Massachusetts Primary Preview Part 1

markeychusetts

As we’ve had to do before, we’re splitting this primary preview into two pieces, because Massachusetts has so many seriously-contested primaries that it goes over Substack’s length limit. This will cover federal elections, the state Senate, and other state and local elections. Part 2 will cover the state House of Representatives.

Federal

MA-Sen Ed Markey (i) vs. Joseph Kennedy III

Here’s a fun article in retrospect, from Politico, March 15, 2013: Greens flocking to Markey for Senate. The article looks at the environmental movement’s unusually extensive involvement in the Senate special election between then-Reps. Ed Markey and Stephen Lynch. Green groups express excitement at Markey’s positions and lay out their plan to target young voters. They also lay out a big underlying motivation: 

“[A] Markey victory will show Washington policymakers that pro-environment candidates win elections.

“We want to send a message to Washington and to the president that this is the thing that gets people excited.”

That sentiment is more relevant than ever. Was Ed Markey a conservative on some social issues in his first few terms? Yes. Did he vote for the Iraq War, crime bill, and a variety of other regrettable pieces of legislation? Yes. Markey was a moderate who moved left over the years, but retained a caution about him. It’s only recently that he’s really let loose, something that first became visible with the bold declaration that was sponsoring the Green New Deal, and embracing the left even further after that. Markey didn’t come up from any activist circles, and for most of his career no one would call him a leftist. But he did something very important. He got on board. He got on board with AOC, Sunrise, and the new, youth-led activist climate movement in general.

That matters. Markey is an ally, and the left is out to prove that becoming an ally is more than just not a hazard to your career—it’s a benefit. And I think we’re doing just that. Markey was ridiculously vulnerable in hypothetical polling years out. When Kennedy announced, Markey was down, and stayed down for months. Kennedy led in every single poll, and the last poll taken before the early summer polling drought, Kennedy was leading by 16%. And then something magical happened. The climate movement, progressive institutions, and the left got to work. The Markey campaign leaned into it all, hard. AOC cut a great ad for him, unions started spending on him, and if you’re one of our readers who don’t use twitter, instagram, or tik tok, it’s hard to describe the energy surrounding this race on social media. It was so intense that the Kennedy campaign, once they realized they were down, pulled a move from the 2020 presidential campaign centrist playbook and started complaining to the media about Markey Bros online.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Kennedy was running a campaign about generational change, and new voices, and all of those exciting sounding platitudes that don’t require taking any actual positions. Kennedy, from the beginning, was a threat to win this seat for the same reason that he was selected to give the 2018 State of the Union response: he inherited the Kennedy looks along with the name, and he’s a solid public speaker who can put meaning into words that don’t contain any on their own. His beliefs? There’s no need to get bogged down in trivialities like that. After all, as he’s said, “there’s more to this job than the way you vote and the bills that you file”. What that “more” is in any specific sense, how he would differ from Markey, or why he’s even running in the first place are details he didn’t feel the need to worry himself over. In a way, it would be a detriment to him or this campaign if there were anything obvious that he believed in. It could only distract from his last name.

Not that he’s actually running on his last name of course. Oh no, no no, he would never stoop to that level. But as the summer wore on, it was clear that he didn’t feel confident in his lead. First, the campaign went negative, and he was not particularly nimble about it (Kennedy’s comms director would like to remind you that he opposed abortion during the Carter administration). By July, there was a tangible sense things were going poorly at team Kennedy. So Kennedy leaned into the name, more and more. Ads, speeches, even down to the buttons. There’s no more high-minded platitudes about service anymore. It’s just raw, unfiltered Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. His recent ads are barely removed from him screaming “I’m JFK”. 

In its closing days, this race offers a starker choice than ever. Are Democrats going to let politicians get by on a pretty face, a good speech, and the existential quality of “rising star” that party leaders and easily amused pundits can confer to politicians they think have all the qualities of a good politician in a movie, or will Democrats demand something: results, a vision for the future, a willingness to engage with activists before it comes time for a photo op? If polls are to be believed, the answer is the latter. We’ve had five polls of the race this month. The absolute worst Markey’s done in any of them was leading by 7%. This isn’t a slam dunk. The polls could be wrong, or maybe undecided voters just break hard for Kennedy—primaries can be fluid that way. But goddamn it, we’re going to let ourselves be optimistic. We guess we’ll know soon.

MA-01 Springfield and the Berkshires

Richard Neal (i) vs. Alex Morse

The race is quirky in a lot of ways. Progressives aren’t used to having an established officeholder to back, there’s been Arati Kreibich, Eva Putzova, and Esmerelda Soria, but none of them got much backing from the national groups like this race did. This is an unusually rural district, and ideological stakes like we haven’t seen in a while. Richard Neal has a problematic record, from anti-abortion policies that were at one point as bad as stripping funding from Planned Parenthood for their abortion services and voting for Stupak-Pitts, to supporting no-knock warrants and the death penalty.

But none of that compares to the power Richard Neal has as Ways and Means chairman, and how thoroughly that allows him to shape public policy, from when he single-handedly prevented an end to surprise medical billing and kept tax preparers from having to offer a free version of their software, to bigger-picture issues like how he’ll factor into health care reform and environmental legislation as the man who holds the purse strings and opposed both Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. And maybe he’ll finally fulfill his lifelong dream of killing the AMT.

Holyoke mayor Alex Morse (who we interviewed way back when) has been running an energetic campaign to scale one of the steepest cliffs in the country a progressive like him has faced. Justice Democrats is in deep in this race, their last of the primary cycle (unless they endorse Jess Scarane. Dear Mr. J Democrats, if you’re reading this, please do that). They’ve put the most money in, to the tune of $710,000, and they’ve crafted a message of an incumbent who’s gone Washington, taken special interest money, and betrayed his constituents. Plus they’ve also released this truly... unique radio ad, which we suggest you listen to. You’ll hate it. But like maybe it’s effective? Who knows. It’s the Metal Machine Music of radio ads regardless. 

Other big help from Morse has come from Sunrise, mostly in the form of volunteer manpower, Indivisible, and the Faiz Shakir/Morgan Harper outfit Fight Corporate Monopolies. We understated both of their investments in the last issue (one because of an FEC error, but the other was literally us missing a zero, sorry), so we should be clear that both put in over $400,000 in this race. The Berkshire DSA, Massachusetts Nurses Association, and LGBTQ Victory Fund are also putting in work here.

Neal is backed up by A) his 5 million dollar war chest, and B) a loose confederation of medical industry interests stacked on top of each other in a trench coat. No fewer than 5 medical industry PACs are involved, some formed specifically for this race, as is the Democratic Majority for Israel, a Republican-backed PAC which is the only thing resembling a consistent centrist Democratic interest in this year’s primaries. The panicked Save Richie Neal operation probably won’t hit $10 million when everything gets tallied up, but it won’t be that far from it either. A lot of powerful interests will benefit from a close ally being one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, and they aren’t shy about spending to protect him.

We can’t talk about this race without mentioning the College Democrats saga, one of the most infuriating weeks of the primary season so far. This newsletter has already discussed it extensively, but very quickly: Morse, who is gay, single, and in his early 30s, had been hooking up with college students at some local schools. This was more or less known for a while, but it became national news when some members of the local College Democrats felt that his advances towards them weren’t appropriate. This was then weaponized by Neal allies within the organization and in Massachuetts Democrats. Surreptitious emails were sent to reporters to get them to look into “creepy Alex Morse”, a letter written in private to Morse saying he was disinvited from events and why was leaked to the press, and things got out of control quickly. 

Morse was accused of being unprofessional and maybe not considering if someone he was hitting on might take his position within the party to mean there would be consequences to saying no. Morse’s initial response was a little confused, but within a few days he said he wasn’t trying to use his position that way, but he could see how someone might think that, he apologized to anyone who did, and he’d be more careful going forward. It was basically what you’d expect if this had all been handled in private. But the public nature of this allowed for a media firestorm, and attacks that were opportunistic, and yes, often homophobic. After a series of Intercept investigations, the involvement of Neal allies and the underhanded nature of what went on became apparent, and College Democrats apologized for the whole incident. People can bring their own reads on whether being a local party power player and an adjunct at the university means Morse crossed a line by getting involved with students. He says he should have been more thoughtful, and yeah, that seems fair. But it’s pretty clear, based on the way that Neal allies were acting, that the intention was to blow this up and sink Morse’s campaign. While the scandal itself is mostly out of the news by now, Neal allies are still airing commercials about it.

Recent polls have shown Neal up single digits. The most recent, commissioned by Jewish Insider, found Neal up 49-40, although the 4% Hispanic sample seems suspect in a 14% Hispanic district. A Morse internal had him down 46-41 a couple weeks ago. We’re not flying as blind as we were in MO-01, so we can say that this race will be close but Morse winning would be an upset. 

MA-04 Wealthy Boston suburbs and working class towns stretching to Rhode Island

Jake Auchincloss vs. Becky Grossman vs. Alan Khazei vs. Ihssane Leckey vs. Natalia Linos vs. Jesse Mermell vs. Ben Sigel vs. (Chris Zannetos vs. Dave Cavell)

We’d like to politely request this race just go away. Stop it. No thank you.

Okay, so there are nine candidates on the ballot, but two, Dave Cavell and Chris Zannetos, dropped out to endorse Jesse Mermell. A third, Ben Sigel, is definitely going to lose, so that leaves us with six.

Jake Auchincloss: Newton City Councilor and the disaster scenario. This man isn’t just a centrist, he was a Republican until recently. In 2014 he worked as a paid Republican operative. He’s a Confederate flag defender, a furious opponent of the left, and you what? He’s a dweeb. A centrist, “look at how much of a troop I am” Seth fucking Moulton worshipping dweeb. That’s true in a personal sense, but we mean that in a political sense. He will never stand for anything, or stand up for anything, if it doesn't win him head pats from the kind of pundits who should never be listened to under any circumstances. We are pro-nerd, pro-geek, pro-loser, pro-dork—in fact we are all of those things—but we are anti-dweeb, and he is ground zero for political dweebism. He’s also maybe the frontrunner, not because his politics have majority support in the district, but because he’s been consolidating the conservative southwest, and that might be good enough for a quarter of the vote.

Jesse Mermell: Former Brookline select board member and Deval Patrick aide. She’s the mainstream/establishment choice in this race, with backers from Maura Healey to Ayanna Pressley. Her policy platform is solid but unspectacular. She’s behind all the big ticket items like Medicare for All, Green New Deal, and free college (we unintentionally misrepresented her position previously, sorry about that), but you wouldn’t confuse her for a socialist. Remember how we made the point in MA-Sen about how Markey, despite having an iffy record, was embracing and being embraced by the national progressive movement, and that made his victory paramount? Mermell is sort of the inverse. She’s good on pretty much every big issue being debated within the party right now (except for her squishiness on Palestinian rights), but she’s a product of a certain wing of the Massachusetts establishment. And, big picture, that’s a good thing. We want establishments that produce people with her politics! But when battle lines get drawn nationally, it’s less than clear where she’d stand. Still, polling has shown her in the top tier of this race, and she’s the most likely progressive to win here.

Becky Grossman: Newton City Councilor and the daughter-in-law of former state treasurer and DNC chair Steven Grossman. She’s running as a moderate, but not as the obnoxious recent Republican that Auchincloss is. Her self-funding has kept her competitive, but her support has come more from random party figures than from grassroots groups or unions (firemen excepted). She’s been in the top tier all campaign, but a recent poll shows her slipping.

Ihssane Leckey: Leckey began the campaign as a democratic socialist challenger to Joe Kennedy before he announced his Senate bid. She was initially the choice of the left, and is very conspicuously running as the candidate of Bernie and the Squad, but has since made some on the left wary after allegations of staff mistreatment, a million dollars of self-funding following what some called a misrepresentation of her wealth, and a feud with the Boston DSA. She does have organic in-district support from progressive and leftist organizations, as well as endorsements from Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush, but the big two that generally signify a national coalescing around a candidate in a crowded field: AOC and Bernie, who got involved in WA-10, NY-15, NY-16, and NY-17, have stayed out here. Leckey has been hovering under the top tier of Auchincloss, Grossman, and Mermell, but she can’t be counted out.

Alan Khazei: Now we’re getting to the candidates you maybe can count out. Khazei has run for Senate twice before, in 2009 and 2012, and he’s an idiosyncratic figure who’s progressive in some areas, not so in others, and supported by the weirdest collection of endorsers in the race. Khazei is down in the polls, and that’s a bad sign considering he should have some residual name recognition from his Senate runs. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm.

Natalia Linos: Linos is the least problematic candidate from a campaign finance perspective—her $35,000 of self funding is dwarfed by every other candidate, who have all gotten six figures of help from either themselves a super PAC. Unfortunately, that’s also meant she’s been greatly outspent, and she’s hovering around 5 and 6 in the polls with Khazei. Her platform is progressive and her campaign is grassroots, but she seems locked out here.

MA-06 North Shore and Lowell

Seth Moulton (i) vs. Angus McQuilken vs. Jamie Zahlaway Belsito

Seth Moulton is an annoying youngish centrist who briefly ran for president on a platform of annoying youngish centrism, then dropped out because it turned out Pete Buttigieg had cornered the market for annoying youngish centrism. He’s also a congressman in his spare time, and not a good one: while Nancy Pelosi isn’t exactly great, the effort to replace her in 2018 was a project of the Democratic Party’s right wing, and Moulton was one of its most prominent faces (until the attempted legislative coup fell apart, spectacularly.) Unfortunately, he’s going to skate to renomination. Gun violence prevention advocate Angus McQuilken hasn’t gained traction, and neither has Jamie Zahlaway Belsito, a Baker appointee to Salem State University’s Board of Trustees.

MA-08 South Boston, Jamaica Plain, the South Shore, Brockton

Stephen Lynch (i) vs. Robbie Goldstein

Stephen Lynch is one of the worst members of the Democratic caucus, and he held that distinction even when the caucus included a bunch of rural Southern Blue Dogs who were effectively Republicans. He still describes himself as pro-life. He originally entered politics in part because he didn’t think his state representative had done enough to keep the gays out of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. (No, really.) He voted for the war in Iraq and againstabortionrights. He voted for a border wall and against Obamacare (ostensibly from the left, but nothing about Stephen Lynch’s career says he would ever vote against a Democratic bill from the left.) He thinks the media is too hard on Donald Trump. You get the picture.

What separates him from most of the caucus’s other terrible standouts is that he represents a very Democratic district. Now, maybe this kind of politics was a good fit for the Democrats of 1990s South Boston, where Lynch got his start; for a long while, it hasn’t been a good fit for the Democrats of...well, anywhere. And Lynch is finally getting a tough primary from progressive challenger Robbie Goldstein—but there’s a catch: national progressive groups have, for whatever reason, largely ignored it. (Though local progressives haven’t: Sunrise Boston, the Boston Teachers’ Union, and Progressive Massachusetts have backed Goldstein. To their credit, Indivisible, the national anti-Trump activist network, has backed Goldstein as well.)

Dr. Robbie Goldstein is an infectious disease specialist and the founder of the Transgender Health Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. (We interviewed him a couple weeks ago.) He’s a gay progressive who supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, sweeping police reform, and more; Lynch halfheartedly supports the Green New Deal and is otherwise opposed to basically any progressive policy you can think of. (Unsurprising coming from a man who once described himself as “the conservative candidate”.) Goldstein’s campaign has gained momentum late, and he’s actually outspent the incumbent on TV (though neither has spent much considering the price of Boston-area TV advertising); this one is worth watching for an upset. (And what a satisfying upset it would be.)

State Senate

Massachusetts, like New Hampshire and Vermont, refuses to actually number their districts and instead insists on naming them by the counties they’re in, even though counties are basically not a real governing unit in New England. Massachusetts legislative elections have traditionally been pretty sleepy, but progressives across the state are pumped this year and taking on an entrenched, often conservative state leadership and political culture. The Democratic establishment has an ally in this fight that will be surprising to some, but only if you’re not familiar with Massachusetts: Republican Governor Charlie Baker, who the Democratic leadership in the legislature is on great terms with and rarely crosses. Baker wants to save his allies, so he’s set up a PAC that’s backed 13 Democrats in contested primaries, mostly incumbents. You could call them Baker’s baker’s dozen…but we won’t be calling them that any more time because we understand that people are going to be, like, reading this. But still, you could if you want to.

Hampden Springfield, Chicopee, and West Springfield

James Welch (i) vs Adam Gomez

This district is the most Hispanic in the state—over 40% of the population. If the primary electorate isn’t majority Hispanic, it’s close, which is probably why James Welch, an unremarkable liberal, was held to a 58% to 42% primary victory against an unheralded Hispanic challenger in 2018. Springfield City Councilor Adam Gomez is running this year, and is a more imposing challenger than Welch has ever faced before. While labor has stuck by Welch, Gomez is supported by not just the statewide progressive and environmental groups, but also by a variety of Springfield politicians. Welch is from the suburb of West Springfield. Gomez’s platform includes green investments, and supporting the single payer system that Welch balked at when it came up for a vote years ago.

Norfolk, Bristol & Plymouth Boston suburbs extending south

Walter Timilty Jr. (i) vs. Jarred Rose

Walter Timilty Jr. is part of the powerful Timilty family in Norfolk County politics (seriously, they have a section in the Wikipedia “political families” page). Timilty, like the rest of his family, is a conservative. His anti-gay record is long-established, including being one of the few Democrats to attempt to constitutionally ban gay marriage years after it became law in the state. He’s not even nominally pro-choice like his ex-Senator cousin was, he’s “““pro-life”””, and in his legislative capacity consitently opposes anything that would actually increase access to abortion, most recently as the only Democrat to oppose funding for family planning clinics. He’s also been working this session to water down policing reform, even as his primary is heating up.

Jarred Rose, a former Senate legislative aide, is running a progressive campaign, with a particular focus on a Green New Deal for Massachusetts. Rose is a Town Meeting member of Stoughton (pop 27,000), though you shouldn’t be too impressed by that—there are 168 of them in Stoughton. More impressive is the campaign he’s been running, which has run circles around Timilty, who chose to sit on a $100,000 campaign fund instead of putting a lot of effort into a race that has serious upset potential. It’s similar in many ways to MA-08, which the district is mostly inside of, with the difference being that you can run a state senate campaign on 20 or 30 thousand dollars. 

Stonewall Democrats, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood (the last of which Timilty has specifically voted against funding for) have endorsed Rose, as have more broadly progressive groups. Timilty has some of the more conservative unions, and he’s one of Charlie Baker’s preferred Democrats. This part of Massachusetts, south and west of Boston, has historically been much more conservative, but this district’s base is increasingly concentrated in the suburban north, and the result may wind up being a geographic tug of war. Timilty is probably the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and Rose beating him would be not just a massive ideological shift, but a serious changing of the guard and symbolic end to the power of politicians like him and his family, especially if his cousin also loses (see Norfolk County Sheriff for more on that.)

2nd Plymouth & Bristol Brockton and nearby towns

Michael Brady (i) vs. Moises Rodrigues

On March 24, Michael Brady was arrested by Weymouth police for drunk driving. He was too drunk to drive straight and was arrested going to a liquor store for even more booze. When the police approached him, he tried to get them to let him off because of his position. The Senate stripped him of his Committeeship over that particular abuse of power, but it was too late to mount a primary election campaign against him, and the district was too Democratic to be competitive in the general. This year he’s facing the primary challenge he was too late for in 2018.

Moises Rodrigues is a City Councilor (and onetime mayor) in Brockton (pop. 96,000), which is where Brady and almost every other Democratic voter in the district lives. Rodrigues’s criticism of Brady’s tenure extends beyond the arrest, and he brings up lack of funding for the city, and Brady’s all-white staff in a district that is more than ⅓ nonwhite. Rodrigues, who immigrated to America as a teenager, is part of Brockton’s largest-in-the-country Cape Verdean community. Rodrigues doesn’t support single payer or universal free college, but he’s on the right side of most issues, and it’s hard to imagine him being to Brady’s right. Rodrigues’s campaign appears to be mostly sign-holding, but a combination of his name recognition and Brady’s scandal could be enough.

1st Suffolk Southie, Dorchester

Nick Collins (i) vs. Samuel Pierce

Nick Collins is seen as something of a rising star, and a monster fundraiser. His opponent is Samuel Pierce, a musician who raised no money and who doesn’t even have a website. This race doesn’t look competitive, even if Collins’s staunch opposition to policing reform might not play well in his majority nonwhite district. The reason we’re including it is because Collins is one of the 13 Democrats that Charlie Baker is spending on. In fact, it’s the most money he’s spent on a legislative race.

Other

The Governor’s Council is a weird little artifact of the past that is now unique to Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They approve a lot of the administrative stuff in the Governor’s office, from appointments to pardons. It’s a neglected office, and candidates, who generally have little money, often find themselves explaining what it is to voters. It’s disregarded and often disrespected. In one district, the 2010 and 2012 elections included a pair of brothers running on opposite party lines to make sure one of them won. But the office does have a lot of power, even if it’s rarely acted upon. Theoretically, this 8-person body could force a progressive, or at least solidly liberal, administration out of Governor Charlie Baker.

Governor’s Council District 6 Boston and north suburbs

Terrence Kennedy (i) vs. Helina Fontes

This district awkwardly combines the northern edge of Boston with a variety of suburbs to its north—and the ultra-lefty college towns of Cambridge and Somerville directly to its west. That provides fertile ground for Helina Fontes, a progressive challenging incumbent Terrence Kennedy. (Who is not one of those Kennedys, as far as we know, but there are just too many Kennedys. It’s very inconvenient that the most famous Irish-American political family has a very common last name.) Kennedy, who has been in office since 2011, is backed by Baker’s PAC. Fontes, a community organizer from Lynn, has the support of some unions and local politicians, as well as quite a few local progressive groups. 

The Governor’s Council is known for approving just about every Baker appointee, and Fontes’s promise is that she’ll be willing to vote no on some of them. You know, as if she were a Democrat and these were Republican appointees, or something ridiculous like that. This naturally, is what set Republican governor Charlie Baker off, and his PAC money has now dwarfed what both Fontes and Kennedy spent in the race. 

Governor’s Council District 7 Central Massachusetts

Paul DePalo vs Padraic Rafferty 

This district is only 49.7 Clinton-41.6 Trump and is currently held by a Republican, but the incumbent’s retiring, and no Republicans are running to replace her. It’s a guaranteed pick up, probably (and we can only speculate here) because Paul DePalo, a progressive Democrat who would have stood up to Baker, nearly won in 2018, and Baker decided that rather than taking his chances keeping a Republican ally in a Democratic district during a presidential year, he’d just elect a Democratic ally instead, and that’s just what he’s attempting to do with Padraic Rafferty, a pretty blatant sleeper agent, who literally donated to the retiring Republican. He works at the law firm of his uncle, also a Republican donor, who represents the state cop union. Unfortunately, DePalo has raised very little money in this race. 

Norfolk County Sheriff

James Coughlin vs. Patrick McDermott vs. Bill Phelan

Norfolk County has a reputation as one of the more socially conservative parts of the state. But in this open sheriff’s race, that could change. The Appeal nicely lays out the stakes here: qualified immunity, cooperation with ICE, and a controversial months-long involuntary drug treatment detention program are all on the ballot, and if you care about making those three things, then the only choice is former Quincy mayor Bill Phelan. Phelan’s running with the support of several (non-cop) unions, and Progressive Massachusetts. James Coughlin is a retired cop, and acts like one. He’s barely distinguishable from the appointed Republican incumbent on many issues. Patrick McDermott (unrelated to the appointed Republican Jerry McDermott, it’s just a very Irish part of the state) is the current Norfolk County Registrar of Probates, one of those “yes they do elect those” offices, and falls between the two ideologically, though he does have the correctional officers’ union endorsement, and as always, expect bad things from any candidate endorsed by the cops.

While we normally stay away from races with Republican incumbents, Jerry McDermott has never been elected; he was appointed by Charlie Baker after the resignation of the previous Democratic incumbent. Norfolk County is very Democratic—Clinton got 60% of the vote, while Trump got less than a third. It’s hard to see the Democratic nominee, whoever that is, losing here.

Norfolk County Treasurer

Michael Bellotti vs. Brad Croall

Brad Croall is fine. He seems fine. It’s whatever. But he absolutely needs to win because his opponent is Michael Bellotti. Bellotti (son of former state Attorney General Francis Bellotti) recently resigned as sheriff of Norfolk County, setting up the special election above. The man has previously considered running statewide. He obviously views this boring, uncontroversial county office as a stepping stone, and that needs to be stopped right now. He was a horrific sheriff. He fought marijuana legalization, is a huge fan of ICE, and there have been complaints about conditions in the jails he ran, as well as overcrowding. Bellotti has a distressing amount of labor behind him in this race, including the patrolman’s union, because of course he does, but stopping him here could mean ending a statewide career before it begins.