Incumbents need opposition

You may have heard that on Tuesday a Holocaust-denying Nazi won the Republican nomination for a congressional seat in Illinois.

The catch: He didn’t actually have an opponent. No mainstream Republican wanted to waste time and money running in the deep blue district, where the seat has been held by current incumbent Daniel Lipinski or his father for the past 25 years.

Sound familiar? To those in Massachusetts, it sure should.

An analysis of 2016 state elections from Ballotpedia found the commonwealth had the least competitive elections in the nation, and not just because of our liberal leanings. Our state primaries are also among the least competitive, meaning many incumbent politicians never face opposition of any ideological persuasion.

And the same holds true at the congressional level. In Illinois roughly 41 percent of congressional incumbents faced a primary opponent in 2016. In Massachusetts, however, that number is zero. Not one incumbent congressman had an opponent from within his or her own party, and only five out of the nine had one in the general election.

The Illinois race illustrates the dangers of an electoral process where incumbents coast to victory over and over with no serious opposition. This should serve as a warning to states like ours, where uncontested races abound, leaving our political process open to unserious perennial candidates of every stripe, dragging down the quality of the political conversation, and giving the voters fewer real choices.

And why don’t candidates step forward? A process heavily tilted toward incumbents, biased redistricting, the increasing ugliness of political discourse and a short election cycle have all been put forward as possible reasons.

Massachusetts needs to examine every possible option to reverse this trend and shake up our all-too-comfortable political landscape.