Worcester and Hampden District state Sen. Ryan Fattman (R-Sutton) was once again victorious after successfully securing his sixth term against challenger Anthony Allard on Nov. 5.
Fattman was first elected to the state Senate in 2015 after previously serving in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Sutton Select Board.
Although it took quite a while for the votes to start being reported after the polls closed, once the numbers came in Fattman was quick to declare victory after winning each district that had reported.
The Worcester and Hampden District includes Blackstone, Charlton, Douglas, Dudley, Hopedale, Mendon, Millville, Northbridge, Oxford, Southbridge, Sturbridge, Sutton, Upton, Uxbridge and Webster in Worcester County, and Brimfield, Holland, Monson and Wales in Hampden County.
With nearly 94% of the vote tallied, Fattman collected 62,045 votes to Allard’s 31,884. He also won in each town in his district.
During Election Night, Fattman talked about the initial numbers that came in.
He said, “I’m happy and humbled. Every town that’s come in so far, I’ve won and I’ve done better than I thought I was going to do. So far, Charlton, Brimfield, Dudley, Mendon, Sutton, my hometown, a precinct in Monson and Wales have all reported and I won all of them, Southbridge as well and I’m looking forward to the next two years and looking forward to try to make Massachusetts a more affordable place for people to live.”
Besides his No. 1 goal of making Massachusetts more affordable, Fattman said one of his biggest priorities he would like to address in his next term is the “pyrrhotite issue with crumbling foundations.”
“It affects a ton of people on the western side of my district but more and more people on the eastern side too. What was shocking when I first learned about the issue was it was Monson, Holland, Wales, little of Brimfield, Charlton, little of Sturbridge that people were affected. Now it goes all the way to Mendon and this is a growing problem for the state and something that the state must fix and help be a part of the solution,” Fattman said.
Fattman plans to work with the state and afflicted homeowners with crumbling foundation, but also would like to work with those expressing other problems during his campaign. Fattman said he learned a lot during this campaign cycle when meeting with residents.
He said, “I learned a lot of the diverse thoughts of people throughout the district and what they care about. The thing I heard most about, which I wasn’t surprised, was the right to shelter and that has been one of the issues that universally people have reached out about, concerned about the cost, concerned about the fairness and of course, that’s something I feel strongly Massachusetts residents should have priority for and right now they really don’t.”
For his supporters that voted him back for another term, Fattman said, “I think the message is that people feel the state is not headed in the right direction and I talk a lot about that. I think we’re unaffordable and I think that’s a direct relation to our policies that we’re putting into place so that’s something I’m going to continue to fight to make Massachusetts a more affordable place to live and know that they’re heard.”
Fattman thanked Allard for running because “democracy involves people getting involved” and said of the people who didn’t vote for him, “that’s fantastic because that’s our process and it’s my job to reach out and understand their interest, their needs and have two ears and one mouth.”
Allard, a democrat from Monson, hosted an election night watch party and as soon as he realized the votes did not go his way, he made sure to thank the crowd for their support and hard work.
He said, “I thanked everyone for taking that extra step. Our district is kind of not the most political and we turned the tide a little bit. From the beginning, I didn’t know anyone from half the state and by the help of so many people, grassroots style, we reached out to every person, every town and people started to learn who I was. So many people worked so hard for this campaign and yes, it didn’t go our way, but people should be happy that we engaged with so many people throughout the district that hasn’t been politically wanting to do stuff, so we opened up a new chapter for our district.”
Allard acknowledged that he joined the race kind of late and had a tough time trying to run against a known incumbent but was upset with some of the results.
He said, “We couldn’t get it done this year. Honestly, we’re pretty disappointed with our numbers. By losing Southbridge was definitely not in our realm of thought during this campaign. We canvased a lot in Southbridge and it went completely red. Obviously, we were kind of climbing the ladder with Fattman being a known incumbent and being in a more red district, but we did campaign our hearts out being a grassroots campaign since the beginning, with not a lot of help from the state and trying to talk to every single person we can throughout this election.”
Allard said he hasn’t thought too much about running again in the future but wants to stay politically involved in his district because, “there’s a lot of things that I have to think about but there’s so much that has to be done here in our district and we’re not getting the type of support we should be getting from the state and they may have won the battle but you haven’t won the war.”
Since the beginning, Allard said he was running for the state Senate seat to bring people together and deliver results for the 19 towns in the Worcester and Hampden districts and he had a message for Fattman after the win.
He said, “I want to congratulate Sen. Fattman for winning his reelection and I hope he leads with a thought of focusing on every town besides the select few towns and really helping out his newer types of districts since redistricting, and really helping us our here in the Monson area and the Hampden County area.”
