alice Wolf. MacKay said Decker was an example of a broken Beacon Hill, proving it by not rejecting independent expenditure “dark money” and generally serving the powerful against the people. Decker said at a July forum that she could “only try not to laugh” at the charge, “because I’ve spent my entire career trying to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to those who don’t have it.” She also referred often to her legislative record of success for her district, even if she didn’t wholly support the politics-as-usual she’d come to excel at.
The Decker campaign also looked for ways to raise doubts about the MacKay campaign and its candidate, painting MacKay as a coddled Harvard student with little knowledge of life outside the university, and pointed repeatedly to a record of voting Republican. The campaign’s efforts to raise suspicion around MacKay’s votes in Republican primaries in their native Florida missed an explanation from MacKay: that they “answered the call of local racial justice activists to participate in our local competitive elections and vote for the lesser of two evils in the closed Republican primaries.”
Decker said she was seeing from MacKay and their supporters “more personal and misogynistic attacks on me instead of substantive challenges to my work,” and said on Saturday via email that “my opponent sent four mailers yesterday riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations of my record.” It was hard to find evidence of the four mailers or the negativity described in the email; MacKay’s campaign communications have talked about their own accomplishments and goals while sharing criticisms of Massachusetts systems rather than their opponent.
