Breakthrough

As incumbents seize the day in other districts, Latino newcomer Jarrett Barrios achieves a landmark victory in Cambridge

Primary '98 - Cambridge by Jason Gay

At twenty minutes to nine, the handwriting was on the wall at Jarrett Barrios's campaign office. Literally. A campaign worker with a blue pen was printing results from the 28th Middlesex state-representative race on a large poster, and he was smiling. Barrios was dominating the vote, winning precinct after precinct in the Cambridge district, which stretches from the east side of Harvard Square through Central Square and up to MIT.

As the results came in, you could almost feel the tension in the room sucked out and replaced with a mixture of jubilation and relief. Barrios -- who had spent much of the past half-hour wandering nervously outside his office, afraid to see the totals -- leaned his tall, thin frame back in a chair, absorbing his apparent victory. His partner, Doug Hattaway, who had been collecting results, stepped over and embraced him. Quietly, Barrios cried.

Make no mistake about it: Barrios's victory is a historic one. Assuming he beats Republican Ron Potvin in the November general election (and that's not a wild assumption in the Democratic-heavy 28th), the 29-year-old Barrios will become only the second Latino state representative in Massachusetts history. He is also the first openly gay man elected to the Massachusetts House. And he did it by beating a five-term incumbent, Alvin Thompson, as well as two fellow challengers, Dennis Benzan and David Hoicka.

"There are a lot of people in Massachusetts who don't have a voice in state government," Barrios would say later, at a victory party at Carberry's Bakery in Central Square. "Their most direct route is through their state representative."

But this was no special-interest win. Barrios dominated the 28th District, taking 15 of 17 precincts en route to winning 49 percent of the vote to Benzan's 26, Thompson's 19, and Hoicka's 6. The victory was achieved through excellent organization (Barrios enlisted nearly 400 volunteers), solid fundraising ($45,000 -- the most in the field), and, more than anything else, shoe-leather campaigning. "We knocked on doors, we knocked on doors, we knocked on doors, we knocked on doors," said one Barrios volunteer, Rita Sullivan.

Barrios's victory served notice that Cambridge's progressive political machinery -- rumored to be wearing down in the wake of rent control's end -- is in fine condition, and may be gaining strength. The city's lefties scored another major win in the 27th Middlesex District with incumbent state rep Alice Wolf's rematch victory over challenger Anthony Galluccio, a city councilor.

Two years ago, Wolf edged Galluccio by 89 votes for the House seat vacated by Charlie Flaherty. This time, she thumped him by nearly 900 votes, taking 55 percent to Galluccio's 45. While Wolf's victory did prove an old rule -- "It's virtually impossible to beat an incumbent who's free of scandal," said local political pundit Glenn Koocher, a Galluccio partisan -- many people expected this race to be much closer. Galluccio was seen as a political star on the rise, with a strong campaign crew that had made him the top vote-getter in the 1997 city council race.

But Wolf -- a progressive's progressive who has been part of Cambridge's political landscape for more than 30 years -- pulled it out in a gritty effort. "A lot of people worked very hard," Wolf said at a victory celebration at Fraser's restaurant, on Massachusetts Avenue. "And there is something to having a record [as an incumbent]."

They'd agree with that sentiment over the border in the 37th Middlesex District, a Somerville-Medford hybrid where incumbent Vincent Ciampa notched a solid victory in his rematch with 26-year-old upstart Joshua O'Brien. This time, however, the result was an upset: the progressive O'Brien, who lost to the old-school Ciampa by just 51 votes in 1996, had been seen as Tuesday's favorite.

"I must say that we were all under the impression that we'd taken the race," said O'Brien's dejected campaign manager, Mike Fitzmaurice.

Fitzmaurice suspected that his candidate suffered partly from a case of Capuano fever. Ciampa, a former Somerville alderman, is an old friend of Capuano's, and he enjoyed a burst of votes from the mayor-cum-congressman's hometown supporters, who hit the polls in droves on Tuesday. But Ciampa also did well in West Medford, which is not part of the Eighth Congressional District. "I guess people didn't want a change," said Fitzmaurice, who also lamented the fact that his young candidate failed to galvanize the under-40 vote in his district. "It's upsetting that more younger people weren't getting involved. You didn't see the twentysomethings and thirtysomethings out there."

Indeed, despite Barrios's win, the defeats of O'Brien and the 31-year-old Galluccio put an end to speculation about a wave of young politicians from this area heading to the State House (two other Cambridge young'uns, Michael Sullivan and Tim Flaherty, got smoked by Martha Coakley in the Middlesex DA race). But while O'Brien's political career is on ice for now, Galluccio's future is more secure. Galluccio still holds his city council slot, as well as the vice mayorship of Cambridge. And Cambridge is still a place where the local political pulse is measured at City Hall, not the State House.

"The average person in Cambridge doesn't connect with their state representative as well as they do with their city councilor," says Robert Winters, a former council candidate who publishes the Cambridge Civic Journal, a political e-mail newsletter. "Representatives tend to go to the State House, get involved in state politics, and vanish."

That's what Barrios promises not to do. He knows that Thompson was dethroned because he had grown too comfortable on Beacon Hill and become a stranger in his own district, to the point where his once-reliable base of support had eroded beyond repair. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, in fact, it became increasingly evident that the race would be between Barrios and Benzan, with Thompson (and his inexplicably minimalistic campaign) reduced to an afterthought.

"I really feel that Alvin is tired, and I feel he didn't have the energy to put up a campaign," says Rita Sullivan, who campaigned for Thompson in previous elections before jumping ship to Barrios this year. "I actually feel sad about it."

It will be interesting to see whether Barrios mends fences with Benzan, another up-and-coming Latino candidate who ran strongly against Thompson in 1996 and inspired an energetic field organization that drew many young and minority volunteers. Few would disagree that the 26-year-old Benzan has a bright political future (city council 1999?). But many of his supporters feel that he was upstaged by a big-money outsider in Barrios, whose résumé (Harvard, Georgetown, Hill & Barlow) was more attractive to a wealthier, whiter -- and growing -- portion of the district.

"The new professional, more affluent Cambridge is starting to assert itself," says Winters, who backed Benzan.

Still, the precinct breakdowns in the 28th show that Barrios kicked butt up and down the district. He performed as well with low-income voters as he did with Saab-driving ones. "Most voters in this district weren't voting for a special interest," Barrios explained when the results were in. "Most people -- regardless of their class, race, or sexual orientation -- wanted to see someone who was working in their interest."

Watching Barrios mingle at his victory party, it was clear that Cambridge has another political star in the making. People wandered in from the street to see what all the fuss was about. Wolf-ites fresh from their victory over Galluccio popped into Carberry's to slap high-fives. Tom Finneran (Finneran!) called the bakery to offer congratulations.

But leave it to Mom and Dad to bring a cocky youth back down to earth. Barrios's father, René, took the stage, embarrassing his state-rep-to-be son with a story about the day he was born and admonishing him: "You have to govern. You have to know who brought you here. And you have to remember who you are." (Barrios's mother, Sandra, was more to the point: "My son the politician," she said. "Don't become a scumbucket.")

Mom needn't worry. But Barrios does face a formidable task in representing both his district and his adopted constituencies outside of Cambridge. It is not overstating the case to say that Barrios's victory could be a watershed moment for Latino politics, and for gay and lesbian politics, throughout Massachusetts. (Barrios has talked about using the strategies and supporters of his campaign to help propel Latino candidates in future races; he has also been a player in state gay and lesbian politics for years.)

Leave it to Barrios to have the last word, however. Normally, the young politician speaks in rapid-fire clips; but when he rose to the microphone on Tuesday night, he looked at his gathered supporters and said, "Por fin." That's Spanish, of course -- for finally.

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.