Around New England

Dean Tran Wins Re-Election To Massachusetts Senate

November 7, 2018

State Senator Dean Tran (R-Fitchburg) won his first general election race for the Massachusetts Legislature, solidifying his hold on the Worcester & Middlesex seat after capturing it in a special election in December 2017.

Tran, a former Fitchburg city councilor who came to Massachusetts as a child from Vietnam, beat Sue Chalifoux Zephyr, a Democratic city councilor in Leominster, according to the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise.

The two tangled in the special election last December, along with two other candidates.

Tran’s win was an unusual bright spot for Massachusetts Republicans on election night. The party’s already-small delegation in both chambers of the state Legislature decreased slightly.

State Senator Richard Ross (R-Wrentham) lost. That drops the GOP strength in the Massachusetts Senate from seven to six come January 2019. (There will be 34 Democrats in the 40-member Senate.) The ratio in the Senate is expected to be 5.67 to 1 Democrat.

Republicans also lost a net of three seats in the Massachusetts House, dropping their delegation there from 35 to 32. In January 2019 there will be 122 Democrats and one independent (who used to be a Republican) in the 160-member chamber. The ratio in the House is about 3.8 to 1 Democrat.

Republicans in Massachusetts have been unable to sustain a veto by a Republican governor since 1992. It takes at least one-third of the members of at least one of the chambers to sustain a veto.