Massachusetts Update

It's been a while since I've written about the upcoming special election in Massachusetts to choose a U.S. senator to succeed the late Ted Kennedy.

By now, the field has pretty well solidified, and the front runners are Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley on the Democratic side, and state Senator Scott Brown in the Republican primary.

Some better-known potential candidates have declined to run. Democrats in that category include former Congressman Joe Kennedy and current Congressman Ed Markey. Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card had been mentioned as a potential Republican candidate, but he has stayed out of the race. A less conventional Republican possibility, former professional baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, has also declined to run.

Congressman Mike Capuano, businessman Steve Pagliuca, and Alan Khazei, the founder of City Year, are also running in the Democratic primary, but are trailing Coakley in the polls.

At this point, Coakley seems likely to win the seat.

Party primaries are scheduled for December 8, with the special election between the primary winners to be held on January 19.

Here's an article that, at first glance, looks like a parody of something that would come out of that certain university in Cambridge, MA, but I think it's intended to be genuine. It's a very Harvard Law School-centric analysis of the election, in the Harvard Law Record.