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FAIRHAVEN — Mark Sylvia, the former state undersecretary of energy and Fairhaven’s town moderator, beat Joe Pires, the small business manager and School Committee member from Rochester, to win the state representative seat for Bristol’s 10th District.
The race was closer than Sylvia’s campaign anticipated, said Matt Monteiro, his campaign manager. Sylvia won 13,424 votes (52%) to Pires’ 12,192 (48%). Pires won his hometown of Rochester with 61% of the vote and also won narrower victories in the slices of Acushnet and New Bedford that are part of Bristol’s 10th district — in New Bedford’s Ward 1, the only ward in play in this race, the total difference was just 3 votes.
Cheers rang out just before 10 p.m. in Fairhaven’s Traveler’s Alehouse, where more than 50 Sylvia supporters congregated to watch results stream in. When unofficial results had been gathered from all six towns in the district, both candidates had won more than Bill Straus, the seat’s retiring Democrat, managed in the 2022 election.
“I’ll demonstrate to everyone that voted for me and everyone who didn’t that I’ve got your back,” said Sylvia in remarks before his gathered supporters. “We need to bring people together, and I vow to do that as the next state representative for Bristol’s 10th.”
In a phone call with The Light on Tuesday night, Joe Pires conceded the race, saying, “I’m proud to be part of this, and I commend everyone for voting.” He continued by thanking all the people who supported his campaign. “It was gratifying to see people step up and get involved in local politics.”
Bristol’s 10th District includes Marion, Mattapoisett, Rochester, Fairhaven, and parts of Acushnet and New Bedford. The district leans blue overall, but Rochester and Acushnet were two among the 14 towns in Bristol and Plymouth counties that favored Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The 10th Bristol seat now goes to a fresh face after 32-year incumbent Bill Straus, the Mattapoisett Democrat, decided to not seek reelection this year. Both Pires and Sylvia had said they focused their campaigns on the cost-of-living issues and political division that voters said were top of mind.
On Tuesday night, voters leaving the polls in Rochester confirmed that the economy and high political stakes of this year’s election were motivating. That’s what brought both Charlie Hopkins, 67, and his son Frank, 28, out to vote. They supported Pires and said they liked how Pires stood up for his values during “the book controversy” in Rochester.
Most of Pires’ supporters in Rochester, however, said they simply wanted to back a friend they knew from the community. Dylan Musgrove, 24, said he grew up with Pires’ kids in Rochester. “He’s a great guy,” said Musgrove, who said there weren’t specific policies that motivated his vote. Another voter, who declined to give her name, said she’s known Pires for a long time and that he coached her kids in baseball. “He aligns with my thinking,” she said, but declined to name what part of Pires’ platform resonated most.
Many voters in Rochester also said they supported Sylvia — representing how the town is one of only a few in Massachusetts where Republicans and Democrats compete on near equal footing.
Linda Gifford and her adult children, Doug and Kate, said they were supporting Sylvia because he had “common sense” views on climate change. Sylvia asserts that climate change is real and intends to use his background leading the state’s Department of Energy Resources to help broker relations between the offshore wind and fishing industries.
Paul and Bernadette Giandomenico, 55 and 49, said that they supported Sylvia because they were put off by “the book banning” debate that Pires spearheaded as a member of the ORR School Committee, when 10 books mostly by LGBTQ+ authors were suggested for removal from the local high school library.
The race for this seat heated up dramatically in the last month before the election. Both candidates recorded about 40% of their total campaign spending during the month of October. Their spending strategies — and the amounts they had at their disposal — differed significantly.
Pires recorded at least 16 different targeted ad-buys on Facebook (which averaged about $40 each), as well as purchases of campaign mailers and a newspaper advertisement. Sylvia went big on the campaign mailers and spent on several in-person events.
Sylvia’s resources ended up dwarfing Pires’. The more than $13,500 Sylvia spent on campaign mailers in October was greater than all of Pires’ spending that month. The total amount Sylvia spent in October — more than $31,000 — was greater than what Pires spent on the whole campaign.
A series of high-profile endorsements in October may have helped Sylvia attract those resources.
On Oct. 4, Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll released a joint statement endorsing Sylvia: “He shares our commitment to lowering the cost of childcare for working families, protecting access to reproductive health care, and making Massachusetts a more affordable place to live,” the statement read. “Our administration needs strong partners like Mark.”
The very next day, Sylvia appeared alongside U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a joint campaign event in New Bedford, hosted by the Greater Southeastern Massachusetts Labor Council. The organization had already endorsed both candidates, and Sylvia won Warren’s support.
On his website, Sylvia’s lengthy list of endorsements also includes U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, state Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, almost the entire South Coast legislative delegation, and town and city officials from every town in the Bristol 10th district.
In a quiet corner of Traveler’s Alehouse, after thanking supporters and taking pictures with his family, Sylvia answered questions from The Light. He said the high costs of living, including housing, child care, and health care would be immediate concerns of his as state representative.
At the same time, Sylvia said he will look for ways to support local industries such as tourism, fishing, and agriculture — “especially cranberries,” he said.
“But we have to make sure we bring people together,” Sylvia said. “We can’t achieve any of that without bringing people together.”
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
