GBH Daily: Incumbent sweep

☂️Cloudy day, rainy night, with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 7:16 p.m.

A quick election results roundup: Sen. Ed Markey won the Democratic primary race last night, with 65% of the vote to Rep. Seth Moulton’s 35%. That’s with about 96% of votes counted this morning. Markey, who has been in the Senate since 2013, will face Republican John Deaton in November.

“Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement of our nation,” Markey said last night. Moulton said he called Markey to congratulate him and told supporters he will support Markey going forward. GBH reporters were on the ground at both candidates’ election night parties, and you can read more about them here. 

And: Businessman Mike Minogue will be the Republican nominee for governor in November, challenging Gov. Maura Healey, who was unopposed in the primary. He got about 76% of the votes over Brian Shortsleeve, a venture capitalist who worked as chief administrator of the MBTA under former Gov. Charlie Baker. “I want to speak to everyone who didn’t vote for me today: You have a home here,” Minogue said. More from the race here. 

Four Things to Know

1. Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden will keep his job as the top prosecutor in Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop. He won the primary with about 50% of votes. Attorney Linda Champion got about 26% of votes, and former DA and U.S. attorney Rachael Rollins 24%. Hayden will be unopposed in the general election.

The seven-candidate district attorney’s race in Norfolk County remains too close to call this morning. Djuna Perkins is ahead with about 30% of the votes, and Adam Deitch is about 3,000 votes behind.

2. Dan Koh, a Biden administration adviser and chief of staff to former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, won the Democratic primary to represent the North Shore in Congress. He got 41% of the vote in a six-way primary race for the seat Rep. Seth Moulton vacated to run for senate.

The North Shore will likely be the only part of Massachusetts with a new representative in Congress. All other incumbents won their primary races last night. The two closest races were in Western Massachusetts, where Rep. Richard Neal ended up with 53% of the vote to Jeromie Whalen’s 46%; and on the South Shore, where Rep. Stephen Lynch won with 55% of the vote over Patrick Roath’s 45%.

3. Jurors deliberating whether to hold Lindsay Clancy legally responsible for killing her three children yesterday told the judge in the case that, after four days of discussions, they had not reached a unanimous verdict. 

The judge told them to keep talking and try to come to an agreement. “I know that this was a long trial, all right,” Judge William Sullivan said. “I know there were over 80 witnesses. There were over 300 exhibits. But because of that, I’m going to ask you to go back out.”

4. Half-off summer discounts on monthly Commuter Rail passes meant a big bump in the number of people buying them: “MBTA summer discounts boosted Commuter Rail monthly pass sales by 200%, while increasing connecting bus and subway trips by 10%,” said Caitlin Allen-Connelly, executive director of the nonprofit TransitMatters.

And some of those discounts will continue through November, including half-off monthly passes and an option for monthly pass holders to bring a guest on board for $1 on weekends.

As small Mass. colleges close, a growing focus on saving the students rather than the schools

Twenty-seven private colleges in Massachusetts have shut down or announced plans to close since 2014, the highest number of any state in the country. And when a college closes, fewer than half of the students enrolled there transfer to another school. Only about half of the ones who do end up earning their degrees, according to a State Higher Education Executive Officers Association analysis.

But there are exceptions: Wheelock College in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood merged with Boston University in 2018. More than 80% of Wheelock students transferred to BU and most of them graduated on time. Those students got the same tuition rates Wheelock promised them. And all the tenured faculty at Wheelock got jobs at BU.

“If you can’t be really clear about what the value is, then people are going to wonder: Do you do more than just collect tuition dollars and teach the groups of students you get? What else do you offer?” said David Chard, Wheelock’s last president.

GBH higher education reporter Kirk Carapezza got in touch with Chard to talk about a big question: as small private colleges deal with declining enrollment, which parts of their institutions are worth saving?

Chard now lives in Provincetown and volunteers as a master gardener at local public schools. He said he hopes he managed to preserve the ideals of college founder Lucy Wheelock, who founded the school in 1888: making the lives of children and their families better. You can find Carapezza’s full story here.