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Republicans make up only 6% of active New Bedford voters, but somehow they have quietly gained the majority of seats on the four-person New Bedford Election Commission.
Democratic Mayor Jon Mitchell says he doesn’t think the situation is a problem, but the Democratic City Committee was so concerned that last week it voted to write both the mayor and one of the commissioners asking for the resignation of that commissioner.
The commissioner, Donald Gaudette Jr., had changed his party shortly after he was reappointed as a Democrat last year. The committee also voted to supply the mayor with a list of at least three local Democrats who would be willing to replace the extra Republican and bring the commission back into the 2:2 balance the state law normally requires.
Democrats make up 25% of active voters in the city, and there are even more “unenrolled” voters, 68%, than either of the leading parties.
Local Republicans have gained the majority on the New Bedford commission even as President Trump has called on Republicans to nationalize elections to get rid of what he asserts is corruption at the state level.
According to Massachusetts election law (Chapter 51, Section 16A), the Election Commission — and not the mayor or City Council — run elections in New Bedford’s form of government. The mayor and City Council’s power is limited to the appointment and confirmation of the commissioners and setting the election dates.
But what happened in New Bedford?
It started in February last year when Lisa Dunaway, a Republican member of the four-person board, informed the city she did not want to be reappointed when her four-year term was up last April. But according to state law, Dunaway remained in place in the position until she was replaced, but the mayor did not make a nomination until October.
In September, however, just before Mitchell moved to replace Dunaway with another Republican, Gaudette, who was one of the two Democratic members of the commission, changed his party registration from Democrat to Republican. He made the change online. Election Commission Chair Manuel DeBrito, the other Democrat on the commission, said he learned about the change two days later and immediately informed the Mitchell administration through the City Solicitor’s Office.
Gaudette’s switch and Mitchell’s appointment of a third Republican two weeks later gave the GOP a 3 to 1 majority on the board even though state law calls for it to be balanced evenly with two members from each of the city’s leading parties.
Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 51, Section 16A states: “The board shall consist of four persons, of whom two shall always represent each one of the two political parties.”
Gaudette, who was first appointed by Mitchell in 2017, is the son of a former state representative and city councilor from the Far North End also named Donald Gaudette. He declined to answer my questions about why he would become a Republican when he was on the commission as the Democratic representative.
“That’s a slippery slope,” he told me.
DeBrito said it was election time and the city was trying to replace Dunaway. Gaudette, he said, may have thought he could help by becoming the Republican member of the board. “He didn’t seem like he thought, ‘OK, I got to step down now,’” DeBrito said.
Gaudette would only describe his change as something “I wanted to do for a long time,” which is odd because he had been sworn into another term representing Democrats just three months earlier, in June 2025.
Gaudette’s term was actually up in 2023 but it took Mitchell until March 2025 to submit his reappointment to the City Council. Remember, Massachusetts election law also says commissioners continue serving until a new appointment has been made.
In reality, Gaudette would never have been able to resign his Democratic position and then become the mayor’s Republican appointee because another state statute (Chapter 4, Section 12) requires that party appointees to commissions must have been members of their parties for at least two years.
After the administration was notified of Gaudette’s switch, Mitchell did not nominate a Democrat to fill Dunaway’s seat, and he did not inform either the City Council or the Democratic City Committee that Gaudette had switched parties. A spokesman for the mayor acknowledged he did not notify either of the groups and said that in the case of the council, the body was not notified because there was no vacancy.
According to the administration, City Solicitor Eric Jaikes’ office ruled that state law allows the Republican to stay on the commission representing the Democrats until the end of his term in April 2027. Jaikes cited a 1963 ruling by the state attorney general in a port authority case, which is also a type of municipal commission, as the precedent.
The ruling caused the state election law to be adjusted. “The purpose of the law was to prevent individuals from being elected to a board/commission, and then changing their political affiliation to prevent members of the opposing political party from being able to be appointed to the board/commission,” the City Solicitor’s Office wrote.
In other words, the state was worried about people misrepresenting their party in order to get on municipal commissions. So the law included the two-year waiting period enacted in Chapter 4, Section 12. The irony is that a law designed to prevent stacking a commission with members of one party allows the New Bedford commission to be stacked in the sense that a Republican can now represent Democrats. It could be vice-versa if a Republican had become a Democrat on the four-person board.
The law also seems to me to contradict another section of the state election law (Chapter 51, Section 16A) which says that election commissions must “always” be balanced between the two leading parties.
The lack of communication between Mitchell and the City Council was not limited to Gaudette’s party switch.
In October, Mitchell appointed what his office described as a “temporary” Republican election commissioner. But she resigned after five days and the mayor then appointed his neighbor, Daniel Higgins, again as a “temporary” Republican commissioner. Higgins was approved as a permanent commissioner by the City Council on Oct. 28.
That resulted in the present composition of the Election Commission with three Republicans and one Democrat.
It wasn’t just that Mitchell didn’t inform the council of Gaudette’s switch that bothers some city councilors, but the fact that he had been taking months to make appointments and then claiming the power to make “temporary” appointments.
Chapter 51, Section 20 allows mayors to appoint temporary boards of registrar members but does not mention election commissioners. Some municipalities use boards of registrars and some use election commissions.
The statue requires the Election Commission to ask the mayor in writing to make the appointment. Five days after DeBrito informed the administration that Gaudette had changed his party to Republican, three of the four members on the commission wrote Mitchell on Sept. 30, 2025, asking him to appoint a temporary Republican commissioner. The three members voting were Republicans Gaudette and Henry Bousquet (who has reposted Trump election conspiracy posts on his Facebook website) and DeBrito, the remaining Democrat.
Councilor Shane Burgo, a potential mayoral opponent of Mitchell’s, says the council must confirm all Election Commission appointees. He said there is no such thing as a temporary appointment.
“He can’t just appoint someone by emergency appointment to the Election Commission,” Burgo said, comparing the situation to the way Mitchell appointed a new police chief last summer without council approval. The mayor eventually sent the chief’s name to the council after they took him to court.
Burgo, when he was City Council president last year, warned Mitchell of his objections in an Oct. 6, 2025, email: “It is my understanding that the statute you have cited (M.G.L. Chapter 51, Section 20) does not apply to the City of New Bedford’s structure,” Burgo wrote. “That section explicitly refers to vacancies on a Board of Registrars, not a Board of Election Commissioners. Chapter 51 draws a clear distinction between the two entities.”
Burgo cited language from the statue which he said was unambiguous: “any appointment to fill a vacancy shall be for the unexpired term,” and said the law further specifies that “as the terms of the several election commissioners expire, and in case a vacancy occurs in said board, the mayor, subject to approval by the board of aldermen [City Council], shall so appoint their successors.”
He also pointed out that in the case of election commissioners, there is no vacancy because the law requires them to remain on the board until a new appointment has been “qualified” or appointed and sworn in.
Mitchell and his city solicitors saw it differently.
The solicitor’s office pointed to the opening of Section 16A, which says “there shall be a board of election commissioners, hereinafter called the board, which, except as otherwise provided, shall have all the powers, rights, duties and liabilities of boards of registrars.”
“There is nothing in 16a modifying the registrars’ powers to ask the mayor to appoint,” wrote the solicitor’s office.
Mitchell’s temporary appointment did not last long. On Oct. 28, 2025, he successfully pushed Higgins’ nomination through the council to a permanent appointment, arguing that the slot should be filled before the November election.
Even so, Burgo and Ward 3 Councilor Shawn Oliver, a Republican, were upset by the long delay. “Here we were weeks before an election scrambling to fill a vacancy,” Oliver said.
The council, a majority of whom are Democrats, confirmed Higgins just a week before the Nov. 4 election and as a result, the 3 to 1 Republican majority on the commission will now be in place until April 2027 when Gaudette’s position expires. That is through this year’s state and national elections.
Some city councilors did not know that Gaudette had changed his party to Republican when they voted for the mayor’s nomination of Higgins.
“The Council was not notified because there was no vacancy created on the board, as Mr. Gaudette was to continue serving,” wrote Jonathan Darling, the city’s public information officer, in response to my question.
Both Councilors Burgo and Leo Choquette told me they only learned of the Gaudette change from this writer several weeks ago.
The Mitchell administration says the three-member Republican-dominated commission is still in compliance with state law even though the law clearly calls for the commission to be balanced between the two leading parties.
According to Darling, the 1963 state attorney general opinion is that when municipal commission members change their party, they continue to be members of their former party for purposes of the commission until the end of their term.
Chapter 51, Section 16A states “Such appointments shall be for terms of four years beginning April first.”
Mitchell, in an interview with me, dismissed the controversy saying the only one who cares about the imbalance is me. He has had zero complaints about the composition of the Election Commission, he said.
“I’m not troubled by the fact that there are three Republicans and one Democrat,” he said, “especially when the appointing authority (himself) is a Democrat.”
He also expressed confidence in Gaudette even though he is now a Republican, saying he has always done a good, non-partisan job. “I’m not hearing concerns specifically about him,” he said.
President Trump’s actions on the national scene is a different story, Mitchell argued, saying he is troubled by the president’s actions interfering with elections. But though Mitchell may not have heard any complaints about the New Bedford commission, unbeknownst to him the Democratic City Committee was set to take up the issue the very night he was doing his interview with me. It was Burgo who wrote the letter on behalf of the Democratic committee asking for Gaudette’s resignation.
I’ll just say this: Mitchell certainly had time to ask Gaudette to resign in the interests of fairness and the public’s confidence in the commission or if Gaudette refused, to appoint a Democrat to replace the departing Dunaway. And he certainly should have let the City Council, the political committees and the public at large know what had happened with Gaudette.
Sure, the mayor may have felt hemmed in by the 1963 attorney general opinion and law, but he also may have been motivated by a desire to avoid offending Gaudette, who comes from an old political family in the city, and represents the conservative side of the Democratic Party.
Yes it’s true that Mitchell may not have been able to easily remove Gaudette from the Election Commission once he had changed parties. But because there was another open seat, it seems to me that Mitchell could have made a reasonable argument that he had to fill that seat with a fellow Democrat in order to keep the board balanced, according to the law.
The local Republican Party may well have taken him to court, but there’s a chance the mayor would have won in Massachusetts, I think, given the controversies over the GOP challenging election results across the country in recent years. At least he would have proven he was concerned by the situation.
Lemieux said the committee hopes that by writing to the mayor the controversy can be defused by Gaudette’s resignation. She said the committee would then present Mitchell with a list of at least three Democrats he could choose from to replace Gaudette.
“We felt strongly that we need to get the mayor to at least try to get the commissioner to resign,” she said.
Jack Spillane is a news and opinion columnist for The New Bedford Light. Email him at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.
