With 40 votes between two Democrats running for the 25th Middlesex District, state law could prompt a recount.
The race between 12-year incumbent state Rep. Marjorie Decker and union leader Evan MacKay appeared close enough for a recount with 99% of the votes counted, according to AP results. As of 7:45 a.m. on Wednesday, MacKay has received 3,354, or 50.3%, of the vote, while Decker has received 3,314 votes, or 49.7% of the vote.
Recounts can be requested if the margin of victory is not more than half of 1% of the votes cast for the office, according to Massachusetts state law.
But MacKay declared victory early Tuesday night and told supporters “Our movement has won this election,” while at a bar in Cambridge, the Boston Globe reported.
Decker did not concede and her campaign called MacKay’s declaration of victory “irresponsible,” the Globe wrote.
“It’s reckless and it’s incorrect,” Democratic consultant Jason Cincotti told the Globe. ”We are waiting for all the votes to be counted.”
Were Decker to lose, it would be notable given the low number of incumbents who face a serious primary challenge. Her last primary challenge was in 2018 against Lesley Phillips, according to Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office.
“I’m not going away, trust me,” Decker told supporters in a speech on Tuesday, the Globe wrote. “I don’t know how to go away.”
MacKay, who uses they/them pronouns, thanked campaign volunteers for helping them challenge “impossible odds.”
“This is a wake-up call to the political establishment,” they said, the Globe wrote. “We’ve shown that our movement is mighty.”
Decker served 14 years on the Cambridge City Council before she was elected to the Legislature. She worked as a teacher and then was executive director of the Equal Justice Coalition before joining the City Council in 1999. Gun safety, tackling climate change, labor and worker rights and maternal health and reproductive rights are among her areas of focus, according to her website.
A Cambridge resident, MacKay is also a pro-democracy organizer and a Harvard teaching fellow, according to their profile on Ballotpedia. They also are a Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commissioner and the former president of the Harvard Graduate Students’ Union, according to their campaign website.
