Kerry easily defeats Beatty to win a 5th term
Four years after coming up short in his bid for the presidency, John F. Kerry settled for a return trip to the United States Senate yesterday, easily defeating a little-noticed GOP challenger to earn a fifth term.
With 77 percent of precincts reporting, Kerry led Harwich Republican Jeffrey K. Beatty 65.9 percent to 30.9 percent.
The race between Kerry and Beatty, a counterterrorism specialist, never gained much traction. With his reelection never in doubt, Kerry focused his political might on helping Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama win New Hampshire.
And even before the first vote was cast, speculation had turned to how much of his term Kerry would serve, with Beatty and Kerry's Democratic primary opponent suggesting he was pining for a Cabinet post if Obama should win the presidential race.
Kerry told jubilant Democrats gathered at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza that he was humbled by the win. But he did not rule out leaving the Senate early if Obama called on him to serve in the new administration's Cabinet.
"If the president calls me and asks me to talk to him about something, I'm going to talk to him," he said in an interview with a Globe reporter. "Whatever I am going to do, I am going to keep faith in what I've been fighting for."
Beatty conceded defeat in his second bid for public office before a small contingent of supporters gathered at a hotel ballroom in Westborough. He challenged US Representative William D. Delahunt in 2006.
"We've accomplished a great deal," Beatty told the crowd. "We've seen a coming out of a movement that represents the majority of our citizens. We've reached a million people tonight. We just need to reach the rest."
Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts, said Kerry never viewed his Republican opponent as a serious challenger.
"I think John Kerry found Jeff Beatty to be nothing more than an irritant," Berry said. "He knew the election was a sure thing, and his focus is on larger career issues than this taken-for-granted election."
Kerry supporters erupted into cheers as Kerry's win was projected on a television.
"Massachusetts is a great place to live if you're a Democrat, and I think he understands how people from Massachusetts think," said Anna Scooler, a 29-year-old Cambridge teacher who was wearing a red, white, and blue tiara, and sporting an "I voted" sticker at the gathering.
But Michael Dirlinger, a 33-year-old Beatty supporter voting in Westborough yesterday, said it was time for a change.
"I'm not very impressed with John Kerry, and I'm a definite believer in fresh blood," Dirlinger said. "I don't think John Kerry has any new ideas."
Kerry is in all likelihood positioned to become the state's senior senator in at least two years with US Senator Edward M. Kennedy diagnosed with brain cancer and unlikely to seek reelection in 2010.
"That's sad, but it's a reality," Berry said. "I think the passing of the torch will be an emotional passage for [Kerry] and yet one that he'll take seriously, and I think one that will burnish his image just a bit."
Kerry invoked his senior colleague's name in his acceptance speech last night. "Let me tell you something: we're up here celebrating; Ted's back in Washington working," he said.
Beatty, 56, brought both military and national security expertise to the race, but was forced to focus his campaign on economic issues as the financial crisis pushed terrorism and the Iraq war out of the spotlight. Beatty said his ownership of counterterrorism consulting firm
Vincent Dileo, a 65-year-old Beatty supporter from Worcester, called Beatty's campaign a "David-and-Goliath" effort.
"Jeff Beatty doesn't have the name recognition," Dileo said. "He has a good message, but he has no money; he has nobody behind him."
Beatty never amassed enough of a fund-raising war chest to force Kerry to compete vigorously for the seat, political specialists said. Beatty raised nearly $2 million from GOP donors nationwide, but the vast majority of the haul went to the coffers of direct mail firm Response America, which coordinated the fund-raising. That left him with little to air television ads statewide or invoke fear in an incumbent with $5 million to spend.
John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com. Globe correspondents Jillian Jorgensen, Padraig Shea, and Emily Canal contributed to this report.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in yesterday's Metro section about US Senator John F. Kerry's election victory misstated when Senator Edward M. Kennedy is up for reelection. His term expires in 2012. 