Republican Rep. Peter Durant of Spencer (center) listens to testimony about House leadership's firearm reform proposal Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, the same day he was set to face a primary opponent in a special Senate election. (Photo by Sam Doran/SHNS)

REP. PETER DURANT of Spencer emerged victorious from Tuesday’s special election Republican primary and will face off in November against his House colleague, Rep. Jonathan Zlotnik of Gardner, in the race for a vacant central Massachusetts Senate seat that appears to be up for grabs.

Durant cruised by his opponent in the Republican primary, Bruce Chester of Gardner, by a roughly 60-40 margin. Zlotnik did not face an opponent in the Democratic primary. The Senate seat is vacant because its holder, Anne Gobi of Spencer, stepped down in May to become Gov. Maura Healey’s director of rural affairs.

Durant said he did well in the southern portion of the district, where his hometown of Spencer is located, and didn’t win but performed strongly in Chester’s home base of Gardner. He said he will redouble efforts in the northern part of the district heading into the general election contest against Zlotnik.

Aside from Gardner and a piece of Worcester, Durant said the district is fairly rural. He said voters are concerned about affordability, schools, and public safety, but two issues have taken special prominence – the migrant influx into the state, which is overwhelming the state’s emergency shelter program, and the push on Beacon Hill for gun control legislation.

“The campaign went in that direction because that’s what people wanted to talk about,” Durant said of the two issues in a telephone interview about 30 minutes after Chester conceded.

Durant said many voters in the Senate district are gun owners and hunters. He spent much of primary day at a Beacon Hill hearing on a redrafted gun bill put forth by House leaders last week and scheduled for a vote of the full House before the end of the month.

On the migrant issue, Durant has raised concerns about whether the state can afford to continue to provide shelter as a matter of right to migrants coming to the state.

Republicans represent a shrinking minority on Beacon Hill, but an analysis of voting trends by Brent Benson in CommonWealth suggested Durant has a rare opportunity to win a Senate seat even though Democrats have controlled it for nearly 50 years.

“An analysis of voting patterns and other predictive election variables shows that the looming special election represents a rare case where Republicans can flip a seat that has long been in Democratic hands,” he wrote.

Bruce Mohl oversees the production of content and edits reports, along with carrying out his own reporting with a particular focus on transportation, energy, and climate issues. He previously worked...