If Somerville State Rep. Carl Sciortino (LA '00) were to travel back eight years and tell his 21-year-old self, then a senior at Tufts, that he would spend his career at the Massachusetts Statehouse on Beacon Hill, the young Jumbo would have laughed.
A biology major, he had taken just a single political science class at Tufts — Constitutional Law with Professor Marilyn Glater — and had spent most of his extracurricular energy as the head of the Tufts Transgender Lesbian Gay Bisexual Collective (TTLGBC), taking a major leadership role in the founding of the Rainbow House. He planned to enter the public-health field, and political office was not even on his radar.
Now, eight years later, Sciortino is fighting for his third term as Somerville's representative in the Mass. House of Representatives. And after some of his registration papers went missing, and his name was left off the Democratic primary ballot, the former Jumbo has spent the summer running an aggressive write-in campaign — headed by a Tufts senior — in an attempt to win back his district.
‘Something I had to do'
After graduating from Tufts in 2000, Sciortino, a Connecticut native, stayed close to the Hill to pursue a career in public health, landing a job as a research coordinator at Fenway Community Health in Boston. It was there, he said, that he first became engaged in local public policy.
"I spent a number of years advocating for some of the issues I thought were important with my own state representative at the time," Sciortino said. "I saw first-hand the effect of state budget cuts in 2003 … and didn't feel that our district was being well represented."
But it was not until his predecessor, conservative Democrat Vincent Ciampa, told Sciortino he would not support same-sex marriage initiatives that the young Tufts graduate decided to take action.
"The final straw was the same-sex marriage debate," Sciortino said. "I was told by my predecessor that he was not supporting same-sex marriage, and that he was not even sure he would submit civil unions, and that was the last straw. I felt that it was important to run to represent the district on all of the values that are important to all of our families.
"I felt that it was something I had to do," he added.
And so, just four years out of college, Sciortino began knocking on doors and introducing himself to potential voters. His campaign was a long shot, at best — as a 26-year-old with no experience in public office, he was running against an eight-term incumbent. What's more, he was a recent Tufts graduate in a community often marked by tensions between students and local residents.
But when the primary came, he shocked many by defeating Ciampa — in both the primary and as a write-in candidate in the general election — to become Somerville's new representative.
Throughout his campaign and his subsequent time in office, he relied on many of the lessons he had learned at Tufts.
"I think Tufts promotes a very strong culture of civic engagement and taking responsibility for what you think needs to be fixed," Sciortino said. "I think those are values that got me interested in running in the first place and have been really important to me as a representative — organizing people, bringing them to the table, hearing their concerns and figuring out solutions are all skills that I learned at Tufts that have been valuable to me in office."
‘A younger generation'
After winning his first term in November 2004, Sciortino entered the state legislature as one of its youngest members. The 26-year-old made his first speech on the House floor that April, arguing for funding and increased attention for the planned Green Line extension (which is currently set to be built by 2014). The issue has been one of his top priorities throughout his first two terms, Sciortino said.
"This is a project that I think has major potential for Medford and Somerville neighborhoods around Tufts as well as the Tufts community itself … This spring, we finally secured full funding, 600 million dollars, for the project," he said.
Sciortino said his youth has been an asset rather than a hindrance, as he seeks to tackle issues that affect his constituents.
"I think it's really important in my experience to have young people involved in politics, whether it's running for office themselves, or getting involved in campaigns or advocating for policies," he said. "I think that diversity of ages and other demographics at the statehouses brings a critical perspective when decisions are being made.
"It's all the more important for young people to get involved in politics considering some of the major issues — whether it's the future of our public transportation system, or the future of the planet, with global warming — are at stake," Sciortino continued. "We have to step up as a younger generation and get involved to make our voices heard."
Running as a write-in incumbent
Sciortino's current campaign was never supposed to be the challenge it has become. Running for his third term, the Tufts alumnus was expected to enjoy the advantages of name-recognition and local connections that make most re-election campaigns successful.
It was under these assumptions that senior political science major Kevin Lownds, a former intern in Sciortino's office, agreed to spend his summer working as Sciortino's campaign manager — a position that holds him responsible for even the most minute details of the campaign.
But in April, the campaign hit an unexpected and devastating road-bump. Just before registration papers were due, a list of required signatures went missing from Sciortino's office, according to the campaign. The incumbent fell 36 signatures short of the 200 required, and his name was left off the ballot, putting him at a huge disadvantage against his opponent, Bob Trane.
Since then, the campaign has been aggressively educating potential voters about Sciortino's record and providing them with small stickers with their candidate's information that they can use in the write-in portion of local ballots. For Sciortino, the mishap has changed his approach to winning over local voters. His campaign has been reminiscent of his original bid in 2004, when he spent his time meeting voters personally and knocking on doors.
"The write-in, or sticker campaign, makes this more of a challenge," he said. "It makes it even more important to have a strong campaign going door-to-door, talking to voters, hearing their concerns and educating them about how they can still vote for me."
For Lownds, it has meant that what he expected to be a summer job has become a full-time effort that will extend until the election on Sept. 16.
"It's something that I didn't expect, but it's something that we've done the work for," Lownds said. "What I knew coming in was that I was going to do everything in my power to make sure Carl got re-elected. And if that means working to produce stickers and running an aggressive field campaign so that every voter in the district knows about the write-in campaign … then so be it."
Throughout the summer, Lownds worked every day of the week and often for long hours. The experience, he said, has been enormously educational.
"As a political science major I've studied a lot of theories of politics and how politics operates … but in this particular case, you are learning the nitty-gritty of what is needed to be done to run a campaign — the practical learning experience," he said.
Lownds explained that much of his job involves coordinating very specific details of what the campaign does on a day-to-day basis.
"There are so many things that you wouldn't think of that make a campaign run," Lownds said. "Because we're running an aggressive field campaign, we need to make sure that our volunteers have lists of people who they're going to go out to. We need to make sure that the volunteers know what they're supposed to say when they get to the door. We need to make sure that our mailers are hitting on schedule.
"You end up supervising volunteers, field operations, data, mail, press — all of those things get jumbled together into one sort-of supervisory role," he said.
The campaign has launched a Web site, WriteInCarl.com, and sent mailings to local residents explaining how to vote for Sciortino. Lownds will mobilize a host of volunteers — many of them Tufts students — to hand out stickers at voting locations on Election Day.
According to Sciortino, the campaign has done all it can to educate voters about the campaign, and that has left him confident about his chances.
"It definitely adds to the challenge of the campaign to run as a write-in candidate, but we've gotten a great response at the doors," Sciortino said. "I'm feeling good about Election Day."
