#2022-24 December 2, 2022

New Class Set to Join Legislature In 2023; Five New Senators Will Join Nearly Two Dozen New State Representatives

Turnover is on the way for Beacon Hill as election season gives way to the next two-year term and more than two dozen newly elected lawmakers prepare to take the oath of office.  Five new senators will join the 40-member chamber in January, while the 160-member House will feature either 21 or 22 first-time representatives depending on how a pair of unresolved recounts play out.

Newcomers head to Beacon Hill from a range of personal and professional backgrounds.  Many already hold elected office at the local level, and some worked as aides to current or former lawmakers.  One is a tax associate, another is a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official, and the class also features a prominent Democrat volunteer who helped the campaigns of several people who will now be her colleagues.  Altogether, a bit more than one in eight legislators will serve their first terms during the 2023-2024 session.

The incoming group is a large one: two years ago, the freshman class at the start of the session featured 19 newcomers.  Eighteen of those lawmakers secured reelection this time around, and the one who didn't, Representative Jake Oliveira (D- Ludlow), instead won a Senate race.  By comparison, twenty-three current lawmakers joined the House in 2019, which according to records kept by the House clerk is the highest share of any year at the start of the 2021-2022 session, but several of those representatives opted not to seek reelection.

Not every member of the incoming class is truly a newcomer to Beacon Hill.  A trio of sitting representatives will move across the hall next session to join the Senate after each won a race for an open seat in that chamber.

Candidates Seeking Recounts in Two Representative Races

Candidates in two Massachusetts House races, each apparently decided by only 10 votes, want elections officials to take another look at the thousands of ballots cast.

Kristin Kassner (D- Hamilton), who challenged a sitting North Shore incumbent, and Andrew Shepherd (R-Townsend), who bid for an open Nashoba Valley seat, submitted petitions asking for district-wide recounts in their contests, according to Secretary of State William Galvin’s office.  The recounts -- and, as a result, a final decision in both districts -- might not wrap up for several weeks.

In both cases, the candidate seeking a recount appears to have fallen less than a dozen votes short.  With nearly 20,000 votes counted in the First Middlesex District and more than 23,000 in the Second Essex District, the microscopic margins would both be well below the threshold -- one half of one percentage point of all votes -- required for a recount.

The outcome in the two unresolved races will determine whether Democrats, who already wield supermajority margins in both chambers, cap off a three-, four- or five-seat pickup in the House compared to their margins at the start of the 2021-2022 lawmaking session.