Like most of Massachusetts, Plymouth voters sided with Kamala Harris in her losing battle against former president Donald Trump’s retaking of the White House.
At the same time, the town stood out by supporting Republican John Deaton over Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Warren in the U.S. Senate contest, a race she won handily statewide.
Between in-person and mail-in voting, 39,954 of Plymouth’s 53,140 registered voters took part in the election that ended Tuesday night, a turnout of 75.2 percent. That was lower than the 78.9 percent voter turnout in 2020.
In one of the most closely watched races for the state Legislature, Democrat Dylan Fernandes, of Falmouth, became the next state senator to represent Plymouth.
Fernandes defeated Republican state representative, Matt Muratore, in the race for the Plymouth and Barnstable senate seat.
Muratore, however, held his hometown advantage, besting Fernandes in Plymouth with 21,173 votes to Fernandes’s 17,140.
“I’d really like to thank Representative Muratore for a thoughtful and cordial campaign,” Fernandes said in an interview Wednesday morning.
As one sign of the attention the race received outside the district, Fernandes earned an endorsement from Boston Globe columnist David Scharfenberg. The Globe usually does not weigh in on State House races. Also, Governor Maura Healey campaigned for Fernandes.
“Our campaign was all about meeting people where they are and having face to face conversations about what’s important to them,” an exhausted Fernandes said, adding that hundreds of volunteers knocked on more than 30,000 doors.
He said one of his main priorities is to listen to people in the district, and in particular to Plymouth residents, whom he is representing for the first time. He hopes to organize a listening tour in December or January.
“Plymouth is a particularly vibrant and beautiful community, and it deserves special attention from the state,” Fernandes said, adding that the main concerns voters have expressed are about the affordability of housing, health care, and childcare, as well as the quality of public education, and protecting the environment.
Reflecting on Trump’s surprisingly convincing victory over Vice President Harris, Fernandes said state legislatures will take on a greater role to offset whatever happens in Washington, D.C.
“In Massachusetts, we are going to continue to protect people’s rights and people’s freedoms no matter what is happening at the national level, and state legislatures are more important than ever now in protecting citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms,” he said.
Fernandes added that Democrats must do a better job of reaching out to working people and those struggling to get by.
His district includes Plymouth, Kingston, Pembroke, Plympton, Bourne, Sandwich, Mashpee, and Falmouth.
In addition to Plymouth, Muratore won in the tiny town of Plympton, but Fernandes more than made up for that in the rest of the district. In Sandwich, he won by 6,675 to 6,110 votes, according to unofficial results. In Bourne, he won by 6,642 to 4,228 votes. In Mashpee, he got 5,642 votes to Muratore’s 4,428 votes. And in his hometown of Falmouth, Fernandes swamped Muratore with a tally of 13,472 votes to Muratore’s 7,232.
The Associated Press on Wednesday said the margin of victory districtwide was 51.3 to 48.8 percent.
“Unfortunately, our campaign came up just short by about two percentage points,” Muratore said in an email statement. “Thank you to the people of the Plymouth and Barnstable state Senate district for their support, and thank you to the citizens of my hometown of Plymouth for the opportunity to serve them in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Congratulations to Senator-elect Fernandes for a hard-fought race, and we wish him all the very best in his upcoming service to our community.”
Democrat Michelle Badger won Muratore’s House seat, defeating Republican Jesse Brown with 14,980 votes to 13,776, and flipping the House district, which has been held by Republicans since Vinny deMacedo won the seat in 1998.
Like Fernandes, Badger ran an intensive home-to-home campaign, knocking on about 9,000 doors in Plymouth, she said.
“It is truly the honor of my life to be elected as the next state representative in the 1st Plymouth District,” Badger said in an email. “Since we launched our campaign in January, it has been a true grassroots effort focused on ensuring that everyone who loves Plymouth can stay and thrive in Plymouth at all stages of their lives. It has been and continues to be about building and creating community together.”
The 1st Plymouth district includes all of Plymouth except for downtown, North Plymouth, and parts of West Plymouth.
Those parts of town are in the 12th Plymouth district, where incumbent Democrat Kathleen LaNatra won re-election, defeating Republican Eric Meschino.
LaNatra won the Plymouth part of the district, 5,189 to 4080, as well as Kingston, with 4,670 votes to Meschino’s 3,703. Overall, she won the district – which also includes her hometown of Kingston as well as Plympton and parts of Halifax, Middleborough, and Pembroke – with 14,154 votes to Meschino’s 12,581 votes, a margin of 53 to 47 percent.
Meschino carried Halifax, Middleborough, and Pembroke.
LaNatra said in a text message that she did not have time for an interview with the Independent Wednesday morning.
In the presidential race, Harris garnered 21,121 votes in Plymouth to Trump’s 17,559.
In the Senate race, Deaton got 19,889 votes to Warren’s 19,255.
Plymouth voters also approved ballot questions allowing the state auditor to audit the Legislature and eliminating the MCAS as a requirement for high school graduation. They also voted against decriminalizing some psychotropic substances and raising the minimum wage for tipped workers.
Those votes were in line with the overall binding referendum, tallies in Massachusetts, but Plymouth broke with the majority on Question 3 by saying no to allowing rideshare drivers the right to unionize. The question received about 53 percent “yes” votes statewide.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org