Boston Globe Columnist Declares MA Senate Seat 'Winner' a Month Before Actual Election

Congratulations Massachusetts!

You have just chosen the person last night who will succeed the late Ted Kennedy in his Senate seat. The Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson declared the winner a week ago on December 3 in this story, Coakley gets the keys to the Senate: 

MARTHA COAKLEY will be the state’s next US senator. Michael Capuano handed her the keys to the late Ted Kennedy’s office by getting caught up in one last dumb shouting match with the sure loser in the race, Stephen Pagliuca. One can only imagine the smile inside Coakley’s head as Capuano and Pagliuca descended into a banter so banal that Pagliuca tried to nail Capuano as the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party.

There is only one "little" problem with this story; the winner of the Senate seat from Massachusetts doesn't actually get chosen until January 19. What Martha Coakley won last night was the right to run in that general election as the Democrat nominee. However, that hasn't stopped the Boston Globe's Jackson from declaring her the winner of that Senate seat.

For the information about that final January "technicality" of a general election, you would have to read the Boston Herald which has a much more realistic story headline, Race comes down to Coakley, Brown:

Attorney General Martha Coakley took a step toward history last night, crushing U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in a landslide victory in the Democratic primary to succeed the iconic late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Coakley was the first to jump into the three-month sprint to replace Kennedy in the days after his death, and the bold strategy paid off in the form of a 19-point victory over Capuano. Coakley, vying to be the first female senator from Massachusetts, hauled in 47 percent of the vote to Capuano’s 28 percent. City Year founder Alan Khazei netted 13 percent while Boston Celtics [team stats] co-owner Stephen Pagliuca got 12.

Coakley’s win sets up a Jan. 19 clash with state Sen. Scott Brown, who trounced Duxbury attorney Jack E. Robinson in the GOP primary, 89 percent to 11 percent. 

Huh! But how can that be? Derrick Z. Jackson has already announced that "Martha Coakley will be the state's next US senator." In fact the only hint in the Jackson's Globe story that Coakley might have one final step to becoming senator after the primary was in the final sentence:

...it appears that Coakley, short of a shockingly effective Republican challenge, will head to Washington, without voters being completely clear what she will brawl for.

So it appears that the January general election for the senate seat is nothing more than a silly electoral technicality that must be endured by the Bay State voters. There is really no reason for them to vote in that election because the winner has already been declared for them by Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe.