In extremely close balloting throughout the sprawling senatorial district, State Senator Sal DiDomenico beat Cambridge Attorney Tim Flaherty by 172 votes.
DiDomenico bested Flaherty in Chelsea, 721-701.
In results from all the cities and towns, almost 13,000 voters cast ballots.
Results show DiDomenico with 6,288 votes to Flaherty’s 6,118.
“I am proud and pleased,” Senator DiDomenico said. “The people have spoken. We campaigned hard and it paid off,” he added.
The final result can be boiled down to the fact that Everett turned out more heavily than expected. And Cambridge did not come out as heavily as expected.
“We fought the good fight,” Flaherty said.
“I’m disappointed. We worked hard. We believed we could win this but it wasn’t in the cards,” he said.
DiDomenico and Flaherty fought a similar battle only a few months ago, with DiDomenico winning the special election to fill former Senator Anthony Galluccio’s seat by 120 votes.
Flaherty threw his hat into the ring a second time believing that Cambridge, without three other candidates running, would deliver him the difference he needed to beat DiDomenico.
In fact, DiDomenico waged a stronger, district wide battle and the results showed that.