Lisa Field declares victory in Taunton state rep race — Larry Quintal calls for recount
"The good news is that we won," Field said at her post-election party at the Ward 5 Club in Taunton. "It was only by 21 votes so it was within the margin of error."
Larry Quintal will not be conceding the race, he told the Gazette, and will instead be seeking a recount.
Voters from Taunton and Easton turned out at the polls on June 10 for a special election to choose who would replace former 3rd Bristol District State Representative, Carol Doherty.
Doherty, a Taunton Democrat, was 82 when she died on Feb. 15 this year from pancreatic cancer.
According to unofficial election results from Easton, Field won 1,032 votes while Quintal won 958 votes, giving Field a 74 point lead in Easton.
Lisa Field won 1,542 votes in Taunton, while Larry Quintal won 1,595 votes, giving Quintal a 53 point lead in Taunton, according to unofficial results from the City's website. That was not enough to overcome Field's lead of 74 votes in Easton, making for a combined lead of 21 votes for Field.
"I appreciate everything that everyone did," Field said, thanking her supporters at her victory speech at the Ward 5 Club.
"It was thousands and thousands of doors that we knocked," she added.
3rd Bristol District, consists of parts of Taunton and parts of Easton. Specifically, the district consists of Precincts 4A, 5, and 6 in the south-west part of Easton, and Ward 1 Precincts A, B, Ward 2, Ward 5, Ward 7 and Ward 8 in the west side of Taunton.
Quintal, a Republican, is a Taunton City Councilor and is co-owner/funeral director at Silva Funeral Home on Broadway in Taunton.
Quintal won his first term on City Council in November 2021 and his second term in November 2023. He told the Gazette during his State Rep. campaign he believes his profession prepared him for politics. 'Caring for and putting people first,' and 'listening to people' come naturally to him, he said.
Quintal also stated he is a small-business owner, not a lobbyist, and has no vested or special interests other than to help his community.
On why he decided to run for State Rep., Quintal told the Gazette, 'I'm not doing this for fame and fortune. I feel I have a proven track record on the local level, and I feel I can get more done and help more on the state level."
Quintal's campaign priorities have been to increase state aid to his district, improve affordability for residents by decreasing taxes and finding ways to reduce utility bills, and addressing the state's costly housing of migrants by amending the Right-to-Shelter Law.
Lisa Field, a Taunton Democrat, comes from a family of union activists and workers, she told the Gazette.
She works as associate director for the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA). Her role involves advocating for legislation for the MNA on beacon hill. Her position, she said, gives her insight into how the State House works.
Field told the Gazette she had been encouraged by her friend, Carol Doherty, to enter state politics, and, upon her death, wanted to "continue her legacy."
"I know what families in Taunton and Easton are going through because I've lived it: family and friends struggling with substance use, and the crushing weight of rising costs of living — even losing my home," Field told the Gazette.
Her campaign priorities included increasing government transparency, reviewing state education funding, examining the Department of Public Health's enforcement powers, and addressing potential impacts of federal cuts on veterans' services.
In June 2020 Doherty won the special election to fill the 3rd Bristol District State Rep. seat that had been vacated by Republican Shaunna O'Connell when she resigned to become mayor of Taunton.
Later that year, in November, she won reelection for a full-term. For both those elections Doherty's opponent was Republican Kelly Dooner, who would go on in 2022 to become a City Councilor for Taunton, and eventual State Senator when she won the seat in November 2024.
Doherty would win the 3rd Bristol District seat 2 more times before her passing.
Before her political career Doherty, a retired educator, worked both as a teacher and guidance counselor at Bennett Elementary School, and then, later on, as director of professional development for the School of Education at Northeastern University for 18 years. She also served two consecutive terms as president of the Massachusetts Teacher Association, as well as five terms on the Taunton School Committee.
In April of this year, the Taunton School Committee voted on and approved renaming a building located at 66 Summer St. to the Carol A. Doherty Professional Learning Center. The building will be used by Taunton Public Schools as a professional development center.
With additional reporting from Emma Rindlisbacher and Rebecca Hyman
This article originally appeared on The Taunton Daily Gazette: Democrat Lisa Field declares victory in Taunton state rep race
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
a few seconds ago
- Los Angeles Times
It's time to save the whales again
Diving in a kelp forest in Monterey Bay recently, I watched a tubby 200-pound harbor seal follow a fellow diver, nibbling on his flippers. The diver, a graduate student, was using sponges to collect DNA samples from the ocean floor. Curious seals, he told me, can be a nuisance. When he bags his sponges and places them in his collection net, they sometimes bite into them, puncturing the bags and spoiling his samples. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, coming closer than 50 yards to seals and dolphins is considered harassment, but they're free to harass you, which seems only fair given the centuries of deadly whaling and seal hunting that preceded a generational shift in how we view the world around us. The shift took hold in 1969, the year a massive oil spill coated the Santa Barbara coastline and the Cuyahoga River, in Cleveland, caught fire. Those two events helped spark the first Earth Day, in 1970, and the shutdown of America's last whaling station in 1971. Protecting the environment from pollution and from loss of wilderness and wildlife quickly moved from a protest issue to a societal ethic as America's keystone environmental legislation was passed at around the same time, written by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, Richard Nixon. Those laws include the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) , the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972), which goes further than the Endangered Species Act (1973) in protecting all marine mammals, not just threatened ones, from harassment, killing or capture by U.S. citizens in U.S. waters and on the high seas. All these 'green' laws and more are under attack by the Trump administration, its congressional minions and longtime corporate opponents of environmental protections, including the oil and gas industry. Republicans' disingenuous argument for weakening the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act is that the legislation has worked so well in rebuilding wildlife populations that it's time to loosen regulations for a better balance between nature and human enterprise. When it comes to marine mammal populations, that premise is wrong. On July 22, at a House Natural Resources subcommittee meeting, Republican Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska introduced draft legislation that would scale back the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Among other things, his proposal would limit the ability of the federal government to take action against 'incidental take,' the killing of whales, dolphins and seals by sonic blasts from oil exploration, ship and boat strikes or by drowning as accidental catch (also known as bycatch) in fishing gear. Begich complained that marine mammal protections interfere with 'essential projects like energy development, port construction, and even fishery operations.' Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), the ranking member on the House Resources Committee, calls the legislation a 'death sentence' for marine mammals. It's true that the marine mammal law has been a success in many ways. Since its passage, no marine mammal has gone extinct and some species have recovered dramatically. The number of northern elephant seals migrating to California beaches to mate and molt grew from 10,000 in 1972 to about 125,000 today. There were an estimated 11,000 gray whales off the West Coast when the Marine Mammal Protection Act became law; by 2016, the population peaked at 27,000. But not all species have thrived. Historically there were about 20,000 North Atlantic right whales off the Eastern Seaboard. They got their name because they were the 'right' whales to harpoon — their bodies floated for easy recovery after they were killed. In 1972 they were down to an estimated 350 individuals. After more than half a century of federal legal protection, the population is estimated at 370. They continue to suffer high mortality rates from ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear and other causes, including noise pollution and greater difficulty finding prey in warming seas. Off Florida, a combination of boat strikes and algal pollution threaten some 8,000-10,000 manatees. The population's recovery (from about 1,000 in 1979) has been significant enough to move them off the endangered species list in 2017, but since the beginning of this year alone, nearly 500 have died. Scientists would like to see them relisted, but at least they're still covered by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. A 2022 study in the Gulf of Mexico found that in areas affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill 12 years earlier, the dolphin population had declined 45% and that it might take 35 years to recover. In the Arctic Ocean off Alaska, loss of sea ice is threatening polar bears (they're considered marine mammals), bowhead and beluga whales, walruses, ringed seals and harp seals. On the West Coast the number of gray whales — a Marine Mammal Act success story and now a cautionary tale — has crashed by more than half in the last decade to fewer than 13,000, according to a recent report by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, the nation's lead ocean agency, is an endangered species in its own right in the Trump era). Declining prey, including tiny shrimp-like amphipods, in the whales' summer feeding grounds in the Arctic probably caused by warming water are thought to be a major contributor to their starvation deaths and reduced birth rates. The whale's diving numbers are just one signal that climate change alone makes maintaining the Marine Mammal Act urgent. Widespread marine heat waves linked to a warming ocean are contributing to the loss of kelp forests that sea otters and other marine mammals depend on. Algal blooms off California, and for the first time ever, Alaska, supercharged by warmer waters and nutrient pollution, are leading to the deaths of thousands of dolphins and sea lions. What the Trump administration and its antiregulation, anti-environmental-protection supporters fail to recognize is that the loss of marine mammals is an indicator for the declining health of our oceans and the natural world we depend on and are a part of. This time, saving the whales will be about saving ourselves. David Helvarg is executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group. His next book, 'Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp,' is scheduled to be published in 2026.
New York Post
a few seconds ago
- New York Post
Hochul throws shade on Mamdani's NYC-owned grocery store plan
Gov. Kathy Hochul threw cold water Saturday on socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's proposal to bring government-owned-and-operated grocery stores to the Big Apple. 'I favor free enterprise,' Hochul told business leaders at a Hamptons breakfast hosted by supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, when asked about Mamdani's pie-in-the-sky plan. The response drew huge applause from attendees, including Catsimatidis. 3 Socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's proposal to bring government-owned-and-operated grocery stores to the Big Apple was slammed Saturday by Gov. Kathy Hochul. James Keivom The Gristedes supermarket owner later told The Post Mamdani's plan would fail miserably, pointing to failures at a Kansas City, Mo.-owned grocery store that closed Monday after years of being a huge money pit for taxpayers and being plagued by rampant shoplifting and empty shelves. Kansas City reportedly invested $18 million the past decade trying to keep the store afloat. 3 'I favor free enterprise,' Hochul (left) told business leaders at a Hamptons breakfast hosted by supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis (right). Obtained by NY Post 'New York City is a capitalist city – look what happened in Kansas City?' he said of the now-shuttered Sun Fresh Market. 'These types of grocery stores just don't work.' Hochul, a moderate Democrat, has yet to made an endorsement in the mayoral race. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and frontrunner heading in November's mayoral election, has proposed opening five municipal grocery stores — one in each borough — and potentially expanding to a larger network of stores. 3 Mamdani has proposed opening five municipal grocery stores — one in each borough — and potentially expanding to a larger network of stores. James Keivom He's estimated the first five would cost $60 million combined to build. Critics have said they fear Mamdani's plan to create 'Soviet' markets would leave customers stuck with just one brand or generic brands of items like bread and milk. They also said that fixed prices at city-run markets could force competing private businesses like Gristedes to shutter, leaving New Yorkers with less selection. Mamdani's campaign declined to comment.
NBC News
32 minutes ago
- NBC News
West Virginia governor deploys hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced Saturday that he is deploying members of the West Virginia National Guard to Washington, D.C., in support of the Trump administration's efforts to ramp up a military presence in the nation's capital. Morrisey's office said that the National Guard mobilization will include 300-400 troops, plus 'mission-essential equipment' and 'specialized training.' 'West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation's capital,' Morrisey, a Republican, said in a statement. 'The men and women of our National Guard represent the best of our state, and this mission reflects our shared commitment to a strong and secure America.' The statement also said Morrisey's decision to deploy his state's National Guard came after a request from the Trump administration and that the troops would be operating under the command of West Virginia's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Jim Seward. The White House did not immediately respond to questions from NBC News about when or how the Trump administration requested this. Morrisey's office did not immediately respond to additional questions about how long the West Virginia National Guard would be deployed in the capital. The governor's move comes just days after President Donald Trump announced that he was deploying 800 members of the National Guard to D.C. and directing federal law enforcement agents to assist local police with patrolling and executing warrants in the city. 'When you walk down the street, you're going to see police or you're going to see FBI agents,' Trump told reporters on Monday. 'We're going to have a lot of agents on the street. You're going to have a lot of, essentially military. And we will bring in the military if it's needed.' Trump's stated aim of cracking down on crime in Washington comes as crime rates in the city are at their lowest levels in decades. Washington residents almost immediately began to notice an increase in law enforcement on the streets, as local police and federal law enforcement set up checkpoints in neighborhoods across the city. Residents and tourists also noticed the increased presence of military and law enforcement around tourist-heavy areas like Union Station and the National Mall. Initially, Attorney General Pam Bondi sought to take over control of the Metropolitan Police Department, but backed down after the city sued the Trump administration. Chief Pamela Smith remains in day-to-day control of the city's police force. Democrats have slammed the president's decision, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries calling the move earlier this week 'illegitimate' and an 'unjustified power grab.'
