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Dan Koh thanked Marblehead for backing him, then turned the wired microphone toward the people in the Gerry 5 Veteran Firemen's Association hall who had backed someone else.
"Whether you supported me or the other amazing candidates in this race," the Democratic congressional nominee began Monday night, before allowing that the primary "got a little testy every now and then."
"We may have disagreements in the primary, but we all understand what is at stake right now," Koh said.
Thirteen days earlier, Koh was one of six Democrats whose names appeared on the Sept. 1 ballot for the 6th Congressional District seat U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton is leaving. Koh won the nomination with 47,326 votes to 33,991 for state Rep. Tram Nguyen of Andover, according to Associated Press results. Marblehead's official count gave him 2,064 votes to Nguyen's 1,343, a 721-vote margin. He faces Republican Micah Jones of Essex on Nov. 3.
The Marblehead Democratic Town Committee's annual picnic, its only yearly fundraiser, filled the wood-paneled room at 210 Beacon St. Students checked in guests at the door. Song sheets for "This Land Is Your Land" sat on round tables under red, white and blue balloons. Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin carried a copy of the state's Information for Voters booklet, which his office is mailing to every Massachusetts household this month. Koh signs and Healey-Driscoll signs were posted around the hall.
So was a sign for U.S. Sen. Ed Markey.
What March looked like
Six months earlier, the committee's March 7 caucus at Abbot Public Library was standing-room-only, according to a letter to the editor from committee chair Anne Gugino-Carrigan. Her letter said the crowd was "addressed and energized by our hometown Senate candidate, Rep. Seth Moulton." State Sen. Brendan Crighton and Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker also spoke; state Rep. Jenny Armini attended.
Tucker, back at the lectern Monday, recalled that the caucus crowd "spilled way out of the room."
On Sept. 1, Marblehead stayed with Moulton, giving him 2,946 votes to Markey's 1,917 in the town's official results. Statewide, Markey won the Democratic nomination.
Moulton was not among Monday's speakers.
The picnic's proceeds go to the Edwin L. Goldberg and Selma L. Goldberg scholarships for Marblehead students, committee campaign work and candidates. The congressional primary before it ran on larger sums. Koh raised about $4.5 million, the most in the field, and John Beccia loaned his own campaign roughly $3 million, according to a Marblehead Independent review of Federal Election Commission filings.
Reporting back
Crighton, who followed Koh to the microphone, called it "a tough act to follow." He thanked "everyone that supported a candidate, that worked for a candidate, that fought for a candidate."
"Now we're all in this together," the Lynn Democrat said. "This is what we do as Democrats: we come together and we fight together."
Crighton, the Senate chair of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation, spent most of his time on Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, who are seeking reelection. He credited the administration with returning ferry service to the North Shore and pointed to housing, commuter rail in Lynn and pending e-bike safety legislation.
Armini, a Marblehead Democrat in her second term, argued that opposing Washington would not be enough. Democrats' success, she said, "cannot be measured solely on how loudly we oppose the corrupt regime in Washington."
"This Commonwealth doesn't just resist; it governs," Armini said, then listed housing money, school funding, a vote to take cellphones out of schools and a process she said keeps challenged books on library shelves.
Tucker had reported on his own office, saying its work is "not all about putting people in jail. It's oftentimes about second chances."
Essex County Sheriff Kevin Coppinger went deepest into the details. He described an old boiler room at the department's Lawrence Pre-Release Center, framed out like the inside of a house, where inmates in a plumbing program work toward first-level certification.
"If you can find a plumber that will come, great," Coppinger said. "If you can find a plumber that you can afford, double great."
He said Essex County had the lowest one-year recidivism rate of any Massachusetts county, then turned to the PROTECT Act, the new state law limiting what his jail can tell federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Coppinger said the jail averages about 120 immigration detainers a day among roughly 900 inmates and that the law leaves about 10 of those cases, involving serious charges, in which ICE can be notified.
"We're not helping ICE. We're not getting in their way. We're staying neutral, just like the law says," he said, adding that the law is "not perfect."
Armini, speaking later, took a different tone about the same law. "Is the PROTECT Act going to get ICE out of our state? Sadly, no," she said. "But it's going to make their jobs a lot harder."
Paper on the tables
Koh's speech had already moved from the primary to November. He told the room his grandmother fled North Korea as a refugee and part of his family came from a village south of Beirut, Lebanon.
"With your help, a Korean Lebanese guy will represent you in Washington, D.C.," he said.
He ran through Medicare for All, caps on rent and utility bills and student-debt cancellation, then closed on Jones. Koh told the room Jones had voted for Donald Trump twice and changed his registration to Republican. The Boston Globe reported in June that Jones said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020 and 2024 and that he registered as a Republican in 2022.
When the speeches ended, Gugino-Carrigan pointed guests to the history trivia questions on their tables. "No fair cheating by looking them up on Google," she said.
Before anyone spoke, she had pointed to other paper in the room: sign-up sheets for people who wanted to get involved "in actually doing something for these elections."
The next one is Nov. 3.
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