Massachusetts hasn’t thrown its electoral votes toward the Republican presidential candidate since 1984 and it hasn’t had a Republican senator since the Carter administration. And yet, the state has had just two Democratic governors since the mid-1960s. On Tuesday, GOP voters will decide which candidate will try to keep up that gubernatorial dominance in the November election.
The Bay State’s semi-open primary, the only one being conducted Tuesday, will determine candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state auditor, and other federal and local offices. Massachusetts is the only state conducting a primary this week.
State Attorney General Maura Healey is a lock for the Democratic nomination for governor, and she will face either former state Rep. Geoff Diehl or businessman Chris Doughty in November. Diehl has been endorsed by Donald Trump and hopes to ride the former president’s backing to the nomination, while Doughty claims he is the only Republican capable of defeating Healey.
The Republican candidates have each informally aligned with a former state representative seeking the lieutenant governor nomination, as Diehl and former Leah Cole Allen are campaigning together against Doughty and Kate Campanale.
Three Democrats – Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, state Rep. Tami Gouveia and state Sen. Eric Lesser – are competing to be Healey’s running mate.
Other races:
- Republican Jay McMahon, an attorney, is running unopposed for the attorney general nomination and will face either former Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell or attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan in November.
- Incumbent William Galvin is trying to fend off an intraparty challenge from fellow Democrat Tanisha Sullivan so he can extend his 28-year run as secretary of state. Rayla Campbell, an insurance claims specialist, is the only candidate in the GOP primary. Galvin is the only statewide incumbent on the ballot but the party threw its support to Sullivan, head of the Boston chapter of the NAACP, at a convention earlier this year.
- The state auditor contest features a two-person Democratic primary involving former state transportation official Chris Dempsey and state Sen. Diana DiZoglio. The winner will face Republican Anthony Amore, who has a background in security and investigations.
- Massachusetts has nine congressional districts. Democrats hold every seat and all of the incumbents are running unopposed in the primaries. There are competitive GOP primaries in two districts.
Massachusetts, with its divided government, has made few permanent changes to its election system since the outbreak of Covid-19 and the unfounded allegations of voter fraud that have been raised by Donald Trump and his allies.
But in June 2022 the state did enact a wide-ranging election law. Its provisions include:
- Requiring jurisdictions to allow early voting and extending the window for casting such ballots, including weekends.
- Requiring a police presence at all polling locations.
- Requiring jurisdictions to offer voting by mail in most elections.
- Requiring the state to send early voting applications, with prepaid return postage, to all registered voters.
- Allowing someone to apply for a mail ballot on behalf of a family member.
- Expanding ballot options for disabled voters.
- Expanding electronic voting options for military and overseas civilian voters.
- Expanding the options for returning mail ballots.
- Extending the deadline for the officials to receive mail ballots.
- Requiring voter registration and voting services for eligible incarcerated voters.
- Requiring correctional officials to provide voter information to people upon their release from prison.
- Extending the voter registration deadline and requiring the online system to be available in multiple languages.
- Directing the secretary of state to join ERIC, an interstate system for sharing voter registration information to facilitate maintenance of the voter rolls.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.