E-Mail This Article to a Friend Primary endorsements Carl Sciortino, Avi Green, and Marty Walz for the legislature; Stephen Murphy for sheriff. Also, marking a tragic milestone, and Bush’s past is catching up with him.

WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL campaign dominating political news, next week’s state primary election has all but escaped notice. It shouldn’t. In Greater Boston, several races, all on the Democratic ballot, deserve your attention. The winners in these overwhelmingly Democratic districts will, in all likelihood, go on to victory in the general election on November 2. Thus, if you want your voice to be heard, be sure to vote next Tuesday, September 14.

In the 34th Middlesex District, which comprises neighborhoods in West Somerville and South Medford, a political newcomer, Carl Sciortino, is the clear choice over 16-year House member Vincent Ciampa. Both men live in Somerville, but there the similarities end. Sciortino — young, bright, and articulate — is an openly gay man who oversees HIV/AIDS research programs at the Fenway Community Health Center. Ciampa, in contrast, is a conservative Democrat who voted in favor of proposals at the constitutional convention earlier this year that would have outlawed same-sex marriage. Ciampa says he supports civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, but his votes mirrored those of the staunchest gay-marriage opponents.

Ciampa has been an effective legislator for his district, bringing home such politically popular goodies as school aid, road-improvement projects, and affordable housing. But he is decidedly old-school, and Sciortino will likely make a more effective advocate for the "New Somerville," which is home to many gay and lesbian families as well as residents just trying to get by. Ciampa derides Sciortino as a "one-issue candidate," but Sciortino is as passionate about good schools and health care as he is about gay marriage.

Voters in the 26th Middlesex District, which takes in parts of Cambridge and Somerville, have a similar but more difficult dilemma. The race pits a smart, young newcomer against a long-time state representative, Tim Toomey, who opposes abortion rights and has voted in favor of capital punishment, though he says he has since changed his mind. The difference is that Toomey, unlike Ciampa, supported gay marriage at the constitutional convention by voting against every amendment aimed at weakening it. Because of that, Toomey has been endorsed by the state’s major gay-advocacy organizations, as well as by Congressman Barney Frank and State Representative Liz Malia, both of whom are openly gay.

Nevertheless, the Phoenix’s endorsement goes to the newcomer, Avi Green. Unlike Toomey, Green is a multi-issue progressive, supporting not just same-sex marriage but also abortion rights and gun control, and opposing cuts in social-services spending and the death penalty. The two also hold different positions on House Speaker Tom Finneran, a conservative Democrat whose admirable intelligence and fiscal restraint have long since been eclipsed by his dictatorial tendencies. Toomey is part of Finneran’s leadership team; Green says he’ll vote against re-electing Finneran as Speaker. Those words may come back to haunt him, but Green deserves credit for guts and independence.

Since 1995, Paul Demakis has represented the Eighth Suffolk District with tenacity and, for the most part, genuine progressivism. Now he is retiring, and voters of that district — which includes Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, the West End, and Cambridgeport — have two attractive choices. Marty Walz, an education activist and former corporate lawyer with a keen grasp of the issues facing her district, will make an impressive successor not just to Demakis (who has endorsed her) but to his predecessors, including Tom Vallely and, before him, Barney Frank.

The other candidate, Kristine Glynn, is an experienced Beacon Hill insider who has worked for State Senators Dianne Wilkerson and Brian Joyce as well as for Demakis. Both women are progressives, in favor of gay marriage, reproductive choice, and more and smarter funding for public education. But though Walz is an outsider, she is a true policy wonk, capable of discussing in great detail such matters as how to push for affordable housing in Cambridgeport and how to bring greater accountability to charter schools — a worthy experiment. Walz’s explication of what to do about dropping groundwater levels in the Back Bay, a situation that has damaged buildings, is worthy of an engineer.

Walz talks about wanting to build a working relationship with Speaker Finneran while maintaining her progressive values. Glynn takes a more combative approach toward the Speaker. Though confrontation has its uses, Walz’s strategy is likely to be more effective.

There is one issue on which Glynn is right and Walz is wrong: the ban on newspaper boxes in the Back Bay, ordered several years ago by the Back Bay Architectural Commission and upheld earlier this week by federal district-court judge Douglas Woodlock. Woodlock was last seen approving the barbed-wire "protest pen" during the Democratic National Convention, even though Woodlock himself likened it to an "internment camp." Walz supports the news-box ban, as does the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, an organization with which she has been closely aligned since the late 1990s. Glynn opposes the ban. Walz argues that the ban was a necessary last resort after the city failed to enforce an ordinance requiring news-box owners to keep their properties clean and trash-free. But restricting free speech is never the proper response to what is essentially a litter-enforcement problem.

Our final endorsement may raise a few eyebrows. Suffolk County sheriff Andrea Cabral, appointed by then-governor Jane Swift in 2002, has been a major disappointment. As a black woman presiding over a jail where so many people of color are locked up, and where women inmates had previously been sexually abused by guards, Cabral stirred hopes that, finally, someone would get it right at the sheriff’s department. Instead, she has lurched from one misadventure to another. She switched her party affiliation to Republican so that Swift, a Republican, would pick her, then quickly re-registered as a Democrat. More recently, she’s come under fire for forcing out an employee who’s been described as a whistleblower, and for using taxpayer funds to place dubious anti-violence ads on cable television and in subway cars just several weeks before the primary.

Thus the Phoenix endorses Stephen Murphy, a conservative Democrat and long-time member of the Boston City Council. Murphy is a decent, well-liked person whose intelligence is often underestimated by those who see him as part of the Old Boston. He also has management experience in the private sector — a more relevant credential for running the $90 million, 1100-employee sheriff’s department than Cabral’s overrated background as a former prosecutor. Indeed, it is difficult to see how Cabral’s experience as a prosecutor in winning guilty convictions qualifies her to oversee the rehabilitation of the very same people whom she was dedicated to sending to prison.

Murphy almost certainly can’t do any worse than Cabral has, and he might do quite a bit better — especially if he chooses former sheriff Robert Rufo as his model rather than Cabral’s disgraced predecessor, Richard Rouse, whose resignation-under-fire paved the way for her appointment in the first place. Besides, if Murphy wins and has to resign from the city council, he’ll be replaced by the runner-up in the last election: Patricia White, daughter of former mayor Kevin White, who’ll bring fresh blood and new ideas to a body that could use both.

THIS PAST Tuesday came word that a sad and unnecessary milestone had been reached. Seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq, bringing to 1002 the total number of US military personnel who have died in this tragically misguided war. According to some estimates, well over 10,000 Iraqis have died as well.

More than 800 of those American deaths came after George W. Bush strutted across the USS Abraham Lincoln in his flight costume and declared that major combat operations were over. As we argued recently (see "An Antiseptic War," Editorial, August 20), Bush and his minions have fought this war with a combination of obfuscation, intimidation, and lies.

President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney must be held to account and removed from office. Fortunately, John Kerry — after more than a month on the defensive — is beginning to articulate a tough message about how he would handle Iraq differently.

THE BOSTON GLOBE reported on Wednesday that a newly uncovered 1973 document offers further proof that George W. Bush did not complete his service in the Air National Guard. The document shows that Bush was supposed to sign up with a Boston-area Guard unit in 1973, after he began attending Harvard Business School. He never did so.

Four years ago the Globe was virtually alone in reporting on Bush’s dereliction of duty. Now the issue may resonate more loudly. For one thing, John Kerry has been subjected to false attacks over his own military service, aided and abetted by people close to the Bushes and to the president’s political guru, Karl Rove.

For another, Bush’s carefully constructed façade is beginning to crumble. At press time, former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes was scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes II to express his "regrets" about getting Bush into the Guard, which enabled the young man to avoid combat in Vietnam. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Wednesday told the story of a former military officer named Bob Mintz, who offered compelling evidence that Bush had not fulfilled his Guard duties in Alabama, as Bush has claimed.

It is bizarre and offensive that Kerry has paid a higher political price for being a war hero than Bush has for apparently blowing off and cheating his way through part of his cushy service in the Air National Guard. Perhaps that is about to change.

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