NORTHAMPTON – Jo Comerford notched a decisive victory in the Democratic primary election for the Hampshire, Franklin and Worcester District Senate seat Wednesday morning, despite no official winner in the hours after midnight.
A former executive director of MoveOn, Comerford ran a write-in campaign led a field of four candidates with 14,196 votes, according to unofficial results, or more than 53 percent of the vote. Her nearest rival, Northampton educator and women’s rights advocate Chelsea Kline, had 10,823 votes or nearly 41 percent of the vote. Kline was the only candidate whose name was on the ballot.
The other two candidates, both write-ins, were Northampton City Council President Ryan O’Donnell who received 939 votes and Central Hampshire Veterans’ Services Director Steven Connor, also of Northampton, who received 552 votes.
Aside from Kline, the other candidates in Tuesday’s primary for the Hampshire, Franklin and Worcester District ran as write-in candidates. That was because the district’s longtime legislator, Sen. Stan Rosenberg, resigned after the filing deadline, after a Senate Ethics Committee report found that he had failed to protect the senate from the behavior of his husband, Bryon Hefner. Hefner is set to go on trial on a number of charges, including sexual assault.
Kline was on the ballot because she got into the race prior to Rosenberg’s resignation.
Of the four candidates still running on election day, Comerford was the last to enter the race. However, she amassed an army of hundreds of volunteers and raised more than $121,000 as of the last campaign finance report. She also garnered high-profile endorsements from the likes of Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, former U.S. Rep. John Olver and political educator and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.
Comerford, 55, also had a birthday on Sept. 3.
Due to an editing error, a previous headline on this story misspelled Jo Comerford’s surname.