Official results out of Cambridge showed that incumbent Marjorie Decker prevailed in her primary election for the 25th Middlesex District’s state house seat.
With 99% of votes counted, Decker’s total was 4,104 votes to challenger Evan MacKay’s 3,599 votes. The race was a closely watched rematch between the two, after Decker’s 41-vote victory in 2024.
In a statement, MacKay congratulated Decker on her victory, saying to supporters “Although we did not win this election, we built something real.”
“We took on the political establishment and built a movement that could not be ignored … We look forward to working with Representative Decker and our community in advancing the commitments made during this election.”
The race for state senate between incumbent Sen. Will Brownsberger and Daniel Lander is still too close to call. Brownsberger’s preliminary and unofficial vote count was 11,997, Lander’s 11,936. In Cambridge, Lander had 1,818 votes to Brownsberger’s 1,553. Whether Brownsberger’s lead of 61 votes is enough, with auxiliary and overseas ballots still to be counted, is not yet clear. (Disclosure: Lander’s mother, Lori Lander, is on the Local News Fund Advisory Board at the Cambridge Community Foundation, which has given financial support to Cambridge Day.)
Uyterhoeven declares victory
With 37 percent of the vote, current state house Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven won in the primary for the 2nd Middlesex District in the state Senate.
Uyterhoeven received 12,335 votes, besting fellow state house Rep. Christine Barber’s 10,142 (30.4 percent), Cambridge vice mayor Burhan Azeem’s 6,073 (18.2 percent) and Somerville city councillor Matt McLaughlin’s 4,171 (12.5 percent).
“We scared the s*** out of the status quo tonight,” she told supporters at a gathering at Sally O’Brien’s on Tuesday night.
In other results from the primary, state Rep. David Rogers was declared the winner by the AP in his race against Nomita Ganguly, joining Will Mbah and Ben Ewen-Campen in the victory column.
Rep. Mike Connolly handily defeated challenger Neil Miller, with nearly 76 percent of the vote in the majority Cambridge district.
With 87.5 percent reporting, Rogers received 6,906 votes and Ganguly 2,867. Ganguly in her concession speech, said “I want to congratulate Rep. Rogers on his re-election. He ran a very decent campaign and I’m grateful for that.”
Mbah won his primary race to represent the 34th Middlesex District in the State House overt Paul Ruseau and Chris Oates. Preliminary results from Somerville have Mbah has 3,745, to 1,924 for Ruseau, a Medford School Committee member, and 1,250 votes for Chris Oates, a political risk consultant. Mbah received 54.1 percent of the votes cast. There is no Republican candidate so the primary race effectively decides who will represent the district after the November election.
Mbah will join his fellow Somerville City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen on Beacon Hill. Earlier tonight Ewen-Campen was projected to win his race to represent the 27th Middlesex District in the State House, ahead of Olivia Gilligan-Corsetti. The AP declared Ewen-Campen the victor shortly after 9:00 p.m. Unofficial tallies from Somerville had with 7,116 votes and Gilligan-Corsetti 3,068 votes.
At her watch party, Gilligan-Corsetti said “I knew when I decided to run that it was a real uphill battle. I was coming into the race late and going against someone who was established.” She said “I have people I’ve known my whole life, say, ‘well, you’re not going to win. But you’ll learn things.’ And when folks came to me and said, like, thank you so much for running, it reminded me of the reason we put ourselves out there. The crazy people who run for office, yeah?”
In the context for Middlesex District Attorney, Marian T. Ryan handily defeated David Solet, who worked for her for 20 years. In the Governor’s Council races, both incumbents were projected to win, with District 3’s Mara Dolan garnering 74.6 percent of the vote to Margie Palladino’s 25.4 percent with nearly 94 percent of the vote counted, and District 6’s Terrence Kennedy garnering 58.2 percent of the vote over challenger Diann Bayliss, with almost 98 percent of votes counted.
The AP also declared Sen. Ed Markey the victor over Rep. Seth Moulton to claim the Democratic nomination for Senator. In the Republican primary for governor, Michael Minogue had garnered almost 76 percent of the vote with more than 94 percent counted. Minogue will face Gov. Maura Healey in the general election.
This story was updated to reflect the unofficial results of the primary election, as aggregated by the Associated Press on Sept. 2, 2026.
This story was reported by Jennifer Chen, Taylor Coester, Alex Degterev and Ruth Tam. Material from Belmont Voice was also used.
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I hope councilor Azeem got a reality check.