Like a summer downpour suddenly ended, campaign season 2022 has come and gone.
Oh sure, Republican gubernatorial nominee Geoff Diehl will carry Donald Trump’s banner into a David versus Goliath fight against Democrat Attorney General and gubernatorial nominee Maura Healey. Except for the governor’s race and smattering of undercard electoral fights playing out in November, the election year’s biggest excitement has come and gone.
With its distinction as the most-crowded primary race in the state, the Democratic contest for the Eighth Essex District seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives sent four women and two men onto the campaign trail. In the end, when the votes were counted, tradition more than current political trends decided the race’s outcome.
Marblehead candidate Jenny Armini won, carrying on a win streak for town candidates dating back to the late Lawrence Alexander’s 1978 victory. Tristan Smith, the second-place finisher in the Eighth District race, tallied up a strong vote in Swampscott. But, votes that might have gone to Smith in a smaller candidate field trickled over to Doug Thompson and Polly Titcomb.
Armini, who can trace her political experience back 30 years to former Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Torkildsen’s campaigns called running for the Eighth seat “eye-opening on many levels. People were really sharing what they need from state government, what they care about, what they’re worried about.”
That election-night remark by Armini suggests she is prepared to tackle her new job from the perspective of a constituent services legislator who understands that crafting legislation and advocating for its passage on Beacon Hill comprises less than half of a legislator’s job description.
Meeting the needs and answering the calls of Marblehead, Swampscott residents and constituents living in two Lynn precincts, will dominate most of Armini’s time if, true to her words, she is a constituent-service legislator and not a big-picture social advocacy representative.
Smith during his concession speech Tuesday night told supporters he would have run for the Eighth seat even if a “crystal ball” view into the race indicated he would lose.
Notwithstanding his lack of political experience, Smith entered the Eighth contest handicapped as a favorite with only Armini as a strong co-contender. When the big-name politician endorsements piled up, the humble and well-spoken Smith looked like a hard man to beat, even as voting results began to provide evidence to the contrary.
The same could be said of Essex District Attorney nominee Paul Tucker, who looked to be cruising into the office now held by DA Jonathan Blodgett until tough attorney and DA candidate James O’Shea mounted an old-school, come-from-behind campaign in the race’s last two week.
O’Shea clobbered Tucker with tough campaign literature questioning the former police chief’s credentials. It proved too little, too late, with Tucker in major North Shore political bastions like Lynn, tallying up 3,117 votes to 2,972 for O’Shea.
O’Shea, like Smith, is sure to want a rematch against the candidate who beat him Tuesday night.
If there was one candidate who ran a tough, focused and smart race this summer, it was Sheriff Kevin Coppinger. It would have been easy in the spring for him to dismiss political neophyte Virginia Leigh as a lightweight who couldn’t match her social worker credentials against Coppinger’s law enforcement credentials.
Coppinger wasn’t having any of that talk. He revved up his campaign and seemed to have an innate understanding that a candidate running on a vision of the sheriff’s office as a giant rehabilitation center for people in trouble with the law would play well with the voters in an age of police reform and an addiction epidemic.
He was right. Coppinger scored a close but convincing reelection win on Tuesday because he never let up on the gas pedal when it came to bringing his message to the voters.
Here’s an afterthought apropos of nothing: Good politicians learn their most valuable lessons from losing. One once told me, “It all comes down to shaking one more hand, looking one more voter in the eye, and asking, ‘Can I have your vote?'”
