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Three candidates have lined up to follow a long-serving state senator in a district that runs from Marion and Wareham on the South Coast to the Rhode Island line. Their policy positions range from center to conservative, suiting the Third Bristol and Plymouth, a district that leans purple.
The Democrat, Raynham Selectman Joe Pacheco, defeated one Taunton city councilor in the primary and now faces another in the general election: a Republican, Kelly Dooner, also a member of the Taunton Planning Board. Jim DuPont — former member of the Republican State Committee, the Raynham Board of Selectmen and the Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School Committee — is running as an independent.
Key 2024 election dates
Nov. 5 general election
The general election is Nov. 5, with a new set of deadlines.
Oct. 19 to Nov. 1: Early voting from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Main Public Library, 613 Pleasant St.
Nov. 5: General election. Polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
More voter info
Where do you vote? To find your specific polling location, enter your street address and postal zip code in this online form. Check the list of New Bedford’s polling locations here.
Get additional info on voter registration, eligibility, requirements, etc., at the Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth website.
Find a list of Massachusetts candidates in the Democratic and Republican primary races.
Learn more about voting in New Bedford and find applications for absentee ballots and applications for voting by mail at the New Bedford Election Commission website.
Find additional information about voting in Massachusetts at Vote 411, from the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
The Third Bristol and Plymouth district includes one city, Taunton, and nine towns: Berkley, Dighton, Seekonk, Raynham and Rehoboth in Bristol County, and Carver, Marion, Middleborough, and Wareham in Plymouth.
Joe Pacheco is not related to the current senator, Marc Pacheco. First elected in 1992, Marc Pacheco faced a primary challenge that year and never again. In 16 general elections, he was opposed eight times, winning by the closest margin, 54%, in the last run in 2022.
Early this year, he announced he was bowing out. He’s turning his attention to national and international climate change projects.
Joe Pacheco: Stressing service, knowledge of government
Joe Pacheco won the Democratic primary last month with 61% of the vote against 39% for a candidate standing a bit to his political left, Barry Sanders, a Taunton city councilor.
In the summer campaign, Pacheco emphasized his knowledge of government gained as a public official in Raynham, as the current director of the Barnstable County Department of Human Services, and in previous staff work with former state Rep. David Flynn and at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
In the general election he’s facing two contenders standing to his political right. But, he said, the pitch is the same, emphasizing the same concerns.
“I am who I am, and I am who I am on the issues,” Pacheco said this month. He describes himself as a “centrist” and “fiscal conservative,” and said “I don’t see a need to pivot on the issues” for the general election campaign.
Pacheco emphasizes his commitment to public service, starting with his election to the Raynham Board of Selectmen in 2007 at age 21, the youngest person ever elected to the position. He has served on the board since, is now 39, and touts his record of minding budgets and keeping local taxes down.
He said the current Raynham budget increase of just over 1% shows he’s serious about controlling spending. He noted that when a local meals tax option arose under former Gov. Deval Patrick, he voted on the losing side on the Board of Selectmen against it.
He said he would bring that approach to the state Senate. He thinks the state could do a better job restraining the cost of public transportation, and curbing abuses in public assistance programs under MassHealth.
Pacheco is among those calling for reforms in the wake of the collapse of Steward Health Care. He said the bankruptcy, which threatened the future of Morton Hospital in Taunton, showed that Massachusetts needs more rigorous oversight of private medical companies.
He said he would be prepared for the job on his first day in office, thanks to what he learned about Beacon Hill from his work as a legislative aide with Flynn, and his years with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Like Flynn, he said, he’s not likely to strictly follow the Democratic Party line.
“I am not going to do what the party suggests unless I think it’s right,” Pacheco said.
That said, Pacheco has the support of major Democratic Party figures, including Gov. Maura Healey and State Auditor Diana DiZoglio. He said he supports DiZoglio’s move to gain the authority to audit the state legislature, which is on the ballot this year as a referendum question.
Pacheco is endorsed by his namesake, Marc Pacheco, who joins all four former living Taunton mayors in backing Joe Pacheco.
So far, Pacheco leads the fundraising competition. His campaign’s latest report showed total spending just over $50,000 through Sept. 30, but Pacheco said that days after that report was filed, the campaign dropped about another $40,000 on mailers and digital ads. That would cut about in half the $83,000 cash on hand shown in the report.
Kelly Dooner: Focus on immigration, spending, accountability
At 32, serving her second two-year term on the Taunton City Council, Kelly Dooner is wasting no time pursuing a bigger political stage. The reason for the senate run is clear, she has said: state actions on migrants.
Specifically, she told the Taunton Daily Gazette in the summer, she was moved to get into the race for the open seat when she heard that all the rooms at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center in Taunton were being used as an emergency shelter, chiefly for migrant families.
She was outraged at the cost and argued that homeless veterans and native-born people should be first in line for shelter. She wants to stop tax-funded benefits for people who are not in the country legally.
Several figures have been reported for the amount Massachusetts has spent on shelter.
The Center for Immigration Studies, described in a Georgetown University report in 2020 as an anti-immigration research group, in July 2024 reported that Massachusetts up to then had spent more than $1 billion on the emergency shelter system.
WBZ reported in February that the state had contracts for housing totaling more than $116 million through the end of June. WBZ also reported that in January, Healey proposed a $873 million supplemental budget that would help pay for the current shelter shortfall, and the projected cost of emergency assistance.
The governor’s office reported in August that it had received more than $20 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support family shelter costs.
Dooner said she’s the only one of the three candidates who wants to revise the state’s so-called “right to shelter” law. Adopted in 1983 after psychiatric hospital closings left more people homeless, the law was meant to protect children. Healey has said that the surge of migrants is straining the state’s ability to meet the requirements of the law.
Dooner, who works as a paralegal in Boston, declined to be interviewed for this story, but she has said that the state’s approach to sheltering migrants is just one example of overspending.
In a written response to questions from The Light, Dooner said she wants to press for lower property taxes, and noted that on the Taunton City Council, she has worked to double the local tax credit for older residents. As a state senator, she would stand against new state taxes, and work to cut the sales tax from 6.25% to 5% and trim utility costs.
On her campaign website, Dooner says she’ll work to curb “rampant fraud” involving Electronic Benefits Transfer cards used to provide state food benefits.
To help small businesses, Dooner said she wants to cut regulations and reduce filing fees for new businesses. She said the endorsement of the National Federation of Independent Business reflects her support for small business.
She calls for several reforms to make the state more open about how it does business, including ending the legislative exemptions from laws on open meetings, public records and procurement. She wants public hearings on all tax bills and legislative committee votes published online.
Dooner said she would be the first woman elected to serve this district, and she is endorsed in the effort by Shaunna O’Connell, a Republican, the first woman ever elected mayor of Taunton.
Dooner also has the backing of three Republican state representatives: Norman Orrall of Lakeville, Steven Howitt of Seekonk, and Susan Williams Gifford of Wareham.
Her campaign’s most recent finance report shows expenses of nearly $48,000 this year through Sept. 30, and nearly $37,000 cash on hand.
Jim DuPont: Talking taxes
Jim DuPont may not be the best financed candidate in this contest, but he is perhaps the most colorful.
It’s not just the campaign’s lavender motif, but voters can sometimes find him campaigning in his lavender necktie, on his lavender adult-size tricycle flying a vertical lavender banner. Maybe it’s the performer in him. Years ago he played in a band, and for the last four years he hosted a weekly talk radio program in Taunton — on a station owned by Sen. Marc Pacheco, whom he hopes to follow.
He seems to like to talk. For the moment, in the thick of a political campaign, he prefers one subject.
“I want to talk about taxes,” said DuPont, 71, who two years ago retired after about 20 years with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Litigation Bureau.
He touts the endorsement of Edward F. King, known as the “Father of Proposition 2 1/2.” In the 1970s, King — not to be confused with the late Massachusetts Gov. Edward J. King — founded Citizens for Limited Taxation, the group that orchestrated the 1980 referendum that changed state law to cap local property tax increases.
Now DuPont wonders if the state couldn’t use some sort of legal tax or budget limit of its own. Even with the local tax cap, DuPont argues that property taxes are still too high, in part because communities are not getting their fair share of state aid.
As a state senator, he said he would work to revise the law to allocate state aid according to a clear, consistent formula, making it “a matter of arithmetic, not politics.”
He argues that state spending on emergency shelter for undocumented migrants is one reason communities are not getting their fair share of assistance. He’s all for legal immigration, but does not want the state to be spending money to “support people who enter the U.S. illegally.”
As a longtime Republican in Massachusetts, DuPont said he’s used to being the “underdog,” and knows he’s got an uphill climb in this race. He’s certainly way behind in campaign finances, as the most recent report shows total spending of $5,020 through Sept. 30, and $69 cash on hand.
He said as far as he knows, there’s never been an independent state senator, although that status allowed him to bypass a primary run.
He said he’s not a perfect fit for either major party. His position on taxes and in favor of gun ownership is what you would expect in a Republican, but he favors a woman’s right to make her own decisions about abortion.
He said he’s talked with influential Democrats who tell him he’ll be diverting votes from Pacheco, and with influential Republicans who say he’ll hurt Dooner. Between the two, he said he’d back Pacheco, whom he knows from his work on the Board of Selectmen, where DuPont served from 1995 to 2001.
Mostly, he said he wants voters to consider a question, and his recommended response: “Who would I like in the state Senate voting on my money? It would be me.”
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org
Editor’s note: This story was modified on Oct. 18, 2024, to correct the amount of money Massachusetts has spent on emergency shelter for migrants so far.
