Gomez Triumphant. (WMP&I)

SPRINGFIELD—After a race that veered into mendacity and nastiness at its climax, Democratic State Senator Adam Gomez bulldozed primary challenger Ward 4 Councilor Malo Brown to again secure his party’s nomination for the Hampden Senate District. While the outcome is not a surprise, the numbers cement Gomez as a political force in the region.

Brown’s boss, State Representative Bud Williams, fared better. However, his seven-point victory over Springfield educator Johnnie McKnight was a poor showing for a four-term incumbent who has held elective office in Springfield for 28 of the last 30 years. Williams sat on a six-figure war chest and could have wildly outgunned McKnight. Instead, McKnight came within 234 votes of unseating the longtime city pol.

Gomez celebrated his victory at a packed downtown restaurant around 8:30PM surrounded by family, friends, fellow legislators, Chicopee & Springfield city councilors, and even a state constitutional officer.

“I want to thank, honestly, I want to thank my community, which is all of us, no matter what part of the district you live,” he said.

Results from Springfield would not be posted until about a half-hour later, but they confirmed Gomez’s landslide. The Associated Press reported the senator scooping up 71% of the vote to Brown’s 29% across the district. The Hampden Senate district includes over seven-eighths of Springfield, excluding only parts of East Forest Park, Forest Park and 16 Acres, plus the southerly precincts of Chicopee.

In the 11^th Hampden House district, the story was less decisive. Williams won 54% to McKnight’s 46%.

The 11th Hampden is only in Springfield. It covers the Bay, McKnight, Old Hill and Upper Hill neighborhoods as well as a sweep of East Forest Park and Pine Point. Its periphery reaches into East Springfield, Forest Park and 16 Acres.

Williams and Gomez chairing a hearing in Springfield…after Brown, Williams’s aide, filed papers to run against Gomez. AWKWARD! (WMP&I)

According to unofficial results, the incumbent secured 30 fewer votes than two years ago when he faced community activist Jynai McDonald. Yet, McKnight earned over 500 more votes than McDonald. In other words, raw turnout rose. That did not favor Williams.

When the election cycle began, the primary did not seem likely to draw attention in Western Mass. Two house seats would open, but neither were in Greater Springfield.

Then in March, Brown filed against Gomez and McKnight against Williams. There was little reason to doubt that the incumbents would win. At the same time, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno was putting his recently flexed campaign muscle behind Brown. Whether upset that Gomez backed Sarno’s opponent in 2023 or that Gomez wrestled him to a compromise in February, Sarno was eager to, at a minimum, scare the senator.

The city’s political class ruminated about the sudden proliferation of Brown’s signs, restrained only by the reality that a sign is not a vote. Many also expected, correctly, that Gomez would fire up the grassroots machine that helped him overtake Senator James Welch in 2020.

Nevertheless, the race proceeded essentially as expected, until it took a sharp, nasty turn toward the end. This was probably inevitable as much of Brown’s case against Gomez was that he allegedly only served the city’s Latino community. Brown and Gomez clawed each other in a catty debate that included outright falsehoods, which the Ward 4 Councilor lobbed.

At Gomez’s victory party at Las Kangris Restaurant, the city and region’s Latino community were well-represented. However, as with the senator’s reelection kickoff, the full sweep of the city and the region were on hand, too. Gomez had drawn support from all corners of the city in addition to legislative colleagues and statewide officials. Governor Maura Healey, Senator Ed Markey, Attorney General Andrea Campbell, Boston Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Auditor Diana DiZoglio all lent their support, too.

DiZoglio, whose relationship with Gomez goes back several years, was there in person. As he gave thanks to family and colleagues, the senator gave DiZoglio a specific shoutout and embrace toward the end of his remarks. Gomez closed with a rallying cry to elect Kamala Harris president in November.

“It’s an emotional victory,” he said in an interview later Tuesday night. “It’s because of my support for the community, we’ve been able to do great things in the last four years. I can only imagine what we can do together.”

Gomez defended his tenure and his campaigns as having reached out to everyone in the district and in both cities. He added he had built up partnerships at all levels of government to be effective.

Early in his bid, Brown accused Gomez of favoring the Latino areas at the expense of others. His evidence? Well, um, uhh…HEY LOOK OVER THERE! (WMP&I)

However, Gomez, who identifies as Afro-Latino himself, was still frustrated with Brown’s baseless allegations and intimations that the incumbent ignored areas of the district, especially predominantly African-American neighborhoods. In a twist of fate, early unofficial data suggest that Gomez beat Brown in historically Black precincts.

Acknowledging his emotions got the better of him at times during the campaign—Gomez gave Focus Springfield its second on-air F-bomb—Gomez said some of the lies about him, and more importantly about communities within the district, hit him hard.

“The worst part of my campaign was the divisive rhetoric that I don’t support African American people, the disgusting rhetoric that came off that Latino people receive more benefits than other individuals” he said.  “When I took this seat, it was to create inclusivity and equity with all people, regardless of color, race or creed, because this is a race about poor people versus corporations, and that’s what it will always be.”

Down the street, Brown and Williams watched the results at Noir. Brown was reportedly in high spirits, the blowout notwithstanding. Williams knew he had won. However, he did not appear to know the margin until a WAMC reporter showed him the results.

As it turns out, Bud was not aware of how much he won by so I ended up being the one to show him the results pic.twitter.com/YawCogmrtm

— James Paleologopoulos (@WAMC_J_Paleo) September 4, 2024

McKnight closed out the campaign near Western New England University at Sofia’s on Wilbraham Road. While he was not victorious, McKnight came closer than anybody else has trying to take down Williams.

Williams first won office in 1993, becoming a Springfield City Councilor after two unsuccessful tries. There he remained for 16 years. In that time, Williams challenged his eventual predecessor, Ben Swan, and lost. Rather than risk ouster as Springfield added ward seats and trimmed the number of at-large seats from nine to five in 2009, Williams ran against Sarno.

Sarno thumped Williams. Yet, the latter came back two years later after Jose Tosado gave up an at-large seat to run for mayor. There Williams would remain until Swan retired in 2016, beating Swan’s like-named son and a third opponent. His only challenge came in 2022 from McDonald after the district shifted to include some new territory.

McKnight: Teacher, two-time municipal candidate, near-giant slayer? (submitted photo)

McKnight had run for mayor in 2015 and city council in 2019, although five years is long enough to fade from the memory of those who do not subsist on municipal politics. He work on Gomez’s senate campaign. Gomez’s turnout operation did help McKnight—virtually all of the 11^th Hampden is in the senate district. However, it is undeniable that McKnight outworked Williams, who barely campaigned at all.

To the extent Williams was running an active campaign, it was seemingly just press releases or photo ops. His office issued vague calls for more federal agents to address street violence. He promised a meeting with US Rep Richard Neal on the subject. (No meeting was ever later disclosed.)

Still, Williams’s campaign committee barely lifted a finger, aside from a few mailers and a week’s worth of ads.

Williams entered 2024 with $164,000 and even crossed into September with $16,000 more. He only spent $25,000 since January, including several unrelated donations. McKnight spent $19,000. That means that despite Williams’s massive cash advantage, his opponent essentially matched him in the money war, excluding outside spending. (Some unions sent mailers boosting Williams.)

None of this will stop Williams from returning to office in January after he is formally elected in November. A win is a win, which was essentially Williams’s message to reporters Tuesday night. However, after 2024 few will see Williams as the same immovable object most have presumed him to be.

Meanwhile at Las Kangras, it was apparent how sturdy the senator’s foundations were. Through the restaurant’s main window, a corner of City Hall, where Gomez’s career began not even nine years ago, was just visible.