Miniard Culpepper, the pastor of Roxbury’s Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church and a former official with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on Tuesday tossed his hat into the ring for the Second Suffolk Senate seat. The seat will open this year as Sonia Chang-Diaz, a Jamaica Plain Democrat, seeks to run for governor. The Second Suffolk already
The Mini-Midterms: Five Takeaways from Six Decades of House Special Elections
A Commentary By Kyle Kondik
Thursday, April 15, 2021
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE There have been nearly 300 U.S. House special elections since the mid-1950s. These elections more often flipped against the party that holds the White House just like what often happens to the president’s party in midterm House elections but the president’s party has scored some noteworthy wins, too, which can cloud the predictive value of special elections.
Sign up: Free daily newsletter
Sign up!
Six decades of special House election trends
Almost exactly 47 years ago April 16, 1974 Republicans suffered what would be the fourth of five U.S. House special election losses in the first half of that year. Bob Traxler (D), who would go on to serve two decades in the U.S. House, defeated James Sparling Jr. (R) in MI-8.