Some slightly off-the-beaten-path stories you may have missed this past week:

— How bad is it getting for higher-ed? This bad: “Hundreds of Colleges Are Sending Acceptance Letters to Kids Who Didn’t Even Apply” (WSJ)

— Steven Pinker says reforms haven’t gone far enough – and he’s right: “What Harvard (and the rest of higher ed) still needs to do to fix itself” (Globe)

— People say they want more housing, but don’t always vote that way: “Mixed Results for Housing-Endorsed Candidates in Mass. Primaries” (B&T)

— A good explainer piece about what’s driving nervous investors: “There Are Four Forces Pressuring Bonds: War Is No. 1” (WSJ)

— We thought the trend was winding down. Apparently not: “Developer buys third Boston residential conversion site” (BBJ)

— It may not have been an illegal deal, but it still stunk to high heaven: “Sheriff Tompkins needs to go” (Globe)

— There shouldn’t be any question. He’s an antisemitic Marxist who needs to go. Period: “The Hasan Piker Question” (Atlantic)

— Maybe Boston could learn a thing or two from these cities? Or maybe Boston doesn’t want to? “Seattle and D.C. Are Bucking the Trend by Attracting Families With Kids” (WSJ)

— ‘Harm reduction’ lunacy up north. Kevin Cullen explains: “Along the banks of Lake Champlain, who’s harming whom?” (Globe)

— They’re undefeated! “Stunning win gives UMass football something it hasn’t had in a long time – hope” (MassLive)

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey can brag all he wants about how his huge win yesterday was a “testament to the power of the progressive movement.” That may be true in his Dem primary race. But not so true in most other state races yesterday, as old-time Dem incumbents like Steve Lynch and Richard Neal beat back progressive challengers. Even a young-one establishment type brushed aside progressives/socialists yesterday to easily win in the 6^th Congressional (see Dan Koh below). All in all, there was no huge generational/ideological shift last night in Mass., keeping the state deep blue as opposed to loony left. The AARP Establishment held.

Here’s a few other post-primary thoughts:

— Polling accuracy, for a change — After major polling screw ups in Wisconsin and Michigan, the polls were right on target in the U.S. Senate and GOP gubernatorial contests yesterday in Mass. – to Seth Moulton’s chagrin. The NYT’s Reid Epstein noticed the same thing.

— Wu’s mixed power messages – The mayor wanted to send a message to local Dems in yesterday’s primaries: don’t cross me on key issues on Beacon Hill. But her Trump-like  dominance strategy didn’t work so well yesterday, as state Sen. Nick Collins easily fended off a Wu-backed challenger.

Yet, state Sen. Bill Brownsberger, another Dem targeted by Wu, was in a too-close-to-call race as of this morning. Whether Brownsberger wins or loses, Wu did put a scare into him, serving notice to other would-be Dem defiers that she can at least make life miserable for them come election time. … The Globe’s James Pindell agrees: Wu lost but also won.

— Dan Koh, New Establishment – Dan Koh’s long quest to become a full-time politician finally succeeded yesterday in the 6^th Congressional race, thanks partly to uber-establishment help from the likes of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Marty Walsh etc. Koh’s classic student-government-type resume practically shouts establishment — Phillips Academy, Harvard University, White House aide, etc.

— Rachael Rollins: maybe next time – Rachael Rollins’s comeback effort failed yesterday, as incumbent Kevin Hayden somewhat easily won the Dem race for Suffolk DA. But remember: Rollins isn’t the type to simply fade away, even if voters tell her to go away. Unfortunately, she’ll probably be back. State legislature? 

— Neal’s lucky win – The DUI leak hurt Jeromie Whalen. Perhap not a lot. But probably enough to make a close race against Richard Neal only a somewhat close race yesterday. Neal was lucky. Or was it just old-fashioned hardball politics that gave him the edge?

Update – David Bernstein has a good analysis piece at the Globe: “Moulton doesn’t deserve the hate.” The same piece, with a different headline, is available at his Substack site.

Update II – Don’t forget Charlotte Alter’s pre-primary Moulton postmortem at the Times. 

Update III – 9.3.26 — This is interesting. Lynch, a South Boston native and son of an ironworker, actually lost in Boston, but retained his seat via strong support in Quincy, Weymouth, Brockton and Braintree. MassLive has more.

 

Alerting me to this Globe story about Andrew Flynn’s decision to nix his plan for a 26-story tower in Davis Square and knowing how much I hated the project, a reader asked in an email: ‘Hubblog pops Champagne?’ Well, that’s not a bad idea. Or maybe a beer at The Burren? … Btw: It’s not all about the Burren. Equally important is that McKinnon’s Meat Market has  been saved too.  … B&T and WBUR have more on Davis Square’s salvation. … Btw II, the reader above added this note to his email: “I know we need the housing… (but) there’s got to be a better way than what was proposed.”

A Hub Blog reader sends in some final thoughts on today’s Mass. primary elections (and, btw, I don’t agree Dan Koh is Moulton’s likely successor):

I will not miss local news being jammed up with campaign commercials, but will share some personal highlights:

– Seth Moulton likely successor Dan Koh – has anyone else in the USA run an ad containing endorsements from both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Only in Massachusetts!   (Well, maybe also the District of Columbia).

– The “he’s too old” PAC daggers came out for Markey yesterday… way too late and by the way how many of the ‘New Generation of Leaders’ could tell us what models of Claude or ChatGPT or Llama or Gemini is running on *their* iPads and iPhones? What exactly makes that an important qualification for The New Generation of Leaders?

— Moulton-Markey was in some ways the exception proving the rule about 2026 election cycle and younger Democrats. Markey had all the younger candidate issues tied up already – his ad with Sanders, Warren and Presley essentially ended the primary. It helps that Mass. is Resistance Central and has some factors that make it particularly so (in particular, reduction in federal education funding). Moulton really did not do anything to stand out.   

— Shortsleeve came up strong at the end on the Republican side IMHO.   I think Governor Healy will dispatch Mike Minogue with some ease in ways that Shortsleeve would have made more difficult.  Oh well… 

— Speaking of Minogue, the Globe turned in perhaps the most ridiculous “Experts Say” headline of the decade, and that is an accomplishment: 

Meanwhile, the Globe’s Marcela Garcia has a good piece on four races she’s closely watching today, a few of which I should have mentioned last week.

There are lots of helpful primary-election summaries out there, via GBH, Herald, Globe etc. But none as piercingly non-objective as Hub Blog’s ‘Six primaries to watch.’ So here goes, before next Tuesday’s progressive/socialist onslaught possibly pushes Massachusetts from deep-blue state to loony left territory.

Wu’s Trump dominance strategy – Like the big guy in the White House, Mayor Wu wants to use the primaries to establish her dominance, punishing perceived intraparty enemies and serving notice to others to stay in line. So she’s going after two Dem state Senators — Will Brownsberger and Nick Collins – who had the nerve to oppose her property-tax plans on Beacon Hill. … I do get a kick out of Brownsberger’s opponent, Eric ‘Thanks Dad’ Lander, who’s trying to out progressive a progressive while tapping into his dad’s network of capitalist friends for funds, as the Globe reports. … GBH has more on the race. And the Herald has more on the Collins-Latoya Gayle race, which hasn’t been as exciting as I had once hoped and expected.

Rollins comeback? – Hub Blog initially put the odds of ethically challenged Rachael Rollins winning back her Suffolk DA seat at 50-50. But I’ve since revised her odds down to 30-70, due to the signature snafu and other missteps that may yet land her in more legal problems. … Still, she can win this one against incumbent Kevin Hayden, who has to be one of the more boring candidates around. But he did get sufficiently nasty the other week, as the Herald reports.

The Big Dud: Markey vs. Moulton — Let’s face it: The Markey-Moulton race for U.S. Senate has been a disappointing dud, a big yawn with little to no umph or controversy. (Sorry, the iPad crack barely counts as a gaffe.) As previously noted, Seth Moulton needs a mini polls-are-wrong miracle to win on Tuesday. If he doesn’t pull it off, he has mostly himself to blame. He made a good case for voting against the geriatric Ed Markey, but he never gave voters a good reason to vote for him, as Charlotte Alter wrote in a sort of pre-primary advance postmortem at the Times.

Another Neal opponent mysteriously tripped up – The 1^stCongressonal Dem primary race was barely on the Hub Blog radar until the NY Post (yes, the Post) came out with a well-timed DUI hit piece on Rep. Richard Neal’s latest to-his-left opponent, Jeromie Whalen, who’s now crying foul. And then all of a sudden the race has gotten interesting. … Btw: Neal’s campaign said it had nothing to do with the DUI leak. You see, a Post reporter just happened to be visiting the Osceola County, Florida, courthouse when he noticed that a case file that was supposed to be sealed wasn’t sealed and so …I still give Whalen a decent chance of knocking off Neal. It’s just one of those years.

Oldie vs Newbie– Here’s another Congressional race pitting a long-time Dem incumbent, this time Steve Lynch, against a hungry young one, Patrick Roach. And it’s another of those races where an upset is possible, theoretically, considering all that’s happened this year in Dem primaries around the country. My hunch on a winner (and centrist preference): Lynch.

Misc. races – I guess I’m supposed to be excited about the open Seth Moulton 6^th Congressional seat that six candidates are now vying to fill. But I’m not excited. Sorry. Still, the contest bears watching, with two DSA types lurking in the background and hoping for a surprise win that would land them some brief national attention. … Meanwhile, the Mass. GOP gubernatorial primary has been quiet, if only because Mike Minogue has long thought to have locked up the nomination, based on polls and his big party convention win. But it would be nice to see Brian Shortsleeve do well. We need contested primaries, not coronations, and Shortsleeve deserves credit for sticking it out to the end. Shortsleeve is also admirably more moderate than Minogue, something the Globe pointed out in its recent endorsement of Shortsleeve. 

Update — 8.31.26 — Maybe Lynch is more vulnerable that I thought. From the Globe: “David Hogg wants to oust sitting Democrats. The 8th District — and its incumbent Stephen Lynch — may be his biggest target.”

Some slightly off-the-beaten-path stories you may have missed over the past week:

— Your medical insurance premiums at work as another health-care tech executive decides to buy a golf course (prior purchase here): “Software executive pays $6M for nine-hole course in Westborough” (BBJ)

— A lot of smart people made a very bad bet: “How Ascend Element, a Mass. ‘unicorn’ EV battery startup, burned through $900M and collapsed” (MassLive)

— The result of a sad U.S. self-inflicted wound: “Why a UMass researcher is among the dozens leaving the U.S. for Canada” (WBUR)

 — The owners are cashing out while the AI good times roll: “Oura and Dunkin’ Get Ready to Join IPO Bonanza” (WSJ)

— He’s keeping the door open – just a teeny-tiny bit: “Bill Chisholm says Celtics don’t need to own arena but would build one under one condition” (BBJ)

— This is encouraging housing news: “Multifamily Fueled Fastest-Growing Mass. Lenders” (B&T)

— This happened just before he invested in Fenway Sports Group, right? Just thinking aloud: “LeBron James Borrowed $300 Million From Insurers Arranged by Guggenheim” (Bloomberg)

— The new Vineyard preserve looks spectacular: “Jackie O’s Private Beach is Open to All. But It’s a Hike” (NYT)

— Please, sir, can we have another? “How many MBTA shutdowns can Boston bear?” (Globe)

— A good primer piece on the fanatical Middle East troublemakers: “How the Houthis have become the most fearsome of Iran’s allies” (Economist)

At the Herald, we used to call it the “full Herald treatment,” i.e. pumping a story up by splashing it across the front page, accompanied by a damning inside sidebar, a no-prisoners pummeling by a columnist (usually Howie Carr), a well-timed indignant editorial, etc., and the relentless bombardment could last for days. Some would tut-tut the well-choreographed full-treatment as shameless tabloid-ism. Which, of course, it gleefully was. I used to love it when the Herald gave subjects the full Herald treatment, especially when they deserved it. … 

But other non-tabloid news outlets routinely dish out their own heavy-handed, full-treatment coverage of stories. They just won’t admit it. Take the NYT’s coverage this morning of a new football C.R.E report (“Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease”), accompanied by a scare-the-moms sidebar (“Your Child Plays Football. How Can You Minimize Risk of C.T.E.?”) and a blatant demand-for-action piece (“Many N.F.L. Players Get Brain Disease. Why Hasn’t OSHA Intervened?”). No sign of an accompanying indignant editorial this morning, But you know it’s coming. … Of course, the C.R.E. package simultaneously comes out as the Times’s sports section tries to make a buck by hyping the upcoming college and NFL football seasons. 

Just pointing all this out as I eagerly await the start of the Pats season. … Btw: I view CRE seriously. I’ve long thought player weight limits, at least at the high-school and college levels, are part of the solution to head and other injuries. It’s all about the physics of two freakishly fast and large players slamming into each other. But coaches, athletic directors, league boosters, etc. routinely pooh-pooh the weight-limit idea, saying it would dilute the quality of the game. They’re wrong, but that’s their argument.

No, it’s not about the ‘ghosts of our Puritanical past.’ It’s about the very alive 160,000 college students in Boston. … The WSJ has more on Boston’s ‘notoriously strict’ alcohol laws when it comes to underage drinking. … And here we were hoping lawmakers might overlook occasional beer-pong mania and instead relax booze restrictions following the success of the World Cup. The WSJ piece is a reality-check that changes won’t come easy.

Want to politically stir things up in Massachusetts? Create really competitive races for a change? Throw out members of an ossified party that’s dominated Beacon Hill since Dwight Eisenhower was president in 1959? Break up partisan primaries’ near monopoly on who gets on election ballots? Then vote ‘yes’ on Question 3, the ballot measure that would replace the current party primary system in Massachusetts with a California-like ‘all-party primary’ system. … Another reason to vote ‘yes’ on Question 3? Nearly the entire political establishment in Massachusetts opposes the measure, as Commonwealth Beacon reports. Of course political parties and their factions are against eliminating party primaries. They’d lose their current monopoly over the election process if partisan primaries went away. … 

Btw: I harped on this topic earlier this year. I’ll repeat: Open non-party primaries are not the cure-all, that’s for sure. But they’re a hell of a lot better than the current flawed system in which three out of five House and Senate races have only one candidate on the ballot.

Btw II: David D’Alessandro agrees the system needs a major shakeup (“Massachusetts has an aging problem. It’s called Beacon Hill” – Globe) but favors term limits to throw the 70-something rascals out. I like term limits too. But it’s an idea that’s been debated for years – and gone nowhere. Question 3 is right here, right now. … 

Btw III: GBH’s Saraya Wintersmith recently talked with Danielle Allen, chair of the Coalition for Healthy Democracy, about why she backs Question 3.

Update – 8.24.26 – From MassLive: “Mass. voters like most ballot questions. Marijuana repeal? Not so much.” … Question 3 has only a slim majority of support, the same poll finds (scroll down). … Good to see the single-family zoning question doing well.

Update II – 8.24.26 – In a podcast, Commonwealth Beacon reviews the pluses and minuses of non-partisan primaries in California. … It’s definitely shaken things up, but it’s not as radical a change as one might think. One change I really like: it’s pushed candidates’ views to the center, not the extremes, as is the case in partisan primaries.

Update III — 8.27.26 – From the Globe: “For thousands of Mass. voters, the parties are over.”