Few know what an SJC clerk does — but it's the hottest political race in town

Boston City Councilor Erin Murphy made a campaign stop on a recent sunny morning at the Nuevo Dia adult day care center in Roxbury. In many ways, it looked like a typical event for a city councilor. Murphy chatted up residents drinking café con leche and handed out pamphlets as a band played quietly in the background.

But Murphy is running for a more obscure position this time around, one with a longer term and higher pay: clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County.

And what’s usually a sleepy race for an administrative role is becoming one of the hottest match-ups in this year's Democratic primary. Murphy and her opponent, attorney Allison Cartwright, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and racked up dozens of high profile endorsements.

"I have never before seen such incredible activity and passion around a race for the clerk of courts," said long-time Democratic lobbyist and political consultant Arline Isaacson. "It's fascinating."

Few people know who the clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County is, or what the position entails. The clerk handles the admission of lawyers to the bar and oversees matters of attorney discipline.

The clerk also manages the high court’s single-justice cases, where people appeal for emergency relief. (The recent Karen Read murder trial is an example: Read's supporters petitioned the high court to remove a buffer zone around the courthouse; a single justice of the SJC upheld the 200-foot restriction). A different clerk handles the caseload of the full court with its seven justices.

There hasn’t been a competitive race for SJC clerk for Suffolk County in decades. Retiring Clerk Maura Doyle has held the seat for nearly 30 years.

Yet big money and endorsements are flowing into this year’s campaign. Murphy is racking up support among Boston’s more conservative old guard Democrats, from U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch to former Mayor and U.S. Ambassador Ray Flynn.

On the other side, Cartwright is assembling an Avengers-style team of Boston’s leading progressives, from Mayor Michelle Wu and Attorney General Andrea Campbell to U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

Pressley is even having her own campaign volunteers make calls to voters urging them to cast ballots for Cartwright. She convened a video call on a recent evening to fire them up.

"Integrity for the highest court in Suffolk County," she said. "We deserve it!"

Cartwright is a managing director with the state public defender agency, where she oversees an office of about 75 people.

"I don’t come from a corporate law background. I come from a background representing poor people. Being out in the community. And that’s what I want to bring to this position," she said in an interview.

Cartwright also stresses that she is a lawyer, while Murphy is not.

"This being our state’s highest court, it deserves to have an attorney at the helm of this office, of this clerk's office, and I think the people who rely on this court deserve that as well," she said.

Murphy counters that her experience as a city councilor and public school teacher prepared her for the role. "I have the same, if not more, skills that I'll bring to make sure that I'm doing the actual job description," she said in an interview.

State campaign finance data shows Cartwright has raised over $100,000 since launching her campaign in March. Outside super PACs associated with the Chinese Progressive Association and the SEIU service workers union have spent over $20,000 on mailers and paid canvassers to support her.

Murphy has raised a similar amount, and also is getting a lift from unions. The local ironworker’s union PAC spent about $3,000 this month on text messages to voters.

The ironworker's support appears to serve two purposes. As CommonWealth Beacon political columnist Gintautas Dumcius recently wrote, if Murphy wins the clerkship and leaves the council, her seat would go to the runner-up in the last election. That candidate was Bridget Nee-Walsh, a union ironworker from South Boston.

Political observers see the match-up between Murphy and Cartwright as a sort of proxy battle between Boston’s old-school political establishment and the city's growing progressive coalition.

Murphy is rooted in the politics of Irish Catholic Dorchester. Her grandfather, Richard J. Murphy, was a prominent community organizer and there’s a school in the neighborhood bearing his name.

On the campaign trail, Murphy often highlights that she’s “from here,” and knows how to serve the city and its neighborhoods.

Cartwright grew up on military bases and moved to Boston for law school. In that way, her biography aligns with some of her political allies: Wu and Pressley both grew up in Chicago before moving to Boston and becoming community organizers.

Former state representative and Democratic strategist Susan Tracy said the stark divide between the candidates is mobilizing opposing political forces in what’s otherwise an uneventful primary. "It's a very sleepy year. It's the only race in town," she said. "I think that the stakes are higher in some respects because of that dichotomy."

Tracy said the race represents more than just who's going to be the next clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County. She thinks it's a statement "about what kind of leaders is Boston selecting these days," she said.

In an all-too familiar scenario for Massachusetts politics, there is no Republican candidate in the race. So whoever wins Tuesday’s Democratic primary will almost certainly win the six-year term and it’s nearly $190,000 salary.

It’s just one contest, but those watching say the result will tell a story about the direction of this changing city.