Campbell, DiZoglio cap off statewide sweep for Dems

By Colin A. Young

NOV. 9, 2022…..No Republican has held the offices of attorney general, auditor, secretary of state or treasurer in Massachusetts this century, and the GOP’s drought will continue for at least another four years as Democrats swept the Massachusetts Constitutional offices in Tuesday’s elections.

Voters granted new four-year terms, beginning in January, to incumbents Secretary of State William Galvin and Treasurer Deborah Goldberg. They also elected Andrea Campbell to succeed Gov.-elect Maura Healey as attorney general and Diana DiZoglio to succeed Suzanne Bump as auditor.

The most recent Republican to hold one of the four statewide Constitutional offices outside the governor’s suite was Joe Malone, who ran the state Treasury until early 1999. And with Healey and Kim Driscoll’s election as governor and lieutenant governor, Republicans will be shut out of statewide offices in Massachusetts after holding the corner office for the last eight years.

Attorney General
Former Boston City Council president Andrea Campbell won the contest to take over for Governor-elect Maura Healey in the attorney general’s office and will be the first Black woman attorney general in state history. Her victory makes her the first Black woman has been elected statewide in Massachusetts.

The Boston Democrat defeated second-time Republican nominee Jay McMahon, a Bourne attorney who has a background in law enforcement and pledged to end the “wokeness” of the attorney general’s office. With 40 percent of ballots counted around 11:30 p.m., Campbell had 63 percent of the vote to McMahon’s 37 percent. Driscoll declared victory for Campbell around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday night, and Campbell took the stage to celebrate her win about an hour later.

Elliot Richardson was the last Republican attorney general in Massachusetts, serving until 1969.

Campbell, a former deputy legal counsel under Gov. Deval Patrick, ran for mayor of Boston in 2021 and turned her sights to the attorney general’s office hoping to make the position what she called “an advocate for fundamental change and progress.” Her family’s story — her mother’s death in a car crash, her father and brother cycling in and out of the prison system, and her twin brother’s death 10 years ago in Department of Correction custody — featured prominently in her campaign.

“I jumped into the race recognizing that families all across Massachusetts are struggling and they’re worried about whether or not they’re going to thrive and prosper coming out of COVID,” Campbell said Tuesday. “At the same time, I recognize that families are frustrated with government and don’t necessarily see government as a solution to their daily struggles. But what I know to be true is that we live in the best state in the nation and I know it because I’ve lived it.”

While Campbell won Tuesday, she probably will not directly succeed Maura Healey as the state’s top law enforcement official.

Instead, Campbell is likely to assume the reins of the attorney general’s office from Kate Cook, the first assistant attorney general expected to run the office on an interim basis between the time when Healey resigns to become governor and when the other new Constitutional officers are sworn in later in January.

Secretary of State
Democrat William Galvin easily won his eighth, and potentially final, four-year term as the secretary of state, setting him up to surpass former Secretary Frederic Cook’s record 28-year tenure in the secretary’s office. Cook held that office during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and was the last Republican secretary of state in Massachusetts.

Galvin told the Boston Globe in August that a victory Tuesday would mean “quite likely, I will not run again.”

En route to another four-year term, the Brighton Democrat defeated Rayla Campbell, a Whitman Republican whose campaign largely revolved around government mandates and the sexualization of children. Galvin pitched himself to voters as a reliable and effective elections administrator who now holds a senior position among elections officials nationally. Driscoll also declared victory for Galvin just after 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and he had 68 percent of the counted votes as of 11:30 p.m.

Campbell joins Anthony Amore, David D’Arcangelo, William Campbell, Jack E. Robinson III, Dale Jenkins Jr. and Arthur Chase as Republicans who came up short against Galvin.

A statewide post, the secretary of state’s office oversees a broad suite of functions, ranging from elections and voting to corporations and securities, public records, lobbyists, the decennial census, and historical commission and state archives.

Auditor
The race for state auditor was the closest contest on the statewide ballot Tuesday and was the only one in which other Democrats did not declare victory at their party bash in Boston. Instead, Driscoll said that DiZoglio would “hopefully” be the state’s next auditor.

But around 11:15 p.m., Republican Anthony Amore said he had conceded to DiZoglio and “wished her nothing but the best in her new role.” With 39 percent of votes counted at about 11:30 p.m., the Democrat DiZoglio was leading Amore 55.5 percent to 37.3 percent.

DiZoglio, a second-term senator from Methuen who served three terms in the House before winning election to the Senate in 2018, was the only sitting legislator to win their statewide primary race this election cycle. She has long been a vocal advocate for restricting the use of non-disclosure agreements on Beacon Hill and has clashed with Democratic leadership about how much time lawmakers receive to review legislation.

Amore is the head of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and was the party’s 2018 nominee for secretary of state. The Winchester Republican is a rare candidate to have the official endorsement of outgoing Gov. Charlie Baker and he pitched himself as a Republican check on the Democratic Party’s supermajorities in both branches of the Legislature and among Constitutional offices.

The last Republican auditor was Russell Wood, who served one term in the office from 1939 until 1941. Democrat Suzanne Bump, who did not seek reelection this year, has held the office since 2011.

Treasurer
Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, a Brookline Democrat, sailed to a third term in office on Tuesday without any serious challenge in the Democratic primary or general election. The only other candidate who appeared on the ballot was Sherborn Libertarian Cristina Crawford.

In her new term, Goldberg will become the longest-serving state treasurer since Robert Crane, who served more than a quarter-century in the post from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s.

Goldberg passed up a race for an open Congressional seat in 2020 because she said there was more that she wanted to accomplish as treasurer. Her reelection announcement cited the work her office has done to help families create college savings accounts for new children and to pressure corporations as an investor through the state pension fund to become cleaner energy consumers.