South Ender Is Last Candidate Standing In House Special Election
The field of candidates for an open House seat representing Boston’s South End and part of Dorchester has narrowed to a single candidate two weeks ahead of the special primary election.
Amparo “Chary” Ortiz appears to have dropped out of the contest for the Ninth Suffolk District, leaving Biogen employee John Moran as the lone hopeful still in the running. Ortiz did not immediately respond to a News Service inquiry on Tuesday, but Moran praised her in a press release announcing she had “suspended her campaign” and the Boston Globe quoted a statement from Ortiz saying she backed away “to attend to personal and family matters.”
No Republicans qualified for the ballot, leaving an easy path to victory for Moran, a housing advocate from the South End who works as Biogen’s associate director for business operations, now that his route through the Democratic primary has cleared.
Moran is vying to succeed former Rep. Jon Santiago, who resigned just weeks into the 2023-2024 term to join Gov. Maura Healey’s administration as the state’s first Cabinet-level secretary of veterans’ services.
Voters will also pick a new representative for the 10th Suffolk District that stretches from Jamaica Plain to West Roxbury and parts of Brookline, which was last held by former Rep. Ed Coppinger. He resigned for a job at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. Bill MacGregor of West Roxbury, Robert Patrick Orthman of Roslindale and Celia Segel of Jamaica Plain, all Democrats, are on the ballot for that May 2 special primary election. Whoever wins the primary will advance to the May 30 special general election with no Republican opponent. – Chris Lisinski/SHNS
Many seats in Massachusetts go unopposed. There are a signifigant amount of people who don’t vote anymore who probably would vote if a good Republican candidate was on the ballot. The RINO crowd doesn’t help matters. I have a RINO as a state rep. She’s even worse than many democrats. She is one of the most self absorbed drama queens that ever served on Beacon Hill. Her daddy was a Bush appointee years ago.
Anyone who donates to the failed and incompetent MassGOP as an entity is an outright dope. Pick your favored Republican candidates–if any arise–and make your donations to them directly.
Yet the MassGOP was able to scrounge up 2 Rinos to fill vacancies on their MassGOP State Committee during that embarrassing “Commie Caucus” they held in Dorchester 2 weeks ago. Welcome to the Great Leap Forward Comrades.
There is nothing worse than watching a special election go by where Republicans become only observers rather than participants. I consider myself a center right independent voter. Once a former Democrat up until a couple of years ago. I however can not yet switch to being a Republican because in this state that could be just so useless and waste of time. I always vote for the best or better candidates running but if I lived in the 9th House district covering much of the South End (where I grew up as a kid), I would be blanking the ballot in the upcoming special election. The MassGOP needs to be finding candidates to challenge Democrats wherever the opportunity presents itself. There’s nothing wrong with running for office and losing. Better to lose than curse the darkness. Accepting the status quo of Politics 101 and throwing up your hands and accepting defeat without even trying guarantees the Mass. Republican Party could be cancelled out by an act of its own, a form of political suicide. What is the answer to this prophetic future?