After the most recent round of redistricting, the largely rural, sparsely populated Berkshires lost a seat in the House — shrinking its Beacon Hill delegation to three state representatives and one state Senate district including three other Western Massachusetts counties.
Since 2011, Democrat Paul Mark of Peru has represented the soon to be defunct 2nd Berkshire House District. With sweeping support from the state party, Mark is overwhelmingly favored to secure the open Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden state Senate seat.
“A lot of the work I've been doing over the past 10 years, and most specifically, during the four years that I was chair of redistricting, and really taking a lot of time to try to promote that census, was just making sure that our voice, our rural voice, our Western Massachusetts voice, is never forgotten in Boston, and also never forgotten in Washington and trying to maximize the impact of that voice," he told WAMC. "And so moving over to the Senate is going to be, I hope, a really great opportunity to continue that work and to continue with a bigger platform, a platform that extends across all communities in Berkshire County, and a platform that includes the ability of being one of a chamber that only has 40 members- So, where everybody has, I think, a more equal voice, and a voice where you can really put your stamp and your region’s stamp on some of the amazing, important policy decisions that are going to be before us in the coming years.”
Mark is being challenged by another Berkshire County resident: unenrolled conservative Brendan Phair, who’s running far to the right of the Medicare For All-supporting union member. A paraprofessional from Pittsfield, Phair wants to lower taxes, protect gun owners’ rights, and remove women’s rights to an abortion in Massachusetts.
“The only exemption I would provide or support is a medical emergency, or, or rape, but within the first 12 weeks, that would be that would be a policy that I would support," he told WAMC. "I'm against abortion on demand, and against the Roe Act that Paul voted for in December of 2020. It's abortion on demand overnight and refer to it as something else. But it's abortion on demand.”
At a debate with Mark on Pittsfield Community Television in October, Phair also voiced his opposition to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and Black Lives Matter.
“The Black Lives Matter movement is a Marxist organization," he said. "They're anti-life. They're anti-Second Amendment. They're anti-nuclear family. They're anti-Semitic. And they're prone to violence.”
Two of the three Democrats representing the Berkshires in the Massachusetts House – John Barrett and Tricia Farley-Bouvier — are running unopposed. In the 3rd Berkshire District, Green-Rainbow Party candidate Michael Lavery is running to unseat long-serving Democrat Smitty Pignatelli. The Becket select board member says he’d move with more urgency on climate change.
“I would be one of the people searching for plans to reduce the carbon emissions of the commonwealth a lot sooner than 2035," he told WAMC. "I don't think we have that much time left. And the IPCC and the United Nations Planetary Climate Change Group have both said that we've gone beyond the tipping point, and there might be no way to reverse it at this point, so I would just be more proactive.”
Lavery says transparency is another issue that separates him from Pignatelli, who hasn’t been challenged in a general election in a decade.
“So right now, the House doesn't have to record their votes in open session," Lavery said. "They can choose to if six or eight members of their House stand up within 15 seconds or something like that. It's really archaic. And we were one of the first in the states to have a democracy, we're one of the oldest states in the union, so it's puzzling why we have the fourth lowest transparency on record for the House in the states. They also didn't vote to have same day voting, none of the Berkshires delegates did, and that was tremendously confusing to me. Democrats are voting rights, and I would just not vote the same way as Smitty did on those two issues in particular- Same day voting, he voted against it, and opening up the records of their voting record to the public.”
Rep. Pignatelli has not responded to multiple interview requests from WAMC.
In the race for the 8th District seat of the governor’s council – a body that advises the governor on judicial appointments, pardons, and more – Democratic North Adams school committee member Tara Jacobs is running against Republican John Comerford of Palmer.
Jacobs says she wants to see more diversity on the commonwealth’s parole board.
“I'd like to more see people of color and Spanish speaking, but also background," she said. "Currently, it is very heavily representational of our law enforcement and prosecutors, and I really think we need to extend that to have points of view at the bench who are more reflective of things like social work and mental health, to diversify those voices.”
Comerford is running as a tough on crime, law and order candidate who questions the purpose of parole at all.
“There were two commutations done fairly recently of two convicted murderers," said the candidate. "All eight of the Democratic governance council members approved the commutation. I would have said no. I read up on their crimes, and because of these two gentlemen, a family member was killed. And a family is probably still crying today about that. I would have said absolutely not.”
Polls open in Massachusetts at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.
