(This caricature of Ed Markey is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)Last night was primary night in Massachusetts, as the voters of both parties went to the polls to select their candidates for the Senate special election -- being held to fill the seat that was vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry.
For the Democrats, it was a race between progressive Rep. Ed Markey and the more conservative Rep. Stephen Lynch. Markey had led in all the polls, and coasted to a pretty easy win -- getting more than 300,000 votes. On the Republican side, the winner was private equity investor (Romney clone?) Gabriel Gomez -- who got slightly less than 100,000 votes. He was opposed by former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and state Rep. Daniel Winslow.
Here are the numbers with 99% of the vote in:
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
Ed Markey...............306,860 (58%)
Stephen Lynch...............226,253 (42%)
REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
Gabriel Gomez...............93,819 (51%)
Michael Sullivan...............66,302 (36%)
Daniel Winslow...............24,099 (13%)
Markey and Gomez will now meet in the June 25th special election, and the winner will become the junior senator from Massachusetts. Markey has to be considered the prohibitive favorite.
