The parking lot is overflowing at the Winchester Sons of Italy on a chilly November evening, so it’s a good thing that Frank Addivinola moved his weeknight campaign event from a local Italian restaurant to the bigger venue.
Addivinola, a 53-year-old Republican from Boston, is fighting an uphill battle to replace former congressman Ed Markey in the Fifth Congressional District, which includes Malden, Melrose, Revere, Weston, Wayland, Ashland, and parts of Cambridge and Sudbury. He is facing off against state Sen. Katherine Clark, a Melrose Democrat, who emerged as the person to beat after prevailing in the seven-person Democratic primary. Winning the primary is usually tantamount to being elected in the very blue district.
“It’s going to be tough,” says Kristen Hughes, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party. “He’s going to have to go out there and really work and talk to every voter and make the case that he’s going to be a voice of responsibility and bring some balance to the delegation.”
Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College in Easton, says Addivinola has virtually no chance. “I don’t think there is any reasonable observer in the Republican Party who thinks that he’s running a credible campaign or should be running in the future,” he said.
Addivinola, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2012, jumped into the race for Markey’s old seat once Markey moved to the Senate, abandoning a bid for a spot on the Boston City Council. On the day of the Republican primary in October, Addivinola got into a Twitter skirmish with Jeff Semon, communications director of the Massachusetts Young Republicans, over the extent of his campaigning for the city council post. (He came in next to last among the 19 candidates in the Boston preliminary election.)
Addivinola, a Malden native who moved to Boston from his hometown, a year and a half ago to care for his ailing father, is not deterred by Democrats’ strength in numbers in the Fifth District. He said he thinks there is an undercurrent of disconnect with Clark. “There are a lot of Democrats who live in the district [who] are not enthused about her,” he told the audience of more than 100 people in Winchester.
A mention of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, drew rumbles of discontent. “When Nancy retires, she will need a person to perpetuate socialist principles and that person will be Katherine Clark,” he said.
The Boston attorney followed up with a critique of Obamacare. “We can fix the website we can fix administrative problems, but we can’t incentivize people when we turn to socialized medicine in this country,” he said.
But it’s his stance on immigration that gets the loudest applause of the evening. “I am pro-legal immigration,” he said to cheers. In an interview, Addivinola explains that he opposes amnesty for undocumented people through such proposals as the Dream Act which would provide a pathway to citizenship for young people who were brought to the United States as children by their parents, a situation he calls “very unfortunate.”
Addivinola prefers to see the undocumented return to their country of origin. He said “a lot of Latinos” who came to the US legally support his position and are “the most passionate that we hold the line on immigration.”
Addivinola explains that he is running for public office because he doesn’t like the direction in which the country is headed. “We are seeing a redistribution plan in place,” he says. “I don’t feel that we should redistribute our wealth; what we should do is we should reward those people who have the motivation, make the sacrifices, and produce productive results.”
Despite choosing to identify himself as a “Ted Cruz Republican” in a NECN Republican primary debate, Addivinola rejects that label. Some of his stances are moderate: he opposed the federal shutdown in October. Others, such as calling Clark a socialist (which he often does), veer off into Tea Party-like hyperbole.
Instead, Addivinola describes himself as a fiscal conservative. He sees providing health care to the uninsured as a problem that should be tackled at the state level. A universal nationwide plan would be difficult to achieve, he says, because the cost of medical services varies widely from high cost states like Massachusetts to a lower cost states such as North Dakota.
Relying on a Massachusetts model means people some states would pay higher prices, according to Addivinola. For states that are unable to devise their own plans, the Republican suggests that the federal government could funnel dollars into the state to help officials come up with a framework to cover the greatest number of people who are uninsured.
In 2010, Paul Caruccio met Addivinola when they were both collecting signatures for their runs for office. Caruccio, the owner of a Winthrop Hallmark franchise, lost his bid for the Governor’s Council and Addivinola lost his race for a state senate seat. The two men remained friends. Caruccio is impressed by Addivinola’s educational background. He has several degrees, including a law degree from Suffolk University Law, and is currently studying for a Ph.D. in law and public policy at Northeastern University
“You expect some pinhead, academic guy, but he’s not,” Caruccio said. “He understands the challenges that people have every day.”
No one issue has captured voters’ attention in the congressional race and turnout could be anemic. Addivinola has made some headlines by trying to goad Clark into a series of debates, but so far only one has been scheduled, for this Friday on NECN. Still, Addivinola remains confident. “I don’t think I am a sacrificial lamb,” he says. “People are going to be surprised where I finish.”
There is no state law that requires a candidate to live in the district that he is running in, nor would Addivinola have to move into the Fifth to serve in Congress, should he win. Winchester resident Richard Valone isn’t bothered that Addivinola doesn’t live in the district. “It would be good to have a Republican representative from Massachusetts finally,” he said.
An Overview of the Fifth Congressional District
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The Fifth Congressional District seat opened up in June when US Rep Ed Markey moved over to the US Senate after beating Republican challenger Gabriel Gomez. The district swung to the Democrats in the mid-1970s and has been reliably blue ever since. President Obama won here by comfortable margins of nearly 70 percent in 2008 and 2012.
Most of the communities were in the Seventh Congressional District before the 2010 redistricting cycle, which reduced the number of Massachusetts districts from 10 to nine. When the dust cleared after state lawmakers redrew the electoral map, Cambridge had been divided between the Fifth and the Seventh District represented by Michael Capuano. Sudbury also had been split in two between the Fifth and the Third, which is represented by Niki Tsongas.
The median income of the district is $79,474. The economically diverse area of 24 communities ranges from the working class cities of Malden and Revere in Greater Boston to wealthy Metrowest towns like Weston, Wayland, and Ashland that have a rural flavor.
The majority of the population is white. Asians comprise the largest minority group and Latinos the second largest. Most residents have a high school education; 52 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Some of the largest companies in the state, Bose, Staples (Framingham); Raytheon (Waltham); and Biogen Idec (Weston) are headquartered here. Institutions of higher learning are well-represented. Harvard University, Tufts University and Brandeis University are located in the Fifth.
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