BOSTON (AP) - The Latest on the midterm elections in Massachusetts (all times local):
12:05 a.m.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has ripped into President Donald Trump, saying he practices “the dark art of ruling by fear” designed to turn hard-working Americans against hard-working Americans.
Warren made the comments during her victory speech Tuesday after winning re-election in Massachusetts.
Warren on Tuesday defeated Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl (deel), the Massachusetts co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and independent Shiva Ayaddurai (SHEE’-vuh eye-yah-DOOR’-eye).
Warren has generated considerable speculation about a possible run for the White House in 2020, recently saying she’d take a “hard look” at a presidential bid after the Senate race was over.
The former Harvard Law School professor recently released a DNA test suggesting that a distant ancestor was Native American, an effort to rebut Trump’s frequent mockery of her claim to Native American heritage.
Diehl told supporters he gave the race his all.
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11:50 p.m.
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has told supporters his administration’s collaborative, bipartisan approach to government will continue for his next four years in office.
Baker, a moderate, won a second term by easily defeating Democratic challenger Jay Gonzalez on Tuesday.
In his victory speech, Baker said he kept his promise to bring fiscal discipline and a “reform-minded” approach to state government. But he also acknowledged there is much left to do on issues including opioids, transportation, education and climate change.
Gonzalez struck a conciliatory tone in his earlier concession speech, saying that in a “time of divisiveness and incivility” in national politics, Baker deserves credit for taking a civil and respectful approach to governing.
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11:10 p.m.
Democrat Lori Trahan has won an open U.S. House seat, preserving her party’s hold on the hotly contested 3rd Congressional District.
Trahan, a Lowell native, defeated Republican Rick Green on Tuesday to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas.
Tsongas’ retirement had set off a mad scramble among both parties in the district that includes the Merrimack Valley cities of Lawrence, Lowell and Haverhill. Trahan and nine other candidates had battled it out in September’s primaries.
Trahan returns to Capitol Hill, where she once served as chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan, who is now president of the University of Massachusetts.
Trahan campaigned heavily on women’s issues, including equal pay and protecting abortion rights.
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11 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Keating has won re-election in Massachusetts, beating back a spirited challenge from Republican businessman Peter Tedeschi.
Keating held off Tedeschi, who ran a chain of convenience stores that bear his name, in Tuesday’s election.
Keating, of Bourne, first was elected to Congress in 2010 from the 9th Congressional District, which includes the state’s South Shore, Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
He serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees and has positioned himself as a national security expert.
Tedeschi, a Norwell native who had run unopposed in September’s primary, campaigned on a pledge to use his business experience in Washington.
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10:45 p.m.
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, seen by many as a rising star in the Democratic Party, has handily won re-election in Massachusetts.
Moulton defeated Republican challenger Joseph Schneider on Tuesday.
Moulton first was elected to the House in 2015, and he had cruised through September’s primary unopposed.
Moulton served four tours of duty in Iraq, and he has toured the country stumping for other Democratic military veterans running for office. He has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2020.
He is also publicly called for new Democratic leadership in the House to replace Nancy Pelosi.
The northeastern 6th Congressional District covers most of Essex County, including the North Shore and Cape Ann.
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10:40 p.m.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern has won re-election after fending off a challenge from Republican Tracy Lovvorn.
The Massachusetts Democrat cruised to victory Tuesday in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes his home city of Worcester.
McGovern first was elected in 1996. He’s known for pressing for congressional oversight and approval of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for working to divert defense spending to education and infrastructure.
McGovern founded the House Hunger Caucus to try to end hunger in the U.S. and abroad.
Lovvorn, a licensed physical therapist from Grafton, had positioned herself as a centrist candidate.
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10:35 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark has cruised to re-election in Massachusetts.
Clark, of Melrose, easily defeated Republican John Hugo on Tuesday in the 5th Congressional District representing Boston’s northwest suburbs.
Clark was first elected to the House in 2013. She has made the opioid addiction crisis, clean energy and climate change her legislative priorities in Washington.
Hugo had touted his endorsement from Massachusetts Citizens for Life, an anti-abortion group. He also backed a balanced budget, congressional term limits, gun ownership rights and treatment rather than incarceration for those addicted to drugs.
The district covers a swath of cities and towns north and west of Boston, including Medford, Framingham and Woburn.
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10:30 p.m.
Massachusetts voters have approved a ballot question stemming from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on corporate political spending.
The measure calls for creation of a 15-member commission that would be charged with advancing a constitutional amendment that would reverse the 2010 Citizens United decision. The ruling prohibits the government from limiting political spending by corporations, unions and other groups.
Critics say the ruling has paved the way for corporations and wealthy special interests to spend freely and exert undue influence on political campaigns.
The unpaid commission would have until Dec. 31, 2019, to make recommendations.
Opponents of the question said amending the constitution would be “dangerous and misguided.”
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10:20 p.m.
A former federal prosecutor who has pledged to help curb mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system has been elected the top prosecutor for Boston and nearby communities.
Democrat Rachael Rollins defeated independent Michael Maloney on Tuesday to become the first woman of color to be elected district attorney in Massachusetts.
The former federal prosecutor will also be the first female district attorney for Suffolk County, which also includes the communities of Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop.
Rollins will replace John Pappas, who was named district attorney when longtime prosecutor Dan Conley resigned in September to join a private firm.
Rollins has promised to not prosecute certain low-level crimes, to push for ending cash bail and to diversify the district attorney’s office.
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10:10 p.m.
Massachusetts voters have supported a state law that protects transgender people from discrimination in public accommodations, including bathrooms and locker rooms.
The yes vote on the ballot question Tuesday rejects an effort by opponents to repeal the 2-year-old law. It was the first statewide referendum in the U.S. on transgender rights.
Supporters of the law feared a vote to repeal would prompt a wave of similar efforts to roll back protections in other states. Massachusetts was the first to legalize gay marriage and is viewed as one of the most LGBT-friendly states.
Critics say the 2016 law allows sexual predators to invade private spaces for women by claiming female gender identity. No such incidents have been reported in Massachusetts since the measure took effect.
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10:05 p.m.
Democrat Suzanne Bump will return for a third term as state auditor after defeating Republican Helen Brady and two other candidates.
Bump says her office has worked hard to root out government waste and inefficiency.
She has also been criticized at times, such as in September when Republican Gov. Charlie Baker challenged her office’s conclusion that the Registry of Motor Vehicles had issued more than 1,900 drivers’ licenses under the names of dead people.
Brady is the business manager for the Boston Pops and has worked for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 30 years. She said during the campaign that the auditor can do much more to identify wasteful spending.
Libertarian Daniel Fishman and Edward Stamas of the Green-Rainbow party were also on Tuesday’s ballot.
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9:55 p.m.
Democrat Deb Goldberg has won a second four-year term as state treasurer in Massachusetts.
Goldberg defeated Republican state Rep. Keiko Orrall (KAY’-koh ORR’-ell) in Tuesday’s voting.
The treasurer oversees the state lottery and state pension fund, among other responsibilities.
Orrall is a former Republican National Committeewoman from Lakeville and was the first Asian-American woman to run for statewide office in Massachusetts. She criticized the incumbent’s handling of the treasurer’s unclaimed property division, saying Goldberg hadn’t done enough to reunite residents with forgotten bank accounts and other abandoned assets.
Goldberg responded that Massachusetts was returning more unclaimed property than any other state.
Jamie Guerin of the Green-Rainbow party was also on the ballot.
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9:40 p.m.
Democratic Secretary of State William Galvin, the longest serving statewide elected official in Massachusetts, has won a seventh four-year term by brushing back a challenge from Republican Anthony Amore.
The two split on several issues, including whether Massachusetts should adopt same-day voter registration.
Galvin said he supports the change. Amore opposed the proposal, saying he wasn’t convinced it could be done securely.
Galvin argued Amore was following what he called a national Republican playbook of making it harder for people to vote, something Amore denied.
The contest was bitter at times, with Amore calling Galvin “a liar” and Galvin calling Amore “a faker” during one debate.
Galvin was first elected to the post in 1994.
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9:30 p.m.
There was no electoral drama for Democratic U.S. Reps. Joe Kennedy, Stephen Lynch and Richard Neal, who ran unopposed in Massachusetts.
All three were handily re-elected Tuesday, along with Ayanna Pressley, who unseated veteran Rep. Michael Capuano in September’s primary and becomes the state’s first black woman in Congress.
Kennedy is returning to Congress for a fourth term representing the 4th District, which covers mostly southern Massachusetts. He was first elected in 2012.
It will be Lynch’s ninth full term representing the 8th District, which covers eastern Massachusetts and part of Boston. Lynch first was elected in 2001 to serve out the remainder of the late Joe Moakley’s term.
Neal, the dean of the Massachusetts House delegation, was first elected in 1988 and will be serving his 16th term representing the 1st Congressional District, which covers a large swath of the central and western part of the state.
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9:20 p.m.
After an expensive campaign that sharply divided health care professionals, Massachusetts voters have rejected strict limits on the number of patients a single nurse can care for at one time.
The ballot question would have established nurse-to-patient ratios in various hospital units and set penalties for hospitals that failed to comply.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association supported the question, while hospitals and doctors’ groups opposed it. The two sides combined had spent more than $30 million to make their case to voters.
Supporters said the nurse staffing requirements would make patients safer, but opponents said it would create an overly rigid system that could result in hospitals being forced to turn away some patients.
California is the only other U.S. state with mandated nurse-to-patient ratios.
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8:05 p.m.
Gov. Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican popular with voters in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, has been re-elected to a second four-year term.
Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito turned back a challenge Tuesday from Democrat Jay Gonzalez, a former state budget official, and his running mate, Quentin Palfrey.
Baker touted the state’s strong economy and low unemployment, his administration’s progress in stabilizing the state’s finances without broad tax increases, and steps taken to tackle the opioid addiction crisis.
He has been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, who is unpopular in Massachusetts. But Gonzalez criticized Baker for endorsing other pro-Trump Republicans, including U.S. Senate candidate Geoff Diehl.
Gonzalez called for $3 billion in new taxes to improve education and transportation, and supported a single-payer health care system.
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8:02 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, among her party’s harshest critics of President Donald Trump, has won re-election in Massachusetts.
Warren on Tuesday defeated Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl (deel), the Massachusetts co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and independent Shiva Ayaddurai (SHEE’-vuh eye-yah-DOOR’-eye).
Warren has generated considerable speculation about a possible run for the White House in 2020, recently saying she’d take a “hard look” at a presidential bid after the Senate race was over.
The former Harvard Law School professor recently released a DNA test suggesting that a distant ancestor was Native American, an effort to rebut Trump’s frequent mockery of her claim to Native American heritage.
Diehl claimed Warren was ready to abandon Massachusetts to run for president.
Warren countered that Diehl, if elected, would be a rubber stamp in Washington for Trump’s agenda.
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8 p.m.
Democrat Ayanna Pressley has completed her quest to become Massachusetts’ first black woman elected to Congress.
Pressley sailed through Tuesday’s general election unopposed, two months after she unseated 10-term U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in a national political stunner in the state primary.
With no Republican in the race, her September victory had all but assured the 44-year-old Pressley the office, with only the remote possibility of a write-in campaign to potentially stop her. That scenario behind her, she’ll now represent the 7th congressional district - the first in Massachusetts where minorities make up a majority of the voting population.
Pressley is also the first African-American to serve on the Boston City Council.
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2:10 p.m.
Incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren refused to say the midterm elections in Massachusetts were about President Donald Trump as she voted in Cambridge.
The Democrat said Tuesday after greeting voters and children, buying a few items at an Election Day bake sale, and casting her ballot, that her first priority was the people of Massachusetts and protecting health care, Social Security, and preventing students from being crushed by loan debt.
She says “I try to stay focused on the issues, not on division and hate.”
She did, however, acknowledge that the Democrats needed allies in Washington to protect and fight for “shared values.”
Warren is being challenged by Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl and independent candidate Shiva Ayyadurai.
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11:40 p.m.
President Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot in any Massachusetts elections but he appears to be motivating voters.
Several Massachusetts voters said Tuesday they headed to the polls to place a check on the Republican president.
Joe Robinson, a 62-year-old Episcopal priest from Cambridge, said he was driven to vote to combat the “negativity” of the Trump administration.
He voted for Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Democratic U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark.
Madeleine Schulman, a writer from Brookline, said she hopes Democrats retake the House to provide a check on Trump, whose rhetoric she called “dangerous.”
The 47-year-old Schulman she was disturbed by the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced questions at a Congressional hearing over allegations of sexual misconduct brought by professor Christine Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.
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6 a.m.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is hoping to defeat two challengers in an election that will also decide a slew of congressional races, a gubernatorial contest and whether Massachusetts should keep legal protections for transgender people.
Topping Tuesday’s ballot is the Senate race. Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl and independent candidate Shiva Ayyadurai are hoping to deny Warren a second six-year term.
If Warren wins, attention will quickly turn to the 2020 election. Warren has promised to take “a hard look” at a possible presidential run.
In the race for governor, Democrat Jay Gonzalez is trying to topple Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who remains popular in Massachusetts and has maintained a lopsided fundraising edge.
There are also three questions on the ballot and five contested U.S. House races.
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