Kennedy mystique, aging incumbents on the line in primary test of coronavirus era

It’s over. Literally.

Most of the 1.3 million people expected to cast votes in Tuesday’s primary have already mailed in their ballots and now it’s up to a few hundred thousand skittish souls to show up at the voting booth to decide whether a wave of progressive Democratic challengers — and a young Kennedy trying to avert a devastating defeat for the family dynasty — topple aging incumbents in the first major election test of the coronavirus shutdown era.

In the marquee race, 39-year-old U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III is desperately trying to lure older voters and minorities to come to the voting booth to support his upstart challenge to 74-year-old U.S. Sen. Edward Markey. He needs a big in-person turnout in Boston and other cities to avoid being the first Kennedy ever to lose a home state election in Massachusetts.

Markey, who has been in Congress for more than four decades, has locked up younger voters and white, affluent progressives and is riding a wave of late polls showing him with a healthy lead in the race. Both candidates and their supporting super PACs have poured millions into the contest.

The battle between Kennedy and Markey has turned nasty and will be a stern test of the waning power of the Kennedy name.

Kennedy’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy II, is a former congressman and his grandfather is the slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. One of the big mysteries of the race is whether Kennedy’s father has siphoned off millions of dollars from his old congressional campaign account to support a super PAC backing his son.

But the former Brighton congressman, known for his “Joe for Oil” nonprofit that supplies fuel to needy consumers, has strangely been missing from the campaign trail. Sources close to the Kennedy family say Joe II suffers crippling arthritis and other injuries and is in constant pain as a result of a bike accident and can only walk with the aid of braces, which is why he hasn’t actively campaigned for his son.

Markey is not the only longtime member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation to face a tough challenge. U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, the 71-year-old House Ways and Means chairman, is trying to survive a heated primary race against Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse in the western district of the state.

On the North Shore, incumbent congressman and one-time presidential candidate Seth Moulton faces two progressive Democratic challengers. In the South Shore and Cape district, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch has also drawn a Democratic opponent.

And in Kennedy’s 4th District, seven Democratic candidates are vying to win that primary race.

In the State House, several longtime incumbent Democrats also are hoping to avoid getting tossed out by more progressive primary challengers.

With so many means available for voting, state election officials face a unique challenge on Tuesday — how to prevent people from voting multiple times. And Secretary of State William Galvin insists officials have gone to “extraordinary lengths” to make sure booths are clean and safe in the 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. window for voting.

But Galvin admitted he’s had bad dreams about whether votes are counted more than once. Partly because of that, vote-counting will be slower than usual and Galvin says only “hopefully” that we’ll know the final results by Wednesday morning.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3jxx3Zk