The vote breakdown :
Joe Markey 1596 48.7%
Al Divirgilio 1371 41.8%
John Faria 312 9.5%
TOTAL 3279 39% voter turnout
We progressives should be very proud of Joe and I was honored to serve as his campaign manager.
Congratulations, Joe! Well done.
Please share widely!
betsey says
Way to go, Joe! And way to go, Fred! You’re a ROCK STAH!
fredrichlariccia says
Thanks, Betsey but Joe is the ‘show horse’. I’m just a humble ‘work horse’.
It takes courage and sacrifice to risk your future by running for elective office today.
Christopher says
How much does party matter in a Moderator’s race? In my experience those are the epitome of issue-free campaigns. Basically it comes down to community prominence and connections.
fredrichlariccia says
In theory, party shouldn’t matter in so -called non-partisan races.
In practice, party is everything in town elections where all politics is local and personal.
fredrichlariccia says
First lesson learned from yesterday’s local election :
HIGH VOTER TURNOUT HELPS DEMOCRATS WIN!
Lynnfield town elections generally turnout between single digits up to a maximum of 20%. Yesterdays election, with the help of a Democrat supported Recreation Rail Trail question garnered > 35% turnout. Progressives generally supported the initiative while most conservatives were opposed.
fredrichlariccia says
Voter turnout more than doubled at 39% with the Wakefield-Lynnfield Rail Trail passing 1,859 to 1,679.
Christopher says
I ran for Moderator of Dracut in 2011. My opponent was the recently retired Fire Chief who had previously served as Moderator. We were both registered Dems though he was seen by some as the candidate of a certain entrenched faction in town politics. It was a bit of an asymmetrical race because the two roles a Moderator has is to preside at Town Meeting and to make several appointments to town committees and it seemed like I was running mostly for Town Meeting chairperson while he was running mostly to be the Appointer-in-Chief. I was actually surprised to discover the appointments were unilateral and did not need the advice and consent of the Board of Selectmen or something. Again, substantive issues didn’t come up and if they had I suspect my attitude would have been that a would-be Moderator should not come down strongly one way or the other so that he could maintain impartiality in the event it came before Town Meeting.
I did not have the chance to campaign as hard as I wish I had and my opponent was much better known. He ended up winning, but I also got several votes mostly because I wasn’t he, though that is not a line of thinking I encouraged.
jconway says
This may still be true in suburban Massachusetts, but we are increasingly out of step with the trend of declining ticket splitting nationwide. We are one of just three blue states that re-elected a Republican in the 2018 blue wave. I would add almost the first question I was asked whenever I’ve canvassed for local candidates, even with unenrolled voters, is what party are they?
Lynnfield is not dissimilar to Naperville, IL, where I used to live. An affluent, predominately white, predominately college educated, traditionally Republican suburb. These areas have flipped substantially in the last two elections to Democrats. Lynnfield gave 60.5% of its vote to Mitt Romney in 2012 and under 50% of its vote to Donald Trump in 2016. It was one of the few Republican leaning towns where Warren increased her vote share in 2018. It went solidly for Baker-Polito, but so did far more Democratic communities like Worcester and Newton. There is something very interesting happening in Lynnfield.