House Speaker Ron Mariano said he was “outraged” that Cambridge’s Evan MacKay declared victory over incumbent Rep. Marjorie Decker during this month’s primary election before all the votes were counted and also slammed The Boston Globe for its coverage.

The race between MacKay, a local organizer in the city, and Decker, a six-term incumbent who co-chairs the Legislature’s Public Health Committee, came down to the wire and initially saw MacKay reportedly declare themself the winner during their primary night party.

Early results that flowed in from the Associated Press during the primary night had MacKay leading by only 40 votes. But updated tallies released by Cambridge election officials the next day reversed that and put Decker ahead by 41 votes. A day-long recount confirmed Decker’s 41-vote win.

After an unrelated event Thursday morning, Mariano went after MacKay and the broadsheet.

“I was a little bit outraged by the fact that her opponent declared himself the winner when he knew there were ballots that had to be counted. I was even more concerned that the Globe wrote it up like he was the winner based on what one of his workers said was going to happen,” he told reporters.

MacKay, who uses they/them pronouns, did not immediately respond to a Herald inquiry sent to their campaign email address Thursday afternoon.

A spokesperson for the Globe, which covered both Decker and MacKay’s primary night parties, said the paper’s team of political journalists “have one agenda when covering election results — to report the facts in real-time, with all necessary context, as we did the night of the primary.

“Covering close elections is challenging, and we keep our audiences informed when situations evolve,” the spokesperson said in a statement to the Herald.

A story from the paper last updated in the early morning hours of Sept. 4 reported that the race between the two candidates “remained unsettled Wednesday, as the Associated Press reported (Decker’s) challenger, graduate student and organizer Evan MacKay, led her by just 40 votes, with 99 percent of votes counted.”

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But in a version that appeared in the Sept. 4 print edition, the Globe’s story carried the headline “Decker may have lost race.”

“In an apparent upset, graduate student and organizer Evan MacKay declared victory Tuesday night in their primary challenge to long-seat incumbent state Representative Marjorie Decker,” the first sentence of the story read.

Mariano said reporters had “an obligation to write what’s really going to happen” and lawmakers knew that the race would not “be decided for another day or two” after the night of the primary because mail-in ballots still needed to be counted.

“So to read that story really, really angered me, because it was really an overstep and an overreach by the press,” Mariano said of the Globe. “Not you guys, but by a newspaper that had an agenda. If you read, even though they endorsed her, they really gave her a couple of smacks in the story they wrote on the campaign.”

Newspapers, including the Herald, regularly update stories as news develops and changes.

And in the digital age, stories that often appear in a newspaper’s print edition are not the final version to run online. That is because newspapers have early deadlines for their print products that typically come before a late-night event finishes or an election is called.

The Globe’s editorial board also backed Decker’s bid, though they acknowledged voters “had every reason to be frustrated with the state Legislature” after lawmakers failed to come to a deal on many major proposals before the close of their formal session.

“It’s fair to say, though, that she also not been a notable champion of legislative reform (though she did tell the editorial board she would favor making lawmakers subject to the public records law),” the editorial board, which is separate from the Globe’s newsroom, wrote.

But even as Mariano criticized MacKay and the Globe, he also took an apparent shot at Decker when asked if he learned anything from the close race.

“No, I don’t campaign the way she does,” he said. “I’ve never yelled at any constituents.”

A spokesperson later said Mariano was “sarcastically referring to a quote that was reported by The Boston Globe in their coverage of the race.”

In a statement to the Herald, Decker said the speaker was “making a joke and referencing the unfounded accusations being made against me in the Globe’s reporting.”

“It’s unfortunate that folks don’t understand the speaker’s sarcasm, or what his real concerns were,” she said. “It’s a shame his jokes get more attention than the poverty commission I chaired yesterday in the South Coast.”