PROVINCETOWN — Alongside choices for president, Congress, the state legislature, and five statewide ballot questions, voters on the Outer and Lower Cape had two more choices to make on Election Day: Question 6, which would have increased and reaffirmed the budgeting authority of the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates if it had passed, and Question 7, which directed the state representative for the 4th Barnstable District to “support offshore and onshore wind power developments in Massachusetts.”
Preliminary returns from all 15 towns on Cape Cod show that Question 6 lost by about 3,800 votes — a relatively close contest. The “yes” campaign got 59,475 votes, or about 40 percent of the county-wide total, while the “no” campaign won 63,287 votes, or about 43 percent of the electorate. More than 25,000 voters left Question 6 blank on their ballots — six times the margin that decided the contest.
Question 6 won in five towns, with narrow victories of less than 100 votes in four of them: Truro, Eastham, Orleans, and Brewster. The “yes” campaign posted its best numbers in Provincetown, where there were almost twice as many yes as no votes: 1,377 to 716.
The “no” campaign won relatively narrow majorities in Dennis, Yarmouth, and Barnstable, but won by almost 1,000 votes in Sandwich, almost 1,300 in Falmouth, and about 500 in Chatham. Wellfleet voted against Question 6 by 95 votes.
As a result of the vote on Question 6, the Assembly’s budget powers, which are defined in the county charter, are unchanged. A charter review is supposed to begin next year.
Question 7 Fails
Question 7 on the ballot was an unusual “public policy question” asking voters to direct their state representative to vote a certain way on a policy question. It would have had no legally binding effect. The referendum failed by almost 1,400 votes.
The question was written by John Leonard, a Hingham resident who told the Independent he has “no economic interest in wind power” but wanted to measure support for offshore wind on the Outer and Lower Cape. The question asked voters in the 4th Barnstable District — the four Outer Cape towns plus Orleans, Chatham, and Harwich — to favor “legislation that would support the development of SouthCoast Wind and Commonwealth Wind and other possible future offshore and onshore wind power developments in Massachusetts.”
Before Election Day, state Sen. Julian Cyr said it was “a deceptive question” because the state legislature has no role in awarding contracts for offshore wind development.
Nonetheless, many fewer voters skipped ballot Question 7, according to preliminary returns in the seven towns where it was on the ballot.
The measure passed by 986 votes in Provincetown: 1,701 voted yes and 715 voted no. The margins in Truro, Wellfleet, and Orleans were relatively narrow: Question 7 lost by 57 votes in Truro and 121 votes in Wellfleet and won by 14 votes in Orleans.
But Question 7 lost by about 300 votes in Eastham, more than 700 in Chatham, and more than 1,100 in Harwich.
Across all seven towns, Question 7 was approved by 44 percent of voters and rejected by 49 percent, with 7 percent, or almost 2,200 voters, skipping the question.
In a tally of only Outer Cape voters, the numbers were exactly reversed: 49 percent voted for Question 7 and 44 percent voted against it. The large losses in Chatham and Harwich defeated the measure.
Given the peculiar wording of the question — mandating that a state legislator vote for nonexistent legislation — its nonbinding nature, and the relatively even split in votes, “it’s hard to see some sort of definitive anti-wind sentiment in this outcome,” said Cyr.
Cyr Defeats Lauzon
Another contest that had no direct effect on the future of wind power in Massachusetts but was seen as a potential referendum on the issue by some voters was the race between incumbent state Sen. Julian Cyr and his Republican challenger, Christopher Lauzon.
Lauzon had challenged Cyr in 2022, but opposition to offshore wind power was a more prominent issue in Lauzon’s campaign this year. “No on Question 7” signs and “Vote for Chris Lauzon” signs were often seen together on the Outer Cape, especially in Cyr’s hometown of Truro.
As in 2022, Lauzon did not win in any towns this year — but he ran ahead of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by one percentage point in Orleans, Harwich, and Brewster. Lauzon ran two points ahead of Trump in Chatham and four points, or 75 votes, ahead of Trump in Truro. Lauzon won 14.5 percent in Truro in 2022 and 24 percent there this year.
In Wellfleet, Eastham, and Provincetown, however, Lauzon’s vote share was almost identical to Trump’s this year and did not change significantly from his vote share in 2022.
Because Lauzon’s vote share changed in Truro but not in Wellfleet or Eastham, Cyr told the Independent, he thought the results there were more about housing than wind power.
“I expect this slight diminution in Truro has more to do with how vocal I have been at the local level on housing than with any trend regarding offshore wind,” Cyr said. “If you look at precincts in Osterville and Centerville where wind infrastructure is actually being planned or installed, I carried those precincts this year, and if you look at Nantucket, where the issue is most prominent, my support has remained around 66 percent.”
Other incumbent state legislators on Cape Cod likewise didn’t seem to face significant erosion of support due to wind power, Cyr said. “In poring over these results,” he said, “I don’t see consistent voter trends that relate to offshore wind.”
Lauzon said he thought wind power had motivated some voters to switch away from Cyr but added that organizing matters. Truro’s Republican town committee is more organized than Eastham’s, Lauzon said, while Wellfleet doesn’t have a Republican town committee. “Question 7 really came out of nowhere,” Lauzon said. If there had been time to “hammer that offshore wind message a little harder, maybe we would have picked up some more of those votes.”
