By Elise Harmon, news correspondent
Midterm elections marked losses for Democrats both in Mass. and across the nation as Republican Charlie Baker was elected governor and Republicans gained control of the Senate by winning seven new seats.
Mass. voters flocked to polls on Tuesday to decide on four referendum questions and elect several positions including governor, attorney general, senator and nine congressional representatives.
The three independent gubernatorial candidates together received over 105,000 votes. Evan Falchuk, an entrepreneur, surpassed the minimum needed to make the United Independent Party official. In order to be an official party in Mass., candidates have to maintain three percent of the vote in statewide elections. Unofficial parties are barred from receiving the same amount of donations official ones. Scott Lively, a pastor who ran on a platform of conservatism, came in second among independent candidates with about 19,000 votes, and Jeff McCormick, founder of Saturn Partners, came in third with 16,000 votes.
Democrat Maura Healey, an alumna of Northeastern University’s law school, won Coakley’s former position as Attorney General, beating Republican Party opponent John Miller by 24 points. William Galvin easily retook his position as Secretary of State with 68 percent of votes against Republican David D’Arcangelo, who received 29 percent of votes, and Green Party candidate Daniel Factor, who received 4 percent. Democrats Deborah Goldberg and Suzanne Bump won the Treasurer and Auditor races, respectively.
Ed Markey won the congressional senate race against opponent Brian Herr, and all nine representatives elected or reelected to the House were Democrats. The Mass. congressional representatives are Richard Neal, James McGovern, Niki Tsongas, Joseph Kennedy III, Katherine Clark, Seth Moulton, Michael Capuano, Stephen Lynch and William Keating.
In Mass., voters weighed in on four statewide ballot questions, favoring eliminating gas tax indexing (annually adjusting the gas tax to reflect the change in the Consumer Price Index) and supporting earned sick time for employees. Voters rejected a measure to prohibit casinos, as well as a proposal to expand the beverage container deposit law, which was supported by environmental activists. The so-called “bottle bill” has been in effect since 1982, but advocates have been urging the legislature to update the law since 2000 to no avail.
The results of the gubernatorial election were left in doubt Tuesday night, the discrepancy between Coakley and Baker less than a single percentage point for most of the evening. Coakley, lagging slightly behind, announced that she wouldn’t concede until every vote was counted.
Baker agreed, telling reporters, “in politics and elections, every vote counts. I am fine with giving her until the morning. That’s the way it works and that’s the way it should work.”
Current Gov. Deval Patrick released a video Wednesday morning on his mass.gov website congratulating the governor-elect and lieutenant governor-elect without specifically naming them.
“Congratulations again on winning the election,” he said in the video. “We stand ready to help with a smooth transition and wish you all the best for a successful administration.”
Coakley conceded the election to Baker through a phone call at 8:15 Wednesday morning. Results at the time placed Baker leading by about 38,000 votes, or 48.41 percent, and Coakley with 46.63 percent, in the closest Mass. gubernatorial race since 1964.
“I told him I am going to hold him to his campaign promises because I have his phone number,” she said in a speech in front of supporters in Somerville on Wednesday morning, according to WBZ. “So he will be hearing from me.”
Baker spoke to supporters following his win, thanking them for their vote.
“We’re fired up,” he said of himself and those involved in his campaign in a video released by WVCB. “We’re as fired up as you are, we’re as excited as you are, and we can’t wait to make this state sing from one end to the other. Across the Commonwealth, in every region, in every town, in every community, [we’ll] build the great Massachusetts that we all dreamed and hoped for.”
On a national scale, Democrats lost their majority in the Senate, with seven seats turned over to Republicans. In the House of Representatives, Democrats lost 14 seats to Republicans. This is the first time that Republicans have had majorities in both the House and the Senate since 1996, when Bill Clinton was elected president.
President Barack Obama responded to the loss of the Senate in a press conference Wednesday afternoon, congratulating Republican candidates for running strong campaigns.
“What stands out to me, though, is the American people sent a message,” he said at the press conference. “One that they’ve sent for several elections now. They expect the people they elect to work as hard as they do. They expect us to focus on their ambitions and not ours. They want us to get the job done.”
In Mass., voter turnout was about 49 percent. This turnout rate is down significantly from the 2012 election, when 73.3 percent of registered voters in Mass. cast ballots. Similar to the 2010 midterms, which had a turnout rate of slightly less than 50 percent.
Nationally, there was a 21 percent turnout of people aged 18 to 29.
Northeastern students ranged from having no idea that an election was even happening to attending the candidates’ election night parties.
“I didn’t have time to vote,” Victor Monterroso, third-year computer science major, said. “I looked at the [ballot] questions and formed opinions on them, so I feel like I performed my civic duty.”
Heather Mottau, a sophomore women’s ice hockey player who organized the “Jock the Vote” voter registration campaign, thinks it’s important for youth to vote, even if they don’t believe their votes matter.
“You kind of realize how, for example, Obama in the 2012 election won three states because of the youth vote,” Mottau said. “I think there are a lot of issues affecting younger people, and the most important aspect of why I think youth should vote is that politicians are never going to gear their campaigns toward youth… until they start voting.”
Photo courtesy Charlie Baker for Governor 2014
