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Date: 9/15/2022
PITTSFIELD — After winning his primary contest on Sept. 6, Paul Mark will now face independent candidate Brendan Phair in the general election race for the state Senate seat being vacated by Adam Hinds.
Mark, who currently serves as a state representative from the town of Peru, took more than 80 percent of the Democratic primary vote in the district covering all of Berkshire County and several towns in western Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties. Hinds chose not to run for reelection this year, and endorsed Mark as his successor.
“Since the beginning of the campaign, it has been all about meeting people in all four counties in the new district,” said Mark. “It has been a great chance to hear new issues so people there know what kind of representative I am and the kind of senator I want to be.”
His primary opponent, Williamstown resident Huff Templeton III, said he would take some time to digest the result, but that he felt it was a good, clean race with no personal attacks.
“It gave me the chance to talk about the issues I really wanted to talk about,” said Templeton. “I got to connect with a lot of people I otherwise would not have been able to connect with.”
Before the primary, Templeton spoke of having unity within the Democratic party going into the Nov. 8 election, something he said he will reaffirm by supporting Mark in his continuing campaign.
“I will do whatever I can to make sure we beat Brendan Phair,” said Templeton.
Phair, 52, is a political newcomer, having previously involved himself little in politics beyond keeping up to date with how his representatives vote on certain issues. He considers himself a conservative, but chose not to enroll as a Democrat or Republican when he first registered to vote at age 18, and has remained unenrolled ever since. He said he is not a fan of political parties, and that it would have felt disingenuous to join one just to run for office.
Phair, who has lived in Pittsfield his entire life, works in special education at Taconic High School. He said he began to consider running for office a couple years ago, when he noticed a lot of his friends were leaving Massachusetts for Texas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and other typically conservative states.
“It was for a variety of reasons, and it wasn’t always to move somewhere warm.
They were going to places where they felt they had better opportunities,” said Phair.
Phair said he is opposed to the state’s ROE Act, which was passed by the state Legislature with a veto override in 2020, which Phair described as a bill that legalized “abortion on demand” for the duration of the pregnancy. The bill allows abortions up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy, and also allows abortions after that period only in cases of a fatal fetal anomaly, or if a licensed physician deems it necessary to “preserve the patient’s physical or mental health.”
The bill was passed more than a year before the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade, allowing states to create their own restrictive abortion laws. Some states had restrictions already had on the books, waiting for such a decision by the court.
Phair also expressed his opposition to a recent state law that will ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, instead forcing all new vehicles must run on electric or hydrogen power. The law would not apply to sales of used vehicles.
“It isn’t that I am against electric vehicles, I am just against a mandate,” said Phair. “It would be bad for the economy. The auto market here would suffer.”
He questioned the idea of mandating electric vehicles when they remain more expensive than gas-powered vehicles, and worried that many Western Massachusetts residents would be priced out.
Phair said that if he is elected, he would support different tax relief and reduction measures, including relief for farmers, seniors, and the purchase of gas. He said he would also like to see the state sales and meals tax lowered from 6.25 percent to 5 percent, as well as getting rid of the inventory tax on businesses.
The threshold for the estate tax, Phair said, is also too low in Massachusetts, at just $1 million. When ownership of a property is transferred, Phair said he would like to see the estate tax applied only to properties valued over $2 million.
There was no Republican candidate in the state primary for the district, so Mark and Phair will only face each other Nov. 8.
Granville, Southwick and Tolland were added to the district in this year’s redistricting map. Other district towns include Blandford, Chester, Huntington and Otis.