Peabody Goes Red, Votes for Gomez in U.S. Senate Race

Democratic Congressman Ed Markey won the U.S. Senate race Tuesday night statewide, but not in Peabody. Republican Gabriel Gomez pulled ahead in the Tanner City by 148 votes.

Voter turnout was also higher than City Clerk Tim Spanos had anticipated, given the level of interest shown by the voting public in the days leading up to the special election.

The official count was 27 percent Tuesday night with 9,633 registered voters out of 35,113 hitting the polls. Spanos had predicted 20 percent, which was 3 points higher than the April special election in which Republican Leah Cole won her state representative seat.

"I thought we had a good turnout today," said Spanos, noting voting was steady throughout the day. He added that he felt Markey and Gomez were both effective in drawing out voters, along with the Secretary of State's office, which initially feared a much lower turnout.

The final tally in Peabody was 4,849 for Gomez, 4,701 for Markey, 48 for Richard Heos, 32 for write-ins and three blanks. Gomez took 12 precincts while Markey won seven.

While Markey was favored to win, and polling up until the election predicted that outcome, Peabody at any rate continues to follow somewhat of a more Republican trend, despite its traditional blue collar roots. About 11,800 voters are registered Democrats while 3,300 are Republicans and more than 20,000 are unenrolled.

Earlier this spring, Peabody voters elected a Republican state representative in Leah Cole as her two well known opponents in that race -- Beverley Griffin Dunne and Dave Gravel -- split a majority of the vote.

Local voters also decidedly chose Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren in last fall's Senate race (14,382 to 12,498), although embattled Congressman John Tierney still received a decent margin of the vote over Republican Richard Tisei (13,476 to 11,587).

And Peabody did vote to give President Barack Obama a second term over electing former Gov. Mitt Romney (15,010 to 11,616).

During the special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy's senate seat back in 2010, Brown handily won in Peabody, which was considered a bellwether for Massachusetts, 11,440 to Attorney General Martha Coakley's 7,619. Voter turnout that January was 57 percent locally.