Flaherty Backs Out Of State Senate Primary

Timothy R. Flaherty announced that he will not seek a recount in the special election for a Mass. State Senate seat, thereby conceding the victory in the Democratic primary to Everett City Councillor Sal N. DiDomenico.

Flaherty, a Cambridge lawyer, had announced on his website on election night last Tuesday that he would seek a recount, citing “voting irregularities in Everett.”

But in a reversal of such intentions, Flaherty released a new statement on Saturday that said he would not request a recount, though he found the alleged irregularities “concerning.”

Flaherty said that he would focus instead on running against DiDomenico in the fall, when the Senate seat comes up for reelection in accordance with the normal schedule.

The Middlesex, Suffolk, and Essex seat—which represents parts of Cambridge and several surrounding towns, including Everett—was vacated in January by Anthony D. Galluccio.

The former Senator is currently serving a year-long jail term for failing a series of breathalyzer tests, in violation of his probation for a hit-and-run accident in October.

Galluccio’s resignation opened a special election for the seat, which six Democrats vied for in the primary last Tuesday. DiDomenico beat Flaherty and the other contenders by 135 votes, according to The Boston Globe.

In the general election on May 11, DiDomenico will face Independent candidate John Cesan, a resident of Agawam.

Local political pundit Robert Winters said that Flaherty and DiDomenico were the two frontrunners throughout the campaign, and that both were likely to run again in September regardless of the outcome of the special election.

“For [Flaherty] to have actually pursued a recount and then lost—as he almost certainly would have—would have soiled him a bit,” Winters said.

None of the other candidates have expressed an intent to run again in September.

According to Winters, Flaherty’s campaign hopes that progressive voters who chose other candidates in last week’s primary will pick Flaherty over DiDomenico in a two-way race.

“I certainly wouldn’t leap to that conclusion,” Winters said. “The presumption here is that somehow most voters were voting along the traditional left to right political spectrum, but people were largely voting along ethnic and identity lines.”

Winters dismissed Flaherty’s claim that he would represent Cambridge better than Everett resident DiDomenico, pointing out that DiDomenico was born in East Cambridge and attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.