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Massachusetts political contributions from Nantucket wind farm developer scrutinized

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Massachusetts political contributions from Nantucket wind farm developer scrutinized


As Nantucket continues to reel from the Vineyard Wind turbine blade failure, critics are raising concerns around how the project’s parent company, Avangrid, has donated thousands of dollars in campaign money to state elected officials.

A Herald analysis found that employees who list Avangrid as their employer have made 217 donations totaling $57,677 to dozens of state and local campaigns since March 2018, two months before the Baker administration selected a Vineyard Wind bid for contract negotiation.

Notable figures include project supporters Gov. Maura Healey receiving 38 donations totaling $16,425 since 2018, and state Sen. Julian Cyr, a Democrat whose district represents the Cape and Islands, collecting 17 contributions for $3,036 since 2021, according to the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

While the donations represent minuscule portions of Healey and Cyr’s cumulative campaign funds, sharply less than 1%, respectively, critics argue the electeds are putting their interests with Avangrid ahead of their constituents.

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Vineyard Wind, a venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, continues to clean up debris — a mix of foam and fiberglass pieces of various sizes — on Nantucket and the surrounding area in the aftermath of the turbine blade failure.

“Campaign donations have bought their support for a project that makes very little sense at this point,” said Paul Diego Craney, a spokesman for watchdog Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “Elected officials should think objectively on policy decisions, but in this case, their judgment is getting blinded by the campaign donations they are receiving.”

The Healey campaign declined to comment.

The $3,036 that Avangrid employees have donated to Cyr since 2021 counts for 0.4% of the $688,518 in contributions he’s received in that time, the senator told the Herald.

Cyr highlighted how Massachusetts campaign finance law limits the maximum contribution a candidate can receive per person per calendar year to $1,000.

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“By capping contributions, we ensure that the voice of every voter matters, rather than allowing those with deep pockets to dominate the political landscape,” the senator said in a statement Saturday. “This promotes fairness, transparency, and trust in our elections, ensuring that our representative democracy is truly for the people, not for those who can spend the most.”

Christopher Lauzon, a Barnstable resident and Republican candidate running for Cyr’s seat, called the Vineyard Wind situation “one of the biggest disasters to hit the Cape and Islands since Hurricane Bob.”

“It’s having devastating environmental and economic impacts,” Lauzon said of the Vineyard Wind blade failure in an interview with the Herald on Friday.

“Senator Cyr has been completely MIA on this issue,” the candidate continued, adding how he visited Nantucket last weekend to speak with island residents. “They are not happy. They feel like they’re being ignored.”

An analysis of Cyr’s social media activity since the blade broke apart on July 13 showed that the senator has not made any posts relative to what many Nantucket officials and residents are calling a crisis.

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Healey also hasn’t made any social media posts about her response.

In a July 16 post on X, Cyr included a link to his monthly newsletter. In it, he highlighted a trip he made with Healey to the Vineyard Wind warehouse facility on June 6 and a celebration of “Global Wind Day” at Craigville Beach in Barnstable a week later.

“Vineyard Wind has demonstrated a commitment to the Island,” Cyr wrote in the newsletter. “I am proud to have played my part in working to forge the partnership between Islanders and the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind installation, and I’m excited to see this effort create a whole host of good in our community.

Healey, during her trip with Cyr, remarked, “To all of the workers, contractors, the people who financed and so many others, thank you for bringing this home. We were serious when we said we were going to make a big bet on wind. It’s where we need to go.”

Lauzon is taking exception to how Cyr has collected five contributions totaling $1,300 from his former chief of staff, Patrick Johnson, who currently serves as Avangrid’s director of public affairs.

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Johnson donated five other gifts to Cyr for $1,101.38 under prior employment.

“When you get into the thousands of dollars it does add up. That’s significant,” Lauzon said. “Honestly, it presents a conflict.”

Cape Cod Concerned Citizens highlighted how it “holds the strong opinion that the pattern of campaign contributions that is publicly available for all to see reveals a giant grift that is poisonous to the democratic process and silences the voices of Cape Cod constituents.”

Cyr stood firm with how he makes his “decisions and votes based on what I believe is best for Cape Codders and Islanders, not for any political contributors.”

“I have been all in on clean energy, including offshore wind, but I am clear-eyed that can only happen if we get it right,” Cyr told the Herald. “That means doing right by the local people and communities who host these projects. Anything else is unacceptable.”

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During his employment with Avangrid, Johnson has contributed to roughly 25 other campaigns including $500 to Healey, $825 to Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and $900 to Rep. Jeffrey Roy, the House chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee.

“Avangrid always supports the ability of its employees to exercise their rights and participate in the political process,” company spokesperson Leo Rosales told the Herald in a statement Sunday, “including supporting public officials on important issues like clean energy and climate policy.”

GE Vernova, the designer, manufacturer and installer of the turbines, has pointed to a “manufacturing deviation” and not an engineering design flaw in the failure of its wind turbine off the coast of Nantucket. An initial third-party environmental analysis of the disaster has found the debris from the 351-foot blade to be “inert, non-soluble, stable and non-toxic.”

Vineyard Wind is prohibited from generating electricity from any of its turbines and building any additional towers, nacelle and blades, under a federal order.

The company is permitted to “install inter-array cables and conduct surveys outside of the damaged turbine’s safety exclusion zone,” the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in a Friday release.

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Nantucket officials, in a Friday update, highlighted how they met with the state for the first time on Thursday to discuss the state’s “monitoring and response efforts.”

The Biden administration restarted permitting for Vineyard Wind 1, the subject of a federal appeal, in February 2021, just a month after the president took office. GE Vernova has installed 24 turbines to date.

Vineyard Wind 1 is planned to grow to 62 turbines that are expected to have the capacity to generate 806 megawatts, enough electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses across the state, according to state officials.

Avangrid has either begun construction on or is in review of other wind farm projects in the Nantucket Sound, which Barnstable residents are fighting against.

“The offshore wind industry is critical to our ability to combat climate change and produce clean, affordable energy,” a spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs told the Herald, “and the Healey-Driscoll Administration is committed to delivering these benefits to our residents.”

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Photos of the damaged GE Vernova wind blade at the Vineyard Wind development in the waters off Nantucket. (Photos courtesy GE Vernova)
BOSTON MA. - NOVEMBER 19: Massachusetts State Senate Julian Cyr on November 19, 2020 in Boston, MA. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)
Massachusetts state Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Cape and Islands. (Herald file photo)



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20k customers without power in Revere, Winthrop areas

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20k customers without power in Revere, Winthrop areas


National Grid is reporting that roughly 20,000 customers are without power due to outages in the Winthrop and Revere areas.

The utility company’s live outages map shows that 10,753 customers are without power in the Revere area and 9,261 customers are without power in the Winthrop area as of 2:25 p.m. Saturday.

The Herald has reached out to National Grid for comment. The Herald has also reached out to Eversource for information regarding any outages in their service regions, where a Herald photographer has seen some outages. Eversource’s outage map did not display any major outages at 2:25 p.m.

This is a developing story.

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Eight takeaways from Friday’s high school playoffs action, including four 1,000-point scorers – The Boston Globe

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Eight takeaways from Friday’s high school playoffs action, including four 1,000-point scorers – The Boston Globe


Find the full scoreboard here, along with everything we wrote Friday night:

Not seeing your team’s highlights in Takeaways? Here are all the ways to submit scores and stats to Globe Schools via phone, email, and social media.

▪ Cathedral senior Keyona Raines scored 15 points, including the 1,000th of her career, as the No. 5 Panthers handled No. 28 Hudson, 60-43, in the first round of the Division 4 girls’ basketball tournament.

▪ Sutton junior captain Ava Carroll netted her 1,000th career point during a 29-point effort in a 49-31 Division 4 first-round win over Easthampton.

▪ With a layup in the waning seconds of the first half, Anna Freeman became the 10th Medway player, and first since Riley Childs in 2018, to score 1,000 career points. She finished the 55-24 Division 3 first-round win over St. Paul with 17. Her father, Matt Freeman, scored 1,000 points at Bishop Feehan.

▪ Burlington boys’ basketball senior Matty Gray reached 1,000 career points during a 25-point performance in a 95-58 Division 2 first-round rout of Holliston. He reached the mark on a first-quarter layup.

▪ Falmouth boys’ hockey senior Kody Pokraka rode two assists to 100 career points during a 5-4 Division 2 first-round win over Plymouth South.

It was a chalky day, with only one significant upset: No. 22 Greater Lawrence girls’ basketball easily handling No. 11 Hamilton-Wenham, 65-45, in the Division 4 first round thanks to 13 3-pointers as a team and a combined 47 points from Serenity West (24) and Maliah Caban (23).

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The only other lower seeds to win were No. 18 Marshfield boys’ basketball, which took out No. 15 Cambridge, 66-63, in overtime in the Division 1 first round, and No. 34 Arlington Catholic boys’ basketball, which survived No. 31 Duxbury, 64-60, in Division 2 preliminary-round action.

The finish of the night came in No. 17 South Hadley’s 61-60 win over No. 16 Madison Park. Trailing 60-59 and inbounding with 10.3 seconds left, the Tigers got an off-balance 3-pointer, but junior Noah Hambley crashed the boards and in one fell swoop secured the rebound and put it back up off the glass for the winning bucket as time expired in a boys’ basketball Division 4 first-round matchup.

The Oliver Ames boys got four free throws from Jacob Lok in the final 26 seconds to squeak past Canton, 45-42, in the first round of the Division 2 bracket. The Acton-Boxborough girls also needed overtime to complete a 53-49 Division 1 first-round triumph over Brookline.

The only overtime hockey game of the night saw the Diman boys net an equalizer in the final minute of regulation before Marlborough’s Ethan Guo supplied the heroics just 2:08 into the extra frame, propelling the No. 8 Panthers into the Division 3 second round with a 6-5 victory. Anthony Tramontozzi and Chace Lozano each scored twice for Marlborough

Caroline Arruda, Marshfield — The sophomore poured in 32 points to push the Rams to a 68-63 preliminary-round win over Westborough.

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Gaby Bassett, Nauset/Monomoy — The senior capped her hat trick with the winning goal in a 4-3 Division 2 opening-round win over Burlington.

Brody Bumila and Jake Webster, Bishop Feehan — The seniors took control of an 85-67 Division 1 first-round victory, with Bumila providing 32 points and 14 rebounds and Webster going for 21 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists.

Avery Gamble, Oliver Ames — The senior’s 3-point shot wasn’t falling, but she didn’t let that get in the way of a 34-point performance, 2 off her career best, during a 59-50 Division 2 first-round win over Bedford.

Eileen Lowther, Hingham — The junior controlled the glass, pulling down 15 rebounds and blocking six shots to go with 12 points in a 54-43 Division 2 first-round win.

Mollie Mullen, Bishop Feehan — The senior from Dighton delivered 21 points, 9 steals, and 5 assists as the No. 2 Shamrocks rolled to a 71-30 Division 1 first-round victory over Peabody.

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Maura Quirk, Acton-Boxborough — The sophomore was cleaning the glass to the tune of 17 rebounds while adding 13 points in a 53-49 overtime win in the first round of the Division 1 bracket.

Senior Sophia O’Donnell made history, becoming the first St. Mary’s athlete to sign to become a Division 1 rower. O’Donnell will row for Merrimack.

Milton Academy graduate Cormac Ryan signed a two-way NBA contract with the Bucks on Thursday, making him the fourth former member of the Middlesex Magic AAU program currently in the NBA, along with The Pistons’ Duncan Robinson, Hornets’ Pat Connaughton, and Knicks’ Tyler Kolek.

Ryan, who hails from New York, was a three-time All-NEPSAC selection at Milton Academy before playing at Stanford, Notre Dame, and North Carolina. He spent the last two seasons in the G League with the Oklahoma City Blue and Wisconsin Herd. He played with the Thunder’s Summer League team in 2024.

Quinnipiac junior Anna Foley, a 6-foot-3-inch Andover graduate, was celebrated for reaching 1,000 points during a ceremony Friday. She passed the mark on Feb. 12 in a 62-40 victory over Siena. A two-time All-MAAC second team selection, she’s averaging 9.5 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.

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8. Basketball leaderboard

Avery Gamble, Oliver Ames, 34

Caroline Arruda, Marshfield, 32

Brody Bumila, Bishop Feehan, 32

Weston Bunnell, Stoneham, 29

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Joe Baraky, Duxbury, 28

Zach Georges, Pioneer Charter I, 27

Kelsi Lanza, Silver Lake, 27

Josh Roux, Andover, 26

Ava Bailey, Newburyport, 25

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Allie Danis, Newton North, 25

Angie Djoko, Danvers, 25

Noah Feldman, Marshfield, 25

Matty Gray, Burlington, 25

Jackson Hines, Arlington Catholic, 25

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Connor Houle, Attleboro, 25

Katelyn Troilo, Mansfield, 25

Alex Ste. Marie, Manchester Essex, 24

Serenity West, Greater Lawrence, 24

Noah Bayersdorfer, Winthrop, 23

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Maliah Caban, Greater Lawrence, 23

Josh Jenkins, Barnstable, 23

Reagan Maniscalco, Tewksbury, 23

Colin Trimble, Foxborough, 23

Eva Andrews, Needham, 22

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Alaysia Drummonds, Foxborough, 22

Trevor Manning, Ipswich, 22

Gia Porazzo, Foxborough, 22

Sarah Powers, Wayland, 22

Ryan Tullish, Middleborough, 22

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Chase Gara, Sutton, 21

Mollie Mullen, Bishop Feehan, 21

LaDainian Rodrigues, Attleboro, 21

Rex Satter, Ipswich, 21

Jake Webster, Bishop Feehan, 21

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Aboubakar Nimaka, Malden Catholic, 20

Dylan Raffle, Milton, 20

Maeve Horsman, Oliver Ames, 18

Eva Andrews, Needham, 17

Maura Quirk, Acton-Boxborough, 17

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Tony Dean, Stoneham, 15

Eileen Lowther, Hingham, 15

Brody Bumila, Bishop Feehan, 14

Angie Djoko, Danvers, 12

Camden Strandberg, Bridgewater-Raynham, 11

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Avery Teixeira, Bishop Feehan, 11

Sophie Gallivan, North Reading, 10

Shannon LaMorticelli, Bishop Feehan, 10

Aboubakar Nimaka, Malden Catholic, 10

Zarah Ochi, Burlington, 10

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Ashley Varnum, Bridgewater-Raynham, 10

Lila Polansky, Bridgewater-Raynham, 8

Duke Cherry, Malden Catholic, 7

Sophie Gallivan, North Reading, 7

Erin Reilly, Burlington, 7

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Jake Webster, Bishop Feehan, 7

Caroline Connors, Millis, 6

Egan Gill, Bishop Feehan, 6

Rex Satter, Ipswich, 6

Marcus Tayag, Pioneer Charter I, 6

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Rayana Laurent, Pingree, 5

Mollie Mullen, Bishop Feehan, 9

Reagan Maniscalco, Tewksbury, 6

Ella O’Keefe, Oliver Ames, 5

Dylan Raffle, Milton, 4

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Ava Sicari, Burlington, 4

Rex Satter, Ipswich, 3

Eileen Lowther, Hingham, 6

Maeve Horsman, Oliver Ames, 5

Zarah Ochi, Burlington, 4

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Gaby Bassett, Nauset/Monomoy, 3

Griff Callahan, Martha’s Vineyard, 2

Max Cronen, Monomoy/Mashpee, 2

Addy Harrington, Duxbury, 2

Jaxon Hoey, Norwell, 2

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Chace Lozano, Marlborough, 2

Mackenna Metell, Martha’s Vineyard, 2

Christos Rogaris, Dover-Sherborn/Weston, 2

Mark Trahon, Norwood, 2

Anthony Tramontozzi, Marlborough, 2

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Bryce Campanale, Norwell, 3

Maeve Turner, Falmouth, 3

Violet Cox, Falmouth, 2

Ryan Heidt, Martha’s Vineyard, 2

Cam Long, Norwell, 2

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Kody Pokraka, Falmouth, 2

Bailen Darack, Martha’s Vineyard, 22

Sammie Precourt, Dennis-Yarmouth, 16


Brendan Kurie can be reached at brendan.kurie@globe.com. Follow him on X @BrendanKurie.





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State health officials announce two confirmed cases of measles in Massachusetts – Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News

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State health officials announce two confirmed cases of measles in Massachusetts – Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News


BOSTON (WHDH) – State public health officials have announced two confirmed cases of measles in Massachusetts this year.

The first case came from a school-aged resident who was exposed and diagnoses while out of state. This person has remained out of state during the infectious period.

The second case was diagnosed by an adult in Greater Boston. Officials say this person had recently returned from international travel with an uncertain vaccination history.

This person visited several locations. Both local and state health officials are working with the locations to identify and notify those who were potentially exposed.

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“Our first two measles cases in 2026 demonstrate the impact that the measles outbreaks, nationally and internationally, can have here at home. Fortunately, thanks to high vaccination rates, the risk to most Massachusetts residents remains low,” said Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein, MD, PhD. “Measles is the most contagious respiratory virus and can cause life-threatening illness. These cases are a reminder of the need for health care providers and local health departments to remain vigilant for cases so that appropriate public health measures can be rapidly employed to prevent spread in the state. This is also a reminder that getting vaccinated is the best way for people to protect themselves from this disease.” 

(Copyright (c) 2025 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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