Keating ekes out win against Perry

Moments later, Perry appeared in front of a crowd at a resort in Hyannis to concede.

‘‘We offered the people in the 10th District a choice. They made a different choice,’’ Perry said. ‘‘I’m not standing here feeling bad,’’ he added. ‘‘I’m standing here feeling very blessed.’’

Interviews with voters suggested that Perry’s past hung over the race and may have contributed to his defeat. A former police officer in Wareham, Perry’s role in two different illegal strip-searches of teenage girls in the early 1990s by an officer under his command was repeatedly reprised during the campaign.

While Perry was not charged or disciplined in the cases, Keating and his allies launched a barrage of negative ads and mailers that targeted the Republican as untrustworthy. And two weeks before the election, one of the women who had been strip-searched broke her long silence to speak out against Perry, saying he was unfit for office because he did not stop the assault.

‘‘Perry, to me, was in his personal behavior, reprehensible,’’ said 66-year-old Ruth Harrington, while voting for Keating in Hingham. ‘‘I would never vote for a man like that. People say, ‘Well, it happened in the past.’ Would you say that if it were your sister?’’

In Marshfield, John White, 60, a data center technician who was supporting Jill Stein in the governor’s race, said he had cast a ballot for Keating but was mostly voting against Perry.

‘‘It’s more of a vote against Perry, based on who I think he is,’’ he said ‘‘I think the biggest killer was the story going around about the girl getting strip-searched nearby and him doing nothing. That’s a killer for me.’’

Some voters, however, said they were swayed to vote for Perry because of the negative ads.

‘‘It backfired with me,’’ said Dick Low, 63, a doctor in Hingham. ‘‘It was nasty, and you have no idea how to judge how factual it is.’’

And in Marshfield, Ellen Dow, 45, said she had been impressed by Perry’s attitude during the campaign. ‘‘He seems like he’s going to work hard,’’ she said.

Last night Perry’s mother, Millie Perry, bemoaned the effect of the negative ads.

‘‘I think my son ran a clean campaign. I think that’s why he lost,’’ she said.

But at Perry’s election night party the crowds gathering around a pair of TV sets absorbed the growing gap between their candidate and Keating, with the mood growing quieter. Dozens pulled on coats and left the ballroom, as Perry continued to make the rounds, greeting supporters. Younger voters, still on their feet, said they would hold out hope until the end, while older campaign workers sat back in their chairs.

One of the bigger surprises of the night was in Plymouth, where Brown won by 28 percentage points in January. A sprawling community known for having a conservative bent by Massachusetts standards, Plymouth went for Perry by only 163 votes.

The congressional race also featured three independent candidates, who combined attracted more than 10 percent of the total vote. The top vote-getter of the three, Maryanne Lewis, received more than 16,000 votes, or 6 percent of the total.

Hingham voter David Drinkwater, 44, said he voted for Lewis out of disgust with both Perry and Keating.
Asked what he liked about Lewis, Drinkwater said, ‘‘nothing. But I didn’t like Keating’s ads against Perry, and I didn’t like Perry either.’’

It’s unclear, however, how those independents affected the final outcome. Another candidate, former Quincy mayor James A. Sheets, for example, garnered more than 10,000 votes, including many from his city, which otherwise went strongly for Keating.

Alan Wirzbicki can be reached at awirzbicki@globe.com. David Filipov, Jenna Russell, and Sean Murphy contributed reporting.