Three Candidates, One Primary: Where the Fifth Middlesex State Senate Race Stands

Three candidates are in the homestretch of a September 1 primary to decide who represents the Fifth Middlesex district in the Massachusetts State Senate. Because no candidate from another party has filed to run in the general election, whoever wins the Democratic primary on September 1 goes on to an uncontested race on November 3 — meaning the primary is, in practical terms, the election.

Ryan O'Malley has drawn visible grassroots and educator support. Kate Lipper-Garabedian has the backing of the state government establishment, including an endorsement from Governor Maura Healey. Carey McDonald has the financial and endorsement backing of Malden Mayor Gary Christenson.

Institutional backing

Governor Healey's endorsement of Lipper-Garabedian, shared in a recent campaign email, calls her "a valuable partner" who "understands the challenges facing our families" on health care affordability and education. It's the kind of establishment support that signals where the state's Democratic leadership wants this seat to land.

McDonald's backing from Mayor Christenson runs alongside McDonald's own record in Malden city government — a role that comes up later in this piece in connection with public records and municipal budgeting.

O'Malley on Flock Safety cameras — and a national fight over surveillance

On August 26, O'Malley released a campaign video arguing against continued reliance on Flock Safety's AI-powered surveillance cameras, telling viewers "before it's too late, we really need to wrap our hands around Flock" and warning that "a surveillance state is not what we need in the United States." That's O'Malley's stated position — not a claim we're fact-checking here, but one worth putting in context, because Flock Safety has become a live national controversy well beyond Malden.

On the same day O'Malley's video went up, Sen. Josh Hawley — chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism — sent Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley a letter raising concerns about misuse of the company's camera network, including officers running personal searches and at least one wrongful arrest tied to a Flock database match. Hawley's subcommittee has an active inquiry into the company. Separately, reporting on Flock's growing public backlash — including security researchers and a self-organized network of "wardrivers" who map camera locations to track the network's spread — has kept the company under sustained scrutiny through 2026. Whether or not O'Malley's video and Hawley's letter landing the same day was coincidence, the broader concern O'Malley is raising is one that's being raised in Washington too.

The July 22 City Hall episode, revisited

MNN previously reported on a disruption at Malden City Hall on July 22, 2026, during a Tech & AI candidate forum, where police were dispatched in response to a report of "a male party... that's arguing there with someone." A subsequent public records request turned up an MPD police radio transmission timestamped 6:40:37 PM referencing that response, and a separate message — apparently relayed from the chief — timestamped 6:42 PM that night, noting McDonald's belief that "the gentleman left."

All three senate candidates were in the building for that forum. The records we have establish that McDonald was in some communication loop about the incident; they do not establish who initiated the call to police, and we're not asserting that. On July 24, 2026, MNN submitted public records request #2026-0311, seeking "Incident/offense reports, supplemental reports ... documenting police response to ... disturbances or disruptions at ... Malden City Hall." The city responded on August 27, 2026 — 34 days later — including "2026-0311ChiefText_08252026083522.pdf" but no incident or supplemental report.

McDonald, Flock cameras, and the Police Community Advisory Committee

McDonald has attended Malden's Police Community Advisory Committee. According to meeting minutes McDonald provided "a brief history and overview of the PCAC, what it is, and what it is not" at the 9/17/25 meeting. Minutes of the 2/18/26 meeting show that MPD participated and provided information and a Q&A on Flock cameras, with McDonald a virtual attendee. McDonald has also served for years as the City Council's Finance Chair, with a hand in approving the budgets that fund the city's Flock Safety camera contract. It's a legitimate accountability question — what has McDonald done, in either role, regarding oversight of how those cameras are funded and used — and it's one we don't yet have a documented answer to. Malden has been paying for Flock cameras with comparatively little public discussion of the arrangement.

Fact-checking the McDonald mailer

A recent piece of McDonald campaign literature makes several head-to-head claims against Lipper-Garabedian. Two are worth checking against the record.

The mailer says McDonald "sued the Trump Administration." The lawsuit being referenced — Mennonite Church USA et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security et al. — was filed by more than two dozen religious denominations and associations, according to UU World, the Unitarian Universalist Association's publication. McDonald is quoted in that same UU World piece in their capacity as the UUA's Executive Vice President, one of many staff at one of many plaintiff organizations. Painting a multi-coalition lawsuit as litigation in which an individual personally "sued" the President of the United States seems a stretch worth asking McDonald's campaign to clarify.

The mailer also credits McDonald with having "released plan to fix school funding & the local budget crisis." McDonald has served as Malden's Finance Chair through a period that included the city's failed March 2026 Proposition 2½ override vote — with a ballot question triggered in large part by a school funding shortfall that the city later characterized as a "regrettable but honest human error" (after the voters were counted). McDonald's mailer doesn't mention that history. Readers weighing McDonald's "plan to fix" claim should know what the budget crisis actually was and McDonald's role in it.

The mailer's third claim — that Lipper-Garabedian "voted against the audit, wants to further restrict it" — is worth checking too, and here the record is more mixed than either campaign's framing suggests. See below.

The audit vote: what the record actually shows

On June 3, 2026, the House passed H.5469, "An Act promoting transparency and public access in state government," 125-28. The Senate passed it 34-6. Lipper-Garabedian voted Yea, according to House Roll Call No. 201 — the same way as the rest of Malden's state delegation: Rep. Paul Donato and Rep. Steven Ultrino, both of whom, along with outgoing Sen. Jason Lewis (who also voted Yea in the Senate), have endorsed her campaign.

So the mailer's claim that Lipper-Garabedian "voted against the audit" doesn't match the roll call we have. She voted for the bill's passage, not against it — as did nearly the entire Legislature. If McDonald's campaign is relying on some other vote, such as an amendment that would have expanded the audit's scope, they haven't shown it to us, and we're not printing "voted against the audit" as fact without it.

That said, the underlying concern about what this bill does deserves a fair hearing on its own terms, separate from the mailer's inaccurate framing. H.5469 did two things. First, it created — for the first time — a mechanism for the state auditor to examine the Legislature's "administrative functions," but the bill defines that term narrowly: it covers the Legislature's budget, official audits, expenditures, and settlement agreements, and explicitly excludes "constitutional functions," a category that includes members' deliberation, speech, and internal communications. The bill also states that no court has jurisdiction to compel production of records or enforce an interview request under this section — disputes are resolved through a published "statement of dispute," not a judge's order.

Second, the bill created an entirely new "legislative records" access law, separate from the public records law that applies to the rest of state and municipal government (M.G.L. c. 66). It defines "legislative record" as a specific, enumerated list of roughly 17 categories of documents — bills, committee reports, roll calls, financial records reported to the comptroller, and so on — and sets its own fees, timelines, and appeal process, which runs through each branch's legislative records access officer and, if denied, directly to the Supreme Judicial Court. The bill states plainly that this new law "shall constitute the sole and exclusive remedy for obtaining access to records of the general court," and that the general public records law "shall not apply to the general court" going forward.

So: the Legislature did exempt itself from the state's general public records law and replace it with a narrower, purpose-built one, and it did limit any audit of its own operations to administrative matters while walling off deliberative work from disclosure. That's an accurate description of what the bill does. It's also true that this wasn't a position unique to Lipper-Garabedian — it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, including every member of Malden's delegation who's now endorsing her.

Lipper-Garabedian's record

Lipper-Garabedian's campaign describes her mission as standing firm "in upholding the basic pillars of our democracy" and protecting reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ and immigrant residents, and health care access, while addressing affordability, schools, veterans, older adults, and climate resiliency.

Voting in Malden

The primary is September 1. Because no other party has a candidate on the ballot for this seat, the winner of the Democratic primary will go on to represent the Fifth Middlesex district after the November 3 general election.

For polling locations, hours, and registration information, contact the Malden City Clerk's Office or visit the city's election information page.

Documents cited in this piece

Have documentation on any of the open questions in this piece — the audit vote, McDonald's committee record on Flock oversight, or what happened at City Hall on July 22? Email us at MaldenNewsNetwork@gmail.com.