Considering the outcome of most Super Tuesday presidential primary states was a foregone conclusion, the real contests were in attracting voters to show up for down-ballot candidates filling offices closer to home. In Whitman and Hanson, only state and town party committee slots were up for votes.
State Sen. Mike Brady, D-Brockton, and former state Rep. – who also ran for governor and U.S. Senate, Geoff Diehl, R-Whitman, made the case for the offices as they made stops in Whitman on Tuesday, March 5.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, with no real competition, received 815 votes in Hanson and 950 in Whitman. during presidential primary voting. Hanson provided U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., with 59 votes, author and self-described spiritual leader Marianne Williamson with 45 votes and 73 people voted “no preference.” On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump received 1,281 votes to 487 for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. There were also 12 votes for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 16 for no preference. Whitman gave Phillips 101 votes, Williamson 71 and no preference 131, according to the unofficial results.
Haley planned to suspend her campaign Wednesday.
Only 29 percent (3,341) of Whitman’s 11,641 registered voters, went to the polls, including 37 by absentee and 1,046 by early voting. In Hanson, the unofficial results showed 34 percent, or 2,876 of the towns 8,421 registered voters cast ballots.
Biden won all the delegates — 1,669 up for grabs Tuesday [118 in Massachusetts where he took 83 percent of the vote at 478,500] in all 16 states voting on the Democratic side and former president Donal Trump took races in all but Vermont as former South Carolina Gov. Niki Haley grappled for wins on the Republican ballots. Haley garnered 191,658 votes (36.8 percent) in Massachusetts to Trump’s 478,500, or 59.9 percent, giving the former president the state’s 40 delegates. Trump now leads the delegate race with 995.
While Trump’s wins were decisive, the margins were lower for him across the country, as two area voters voiced the reasons of those who went with Haley.
“I like her policies better,” one man said.
“I’m an independent, and Biden didn’t need my vote, so I took a Republican ballot to stick it to Trump,” a female voter said. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity, given the divisive political climate in the country.
Polling places were relatively quiet, with no lines at Town Hall doors when polls opened at 7 a.m. Hanson was a little busier as a steady trickle of voters drove up to Hanson Middle School to vote. There were not a lot of campaign operatives meeting them with encouraging waves and campaign signs.
No Republican volunteers were out holding signs for the morning voters to acknowledge, but a gaggle of Democrats in Whitman held more signs for Brady than Biden-Harris opposite Whitman Town Hall. In Hanson Democratic Chair Kathy eagan sat alone in a mornng drizzle holding a Brady sign after having placed a trail of Biden-Harris signs up the middle school driveway.
Whitman Town Clerk Dawn Varley reported about 185 in-person early votes cast and noted there were still 500 mail-in ballots out as of 7 a.m., on primary day. Between all early and absentee voing options, there were 1,023 ballots involved in early voting. If voters, who are on the State Elections list for early-ballot applications, but did not use them, will receive another one in September for the state Primary and another one still, for the general presidential election in November.
In the past, people who took out – but did not use – their absentee ballots, could “beat their ballot to the booth but you can’t do that any more,” Varley said, “Some people would do that. If we hadn’t processed their ballots, they would come and vote [in-person] and cancel out the absentee ballot.”
“It’s a lot of money,” she said of the low-turnout primary. “You have to staff it, because you don’t know, you could have a ton of people.”
What was expected to take time in Whitman Tuesday night was the GOP State Committee race. There were slots for 35 candidates, with only 25 candidates on the ballot – and room for 10 write-ins.
“It’ll be a long night,” she said.
Democrats gave Brady 1,127 votes for state committee man and Peggy Curtis 1,300 votes for state committee woman in Whitman. Hanson gave Brady 856 votes and Curtis 837.
State Committees
Diehl and his wife KathyJo Boss, were running as a slate on the Republican ballot, where they were the favored candidates on the state party slate for Whitman and Hanson voters. Diehl earned 1,570 votes, Boss received 1,426 votes. Hanson gave Diehl 1,367 votes and Boss 1,221.
“It’s one of those sort of hidden races in Massachusetts politics,” Diehl said. “They don’t realize that there’s 40 Republican men and women who run to be on the Mass. GOP Board.”
The committee decides who the Party Chair is and appoint the national committee man and woman are.
“Those three people are very key in making sure the party runs effectively to recruit good candidates, support candidates and then the National Committee officials they appoint go to Washington, D.C. To try and gain support for state Republicans,” he said.
“I’ve been serving [on the state Democratic Committee] for several years,” Brady said as he joined his sign-holders in Whitman. “It’s important to support your Democratic candidates. “We want to make sure the economy stays strong and we create more jobs for people.”
For Diehl, getting the national support to try winning Congressional and statewide races is vital and requires better party leadership.
“That’s why I’ve spent a lot of time promoting the Massachusetts Freedom Slate,” he said, pointing to his experience of running statewide campaigns twice.
“There’s other husbands and wives that run as a slate,” Boss said. “I’ve always been involved in politics.” She served as president of the NYU student body when she was in college, lobbying in Albany.
“I gues it’s something in our DNA,” Diehl said.
As for Trump’s chances in the day’s primary, he predicted Massachusetts could be one of the higher-percentage states in that column at the end of the night.
“It’s no secret Charlie Baker misspent $2.5 billion,” Diehl said. “The T was never really fixed under his leadership. Maura Healey’s inherited some of these problems, but she’s also got issues of her own with immigration … the cost of living… all of these things are building to the case being made that maybe Trump had four good years and maybe we should go back there.”
In Washington, Tuesday, Secretary of Transportation was reminding MSNBC audiences that the Biden administration’s accomplishments include an “all-time high in the stock market, record job creation, unemployment that hasn’t been this low and for this long since before I was born (in 1982).”
He also pointed to a bipartisan immigration bill put together by one of the most conservative members of the Senate — Sen. James Lankford, R-OK, — that failed in the House of Representatives because Trump killed it with “the chill he put on Congressional Republicans.”
“People are also frustrated, I get it,” Buttigieg said. “It was especially disappointing to see what happened with the border.”
W-H history teacher Steven Bothelo brought some of his students to observe the early-vote ballot process earlier in the week.
“I always try to get the high school students up here,” Varley said. “There’s early voting for all elections now, by mail.” She said Libertarian ballots have shown an interesting trend in town.
In 2020, there were only 5,000 Libertarian ballots cast statewide. This year, Varley said, there have been 25,000.
“We think it’s because they’re like – ‘Well, I don’t like that choice, and I don’t like that choice, so I might as well take that choice,’” she said. “I don’t know why, nobody knows. … And they’re using them. Selectively.”
Hanson Town Clerk Beth Sloan’s experience offers a different explanation.
“That’s because they didn’t understand,” Sloan said. “They thought they were unenrolled and that was [the ballot] they got. But with in-person voters in Town Hall, no one asked for a Libertarian ballot, because they could see [the posted sample] ballots.”
Sloan said there were already 617 vote-by mail ballots and 158 in-person early votes cast.
Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver garnered 4 votes in Hanson, Joseph Hornberger and each Michael Rectenwald received 3 votes and Michael Ter Maat received 1 vote. No preference received 10 votes and write-in candidates 12, as they carried the day on the Libertarian ballot. Whitman gave Oliver 6 votes, Hornberger 4 votes and Ter Maat 2 with 8 votes for no preference and 7 for write-ins.