Democratic state Rep. Carl Sciortino (LA '00) narrowly defeated Alderman Bob Trane yesterday after an unexpectedly grueling primary campaign.
The two-term incumbent, who represents parts of Medford and Somerville in the Massachusetts State House's 34th Middlesex district, won 47 percent of the vote to Trane's 45.
Sciortino was forced to run a sticker campaign after a mix-up in his office kept his name from appearing on the ballot.
"Running a sticker campaign is never easy," said Kevin Lownds, a Tufts senior who served as Sciortino's campaign manager. "You can see that people were willing to go to the extra trouble of putting a sticker on the ballot for Carl because they know he has done a great deal for the families of Medford and Somerville, and it's a win for everyone who lives here."
Sciortino went door-to-door all summer to promote his candidacy after his campaign lost the signatures it needed to get him on the ballot. "We don't know what happened to the signatures, but they went missing from his State House office," Lownds said.
As a result, according to Lownds, "We knew that we had to go door-to-door. We knew that we had to talk to the voters of Medford and Somerville about Carl's accomplishments."
Lownds said that Sciortino emphasized his achievements when distinguishing himself from Trane, the president of Somerville's board of aldermen, in talks with voters. "The main difference that I felt was that Carl had a long list of accomplishments that he could point to as a legislator," Lownds said.
"Carl was a leader in the fight to close corporate tax loopholes to offset the burden of local property taxes; he has worked to secure funding for increased transportation for seniors and to secure funding for parks and open space," Lownds continued. "He was the leader in the fight for marriage equality, and sponsored legislation and pushed the speaker to bring the Global Warming Solutions Act to a vote this past legislative session."
Lownds said that Sciortino plans on bettering public education and garnering more state funding for his district in the future. "He's interested in continuing to fight for better education funding and improving our public schools," Lownds said. "He's going to work for more support for our towns. Local aid has been slashed for Medford and Somerville in budget cuts a few years ago."
Sciortino, who graduated from Tufts in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in biology, worked as a research coordinator at Fenway Community Health in Boston directly after college. When the 34th Middlesex district's incumbent state representative, conservative Democrat Vincent Ciompa, told Sciortino that he would not support same-sex marriage, and perhaps not even civil unions, the 26-year-old Sciortino, who is openly gay, decided he had to run. "The final straw was the same-sex marriage debate," Sciortino told the Daily earlier this month.
In his debut election, Sciortino took down Ciompa, who had served eight terms, in the primary.
This year, Sciortino had to counter what Lownds called "negative campaigning" on the part of Trane. Lownds said the alderman tried to label Sciortino a "tool of special interests and a Beacon Hill insider."
Lownds said Tufts students were a boon to the former Jumbo's campaign. "The Tufts community was very supportive," he said. "Carl had several volunteers from the Tufts Dems, who were handing out stickers at the polls."
Trane may have some hard feelings himself after this election. The Somerville News reported on Monday that Trane was pursuing legal action against the Somerville Journal for alleged bias. The alderman claimed that a political cartoon in the Journal's Sept. 11 edition implied he had been involved in the disappearance of Sciortino's signatures earlier this year.
Trane also alleged that the Journal failed to run a full-page advertisement that he had paid for in advance.
