By Matt Stout Globe Staff,Updated November 9, 2022, 12:04 a.m.
William F. Galvin, a Democrat who has overseen Massachusetts elections for nearly three decades and navigated Beacon Hill for the better part of five, won an eighth term as secretary of state Tuesday, according to an Associated Press projection, cementing an unprecedented tenure in the centuries-old office.
Galvin, 72, of Brighton was facing off against Rayla Campbell, a conservative Whitman Republican who had sown doubts about the results of the 2020 election.
He wasn’t the only statewide incumbent celebrating another round in office. The AP projected Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg, a Brookline Democrat, would win a third term. Her victory over Cristina Crawford, a little-known Libertarian candidate from Sherborn, put Goldberg, 68, in line to become the second-longest-serving treasurer in Massachusetts history.
Galvin, a former state representative, was first elected to his current post in 1994, making him the only secretary of state some Massachusetts voters have ever known. With his reelection, he sets a new standard for longevity in a 242-year-old position, where no one has served longer than 28 years. Frederic W. Cook, the last Republican to lead the office, holds the current record after serving from 1921 to 1949.
Galvin is also the dean among Democratic secretaries nationwide, having overseen elections on a statewide level longer than any of his active party counterparts. The Massachusetts secretary of state is also responsible for enforcing the state’s public records law and policing the financial industry and state lobbyists.
Galvin has repeatedly fended off challenges in recent years to get here.
He topped Tanisha M. Sullivan, the president of the NAACP’s Boston branch, by 40 percentage points in September’s Democratic primary, a race in which Sullivan pitched herself as a fresh, more proactive voice for the secretary of state’s office.
Galvin has also advocated for wider voting reforms, including bringing Election Day registration to Massachusetts, a measure the Legislature has resisted.
But more so, the seven-term Democrat has cast himself as a seasoned elections administrator who oversaw a record-breaking vote in 2020 that was viewed as a success, if not a model, for counting votes nationwide.
The office itself was once considered a down-ballot afterthought, but this year, secretary of state races transformed into a pitched battleground across the country following the 2020 election and former president Donald Trump’s bogus claims of widespread election fraud. In one campaign ad this cycle, Galvin warned voters Trump has “got a plan to steal the next election” in 2024, and that Galvin is the one to defend against it.
On the eve of Tuesday’s election, he lamented the rise of election deniers and the often “baseless allegations” of fraud that has surrounded elections administration.
“It really speaks to the depth of which it has penetrated our political consciousness and our society,” Galvin told reporters Monday. “It is greatly concerning, not just for those of us who run elections . . . but it should be concerning for every citizen.”
Galvin has indicated that an eighth term could be his last. He told a Globe reporter In August that he “quite likely” would not run again in 2026. He also told a Globe columnist he was “certainly done here, with this job.”
Beth Huang, executive director of the Massachusetts Voter Table, said with at least one more term, Galvin would have another opportunity to make “Massachusetts the clear leader in voter access.”
“To Secretary Galvin’s credit, the integrity of our elections have been strong the past 30 years,” Huang said. “I think one area where he could leave a legacy is by ensuring greater access and equity in our elections system.”
Campbell, who is seeking to become the first woman elected to the office and and the state’s first Black secretary of state, has rooted her campaign in warnings of children accessing “books with sex acts.” She ran a television ad that includes images from the graphic novel “Gender Queer: a Memoir” and a voiceover from Campbell asking viewers if they want their children “reading child pornography.”
“Let’s fight this fight together to save our children,” she says in the spot.
In a rare move, WCVB, the Boston television station that ran the ad, added a disclaimer to it, warning about potentially “offensive” content. The decision drew complaints from Campbell, who previously had baselessly claimed that public schools are instructing 5-year-olds to perform sex acts.
Goldberg, too, will return to Beacon Hill to a post she’s held since 2015. Now heading for a third, four-year term, she is poised to move behind only the late Robert Q. Crane in terms of longevity. Crane, a Democrat whom Goldberg said she knew as a child, led the office for a record 27 years until 1991.
The politically low-profile seat wields authority over billions of public dollars and leads a loosely connected web of boards and panels overseeing the state’s retirement fund, the state lottery, and alcohol regulation.
Goldberg has pushed to use the state pension fund as a weapon in the fight against climate change, recommending last year that the fund’s managers pressure companies to cut emissions and take other measures to comply with world climate goals.
She has also long advocated for allowing the state lottery to offer online sales, something the Legislature considered but ultimately cut from a multibillion-dollar spending bill that emerged last week.
A former local Brookline official whose family started the Stop & Shop supermarket chain, Goldberg ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2006 before launching her first bid for treasurer in 2014. She advanced out of a three-way Democratic primary before topping Michael Heffernan, now Governor Charlie Baker’s budget secretary, in that year’s general election.
She captured a second term four years later with an easy victory of Keiko Orrall, then a Republican national committeewoman and now also a Baker administration appointee.
Goldberg then eyed shifting from the State House in 2020, weighing a run for an open congressional seat. She ultimately opted against joining what would be a crowded race.
At the time, she said she believed she had unfinished business. She faced no Democratic opponent in this year’s primary and drew no GOP opposition as well, circumstances that helped mute her reelection bid.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mattpstout.