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Thirteen days after the September primary, Dan Koh stood with a microphone in the Gerry 5 Veteran Firemen’s Association hall at 210 Beacon St. and spoke to the Marblehead Democrats who had backed someone else. The primary, he allowed, “got a little testy every now and then.” Among the Koh and Healey-Driscoll signs posted around the hall was one for U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, whom town voters had passed over two weeks earlier for hometown U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton.
On Tuesday, the coalition Koh asked for that night faced a far bigger electorate, and he won. The Associated Press (AP) called the 6th Congressional District race for Koh, an Andover Democrat and former Biden White House aide, at 10:24 p.m. over Republican Micah Quinney Jones, an Essex attorney and Army veteran.
In AP’s 11:21 p.m. update, the latest available for this story, Koh had 74,618 votes to Jones’ 42,586, or 63.7 percent to 36.3 percent of the 117,204 votes counted for the two candidates, with AP estimating 33 percent of the expected vote counted; AP did not publish that expected total. The figures are unofficial; domestic mail ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive through Nov. 6, and certification is scheduled for Dec. 2.
Koh, now representative-elect, takes office in January. He succeeds Moulton, the Salem Democrat who has held the seat since January 2015 and gave it up to challenge Markey in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary. Markey won that Sept. 1 contest statewide.
Different district, different count
Koh will be the first Asian American to represent Massachusetts in Congress, the Boston Globe and GBH News reported. At Gerry 5 on Sept. 14, Koh, whose grandmother fled North Korea as a refugee and whose mother’s family came from Lebanon, put it in his own terms.
“With your help, a Korean Lebanese guy will represent you in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Koh’s first run for Congress came in 2018, when he finished second in a 10-candidate Democratic primary in the 3rd District, which then included Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill. The first count left him 122 votes behind Lori Trahan. A recount in all 37 of that district’s cities and towns widened her lead to 145 votes, 18,580 to 18,435.
“There’s no use in getting upset about the close margin — we can’t afford to,” Koh wrote to supporters as he conceded Sept. 17, 2018, according to AP.
Trahan, now in Congress, returned to his story this summer from the other side. On Aug. 24 she and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley endorsed state Rep. Tram Nguyen of Andover, Koh’s closest rival for the 6th District nomination.
What September settled
That nomination fight was crowded, costly and divided. Certified results from the Secretary of the Commonwealth gave Koh 47,835 votes and Nguyen 34,324, followed by John Beccia with 14,215; Jamie Belsito with 11,268; Mariah Lancaster with 4,725; and Bethany Andres-Beck with 4,385. Koh’s 40.9 percent was his share of the 116,908 votes cast for any candidate; 4,643 ballots were blank. Lancaster withdrew and endorsed Nguyen Aug. 29 but stayed on the ballot because voting had begun.
Money shaped the field. Koh raised about $4.5 million before the primary, the most of any candidate, with about $271,000 from donors inside the district, according to the Independent’s review of Federal Election Commission filings. Nguyen raised about $711,000, about $604,000 of it from Massachusetts donors. Beccia lent his own campaign roughly $3 million. Outside groups, which cannot legally coordinate with campaigns, also spent: New Leadership PAC reported spending more than $870,000 supporting Koh, and Pro-Choice Majority Action reported about $500,000 in advertising for Nguyen in the final week.
The money turned personal at a June 17 debate at Salem State University. Belsito told Koh that most people lack “access to the wealth that you do.” Koh, who had cited his immigrant father and young children through the evening, answered, “For you to call out my family in this debate is something that is way past the line.”
“Your father’s got a phenomenal job,” Belsito replied.
Koh’s endorsements came earlier in the year: former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, his former boss, and unions including the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Nguyen’s came late, from Pressley, Trahan, Attorney General Andrea Campbell and Lancaster.
Marblehead split its own ballot. In official town results, voters gave Koh 2,064 votes to Nguyen’s 1,343 while backing Moulton over Markey, 2,946 to 1,917, in the Senate primary. AP’s election-night count showed Koh leading in 30 of the district’s 39 cities and towns.
November’s bigger room
Tuesday’s partial count outgrew the primary. By 11:21 p.m., Koh alone had 74,618 votes, compared with the 47,835 that won him the nomination. Combined, he and Jones had 117,204, more than the 116,908 votes all candidates drew Sept. 1, with most of the expected vote still uncounted.
Jones built his campaign for that larger audience. Unopposed for the Republican nomination, he drew 29,111 votes in that Sept. 1 primary, then courted unenrolled voters, who in Marblehead numbered 11,250 of the town’s 17,084 registered voters as of Oct. 24, according to the town’s enrollment figures. “We have a one-party congressional delegation that, in my opinion, is less inclined to work across the aisle,” he told the Independent in October. He backed term limits, a ban on stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses, and nuclear power and natural gas pipeline expansion to lower energy costs. Former Gov. Charlie Baker endorsed him.
Jones said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024 and registered as a Republican in 2022. Koh made Jones’ Trump votes the close of his Gerry 5 speech.
Jones raised $586,091 through Sept. 30, compared with about $5.25 million for Koh over the same cycle, according to federal filings cited by the Independent. Jones faulted Koh for backing out of two planned debates, including a Sept. 17 forum at Endicott College. Koh’s campaign said he had taken part in 11 debates.
AP’s partial town results showed where Jones ran closest. Koh led Rowley by 3.3 percentage points of the two-candidate vote with 3,209 votes counted and Saugus by 5.1 points with 10,649 counted, while leading Newburyport by 44.3 points with 9,948 counted, in town updates AP posted between 10:24 and 10:55 p.m. AP had not reported any Marblehead votes in the race as of 11:21 p.m., and the town’s congressional count had not yet been posted on the Independent’s results page.
Before the race was called, Koh told a crowd at Olio in Peabody, “I want to be clear that I work for you,” the Globe reported. In defeat, Jones said, “I’ve always believed that leadership means leading from the front and leading by example,” and added, “I hope that our next representative will embrace that same approach,” according to WBUR.
Eight years ago, a recount settled Koh’s first race for Congress. This time, the ballots still to be counted will decide only his margin.
