Almost four years after graduating from Tufts, 26-year-old Carl Sciortino overcame long odds and a close primary election last week to unseat a 16-year incumbent, Vincent Ciampa, from his state House seat.
Sciortino won Tuesday's Democratic primary for the Massachusetts 34th State House District with 51.3 percent of the vote - a margin of only 117 votes. The district covers parts of both Somerville and Medford, including the Tufts campus west of Professors Row. Although Sciortino lost Medford, he credited Somerville's strong turnout for his win.
Since no Republican challenger has presented himself for the state House seat, Sciortino's victory in the primaries virtually assures him the post due to the lack of an opposing candidate.
Sciortino, who is openly gay, was largely motivated to challenge Ciampa because of the latter's efforts to amend the Massachusetts state constitution to ban gay marriage. Sciortino's win moved the legislature one vote closer to rejecting a potential ban.
But it wasn't just Ciampa's view on gay marriage that motivated his run, Sciortino said. Ciampa also voted against the interests of his community by opposing the Green Line T extension, Sciortino said, and by voting against $1 million in funding for local schools.
Ciampa did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But before Sciortino could attempt to challenge an incumbent of so many years, he had to get his name out. He created a strategy of personal contact, knocking on as many doors and talking to as many voters as possible.
"It would be Carl and whatever volunteer we could get that night," campaign manager Rachel Berry said, describing the little support they received in late spring and early summer.
During early phone banking and door-to-door efforts in May, Sciortino found that Ciampa had a strong lead, better name recognition and much more support. But he also found that talking to residents one-on-one was a good strategy for finding voters who supported his agenda.
"As soon as I started going door to door and realized that people responded well to me as an individual - responded to the issues that I was talking about - I knew that if I would do that more and faster and get to as many people physically as I could, then we would be successful."
Sciortino faced a potential crisis in June when the Ciampa campaign challenged the voter signatures used to put him on the primary ballot by showing that Sciortino had added his middle initial and the suffix "Jr." after the signatures had been collected. The state elections commission rejected the challenge, stating that there was no evidence that Sciortino had tried to mislead voters.
As the election neared, more and more volunteers began to show up to Sciortino's headquarters, allowing the campaign to reach more voters face to face. The strategy differed from Ciampa's, who concentrated on doing "visibilities" - standing at busy intersections with signs and waving to voters, Berry said.
"People would call our office in a panic saying, 'Ciampa's on this corner doing a standout - what are you going to do?'" Berry said. "And we said, 'We're not doing anything, we're knocking on doors tonight.'"
The strategy worked. By early August, the campaign's internal tracking showed Sciortino voters tied with the number of combined undecided and Ciampa voters. A month and a half later, just before the election, Sciortino had clearly pulled ahead.
On election day, Berry arrived at the office at 5 a.m.. The campaign had around 100 volunteers in the streets and on the phones, convincing supporters to go to the polls.
As the returns slowly came in, Ciampa was initially in the lead. Once the polls closed, Sciortino volunteers collected at Orleans restaurant and bar in Davis Square, not knowing who had won. By 8:45 pm, all the precincts had reported and Sciortino emerged with a slight win. He rushed to the party at Orleans, stood on a wooden chair overlooking the crowd, and announced his win. According to Sciortino, the room shook with applause.
"We were ecstatic. It was a thrilling moment," Sciortino said.
But Michael Goldman, a Tufts political science lecturer with extensive experience in Massachusetts politics, said that Sciortino's win was not a referendum on Chiampa's gay marriage vote. Rather, a demographic change in the makeup of Somerville voters created an electorate that was waiting for the right candidate to challenge Ciampa for a win.
The demographic shift stems from rising housing costs in Cambridge after the end of rent control, sending socially liberal residents to nearby Somerville, where rents were lower. Medford has not experienced such a change, which could account for Ciampa's stronger showing there.
"Demographics led to the ability to identify people who would vote," said Goldman. "When Ciampa was first elected, the demographics of that area favored someone of his ethnicity - because he was Italian - and his ideology."
Goldman agreed with Berry's analysis that the key to Sciortino's primary win was getting those more progressive Democrats to the polls on election day. The gay marriage issue helped, but was not the deciding factor, Goldman said.
Since his win, Sciortino is exploring which pieces of legislation to support. He says that the Green Line extension is one issue he'll fight for that will affect Tufts students. He also hopes that he can improve relations between Tufts and the Medford and Somerville communities.
As for being a deciding vote in rejecting the constitutional ban on gay marriage, Sciortino is proud to be an elected gay leader, fighting for his rights. "I want to be able to go to my mother and say, Mom, I'm getting married," he said.
