FRESH OFF her own campaign loss in what she said was a “devastating” cycle for the party, Republican treasurer candidate Elizabeth Dionne this weekend launched a bid for the Mass. Republican Party chair and said she would not take salary if elected.
Despite encouraging signs from the 2024 presidential election, Bay State Republicans mostly struck out in Tuesday’s elections. The party’s candidates lost races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, secretary of state, US Senate, a handful of US House seats, and the party lost at least three seats in the state House.
MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale, who has led the party for four years, said in a Monday morning email to state committee members that she will not seek reelection as party chair in January.
“Massachusetts remains a challenging environment for Republicans, and there is still considerable work ahead. Building a lasting Republican presence in the Commonwealth requires sustained investment, organizational discipline, and a willingness to look beyond any single election cycle. We have made meaningful progress, but our work is not finished,” Carnevale wrote. “The next chapter of this Party will be an important one.”
In her own letter sent to state committee members Sunday and circulated to the media, Dionne said “this is no time to retreat.” She said her tenure as chair would focus on fundraising, clear messaging and strategic planning to support campaigns.
“First, we must remain laser-focused on providing voters with a true choice, not a coronation of Massachusetts’s current political superpower. Our objective is to check untrammeled power on Beacon Hill,” Dionne wrote. “Second, we want to win elections. Highlighting the dysfunction, arrogance, and self-dealing on Beacon Hill means nothing if we can’t translate that into a farm team of School Committee, Select Board, and City Council members who then win additional House and Senate seats.”
A Belmont town official and attorney, Dionne got about 867,000 votes in her challenge to Democrat Deborah Goldberg, about 34 percent of the statewide vote. She was the party’s third-highest vote-getter, according to unofficial results reported by the Associated Press, trailing gubernatorial nominee Mike Minogue and attorney general nominee Michael Walsh.
She said she knows “where the party falls short in supporting individuals pursuing elected office, and I will address those issues.”
Dionne comes from a political family, her father John Harmer was a California state senator and Gov. Ronald Reagan’s lieutenant governor. But Dionne has not been a lifelong Republican. She unenrolled from the party in 2020, and reenrolled in November 2025 as she launched her run for treasurer.
Carnevale won leadership of the Republican Party here away from former Rep. James Lyons in early 2023, inheriting a party in significant debt and organizational disarray. She won a second two-year term in early 2025 and the party committee is expected to vote for a chair for the new two-year term in January. Gene Parini, the chair of the Sandwich Republican Town Committee, has said he planned to seek the state party chair job, the Boston Globe reported.
Dionne said the party’s “most pressing issue is its financial condition: significant debt and inadequate fundraising” and issued a challenge to other potential candidates for the job.
“Given this stark reality, the next Chair needs to work without a salary. If elected as State Party Chair, I will donate my labor for the full two years of my term. Any credible candidate for State Party Chair must make this same commitment, and I call on all other candidates to do so now,” she wrote.
She also addressed the alleged signature fraud that threw the primary for lieutenant governor into chaos and endangered Walsh’s candidacy. Dionne said MassGOP “should provide standardized services at scale to all candidates. We must never have a repeat of the signature vendor who allegedly defrauded three of our statewide candidates.”
