My publisher wondered aloud about the peculiar fact that U.S. Rep. Seth W. Moulton’s Tuesday primary opponents both live in Topsfield. Moulton’s 78 percent win in the primary suggests everyone in Topsfield could have run against him and he still would have won. But it is interesting that one out of the Sixth Congressional District’s 39 communities produced two candidates.
Of course, there was a time in politics when incumbents concerned about a challenger’s electability recruited “straws” with the same name as the challenger to run in the primary and dilute the vote or confuse the electorate enough to vanquish the challenger.
Those stunts went the way of the fun Election Night festivities that engulfed Lynn City Hall in past years, especially during municipal elections. The late Leo d’Entremont, the city’s feisty election commissioner, banished anyone who dared ask him a question about election results from the clerk’s office and posted election returns on a big board in the City Council Chamber.
Questions about results, voting machine breakdowns and when the last returns would be in were met by Leo with a gruff, “see me later.”
Leo was actually the smoothest-turning cog in the Election Night machine back in the days before computers. Covering a race like the Sixth Congressional, a governor’s race, or county races meant grabbing election results from Newburyport to Wilmington down to Saugus.
Campaigns were eager to share returns — especially if their candidate was winning — but assembling an accurate picture of who won and who lost often meant calling tired town clerks in Essex or Byfield late at night and even imploring janitors to make post-midnight forays into a clerk’s office in search of results.
The saddest part about pandemic-era politics is the lost opportunity to hang around a clerk’s office on election night with political know-it-alls of every stripe and campaign workers armed with clipboards, anxiety and joy alternating on their faces as the returns rolled in.
The real fun came when you shoved your way into the Franco or the Hibs in search of the night’s winner. The big rooms would be packed with people drinking and celebrating. Suddenly the candidate would emerge to cheers and boozy hurrahs and make speech tinged with relief and exhaustion.
For the vanquished, the night would be a struggle to hold back Pathos’ floodwaters. I remember the late Thomas W. McGee and his son, now-Mayor Thomas M. McGee, hugging ecstatically on a fall night in 1990 under the impression the elder McGee had won reelection to the 11th Essex District seat. Chip Clancy scored a five-vote victory to win the seat.
I remember Eddie Johns sitting dejectedly in a near-empty West Lynn restaurant as rain poured down outside, lamenting his loss in a bid for mayor.
Politics at its best is sweat, tears, arguments, laughter and back slapping. Here’s hoping it returns in all its glory.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
