In southeastern Mass., Republicans find a reddening enclave of working-class cities and towns

NEW BEDFORD — Shawn Oliver, a local city councilor running for lieutenant governor, stood in front of a row of fishing boats in this coastal city on Tuesday to pitch voters on why they should back him and his gubernatorial running mate Brian Shortsleeve.

The Republicans, he said, understood voters’ fiscal hardships. Their South Coast “economic plan,” Oliver said, would revitalize the region’s ports. And they’d fight “unfair” regulations on commercial fishermen.

“The people in southeastern Massachusetts work hard,” he said. But, “we’re too often left behind.”

The location, as much as the message, was a strategic one.

Situated at the intersection of two reddening counties, southeastern Massachusetts is slowly transforming into fertile political ground for Republicans, offering a haven for local conservatives amid the party’s muted influenceon deep-blueBeacon Hill. It’s also made the region more than just a pit stop on the statewide campaign trail, but a potential foothold for the GOP to grow.

President Trump made some of his strongest gains in Massachusetts in Bristol and Plymouth counties, the two areas where he performed the best in 2024. The Massachusetts Republican Party flipped a state Senate seat in the area that same year after it had been held by Democrats for decades. And some of the state’s few remaining Republican county officials hold elected office in the region.

“That is the hotbed of the Republican Party in Massachusetts today,” Shortsleeve said.

The region has naturally become an increasing focus for candidates.

Shortsleeve, who lives in nearby Barnstable, plucked his running mate in Oliver from the area. Michael Minogue, another Republican gubernatorial hopeful, scheduled more than a dozen events in the area between December and July, including a stop at a business on Thursday,according to updates his campaign puts in a weekly newsletter. His campaign has also touted the endorsement of Tom Hodgson, a former Bristol County sheriff and Trump’s Massachusetts campaign chair.

“The reason there’s a lot of energy down here is because people here are struggling to pay their bills,” Minogue said. “They’re working-class entrepreneurs, and they have real grit down here. And so they want accountability.”

Down-ballot, there are also more choices. For the first time in more than 50 years, a Republican is running for Bristol County district attorney. There’s even a competitive GOP primary to pick a challenger for one of the most powerful Democrats in the state Senate.

Political strategists, candidates for elected office, and local lawmakers said the area has long been defined by independent-minded voters, but of late, also frustrated ones. Residents in many of the region’s lower-income and working-class communities, they say, feel forgotten by the State House, where Democrats have long wielded power, helping to hasten the shift rightward.

“We’ve been overlooked by a lot of different administrations,” said Paul Anthony, the general manager of a business that sells gas to the mass of fishing boats berthed in New Bedford. He spoke to the Globe as he looked out at a pier run by the state that was forced closed because of deteriorating conditions and after speaking with Shortsleeve at his New Bedford event.

“We haven’t had really good representation up in Beacon Hill, in Massachusetts, for a long time,” he said.

Nearby Fall River has had one of the sharpest tacks to the right in the last decade, backing Trump in the 2024 presidential election and making him the first GOP presidential candidate to win the city in a century.

The city’s changing demographics may have played a role. Fall River’s Latino population has doubled since 2010, and Latinos now account for 14 percent of the city’s largely white, working-class population — two cohorts that Trump particularly appealed to in Massachusetts and beyond. In nearby New Bedford, more than 25 percent of its 102,000 residents now identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Trump, of course, didn’t come close to winning Massachusetts, netting 36 percent of support. But in Bristol County, he carried six of the 20 cities or towns by a more than 10-percentage-point margin, and won 48 percent of the vote, the highest of any county in the state, according to state data. Trump did nearly as well in neighboring Plymouth County, winning more than half the county’s towns and cities, and 44 percent of the county vote.

Peter Hoogerzeil, a Seekonk-based Republican political strategist, said economic anxiety, particularly in the region’s lower-income communities, is helping give Republicans new footing.

“They feel the squeeze,” he said of voters, “and I think they’re looking for alternatives.”

It effectively makes the state’s southeast corner among the areas — Worcester County being another — that are a “must-win, by a good margin” for any Republican statewide candidate, Hoogerzeil said. “If the Republican at the top of the ticket does not do well in Worcester and Bristol County, it’s over.”

Other GOP candidates are hoping to capitalize. In Seth Aitken, a Swansea attorney, Republican voters will have their first chance in more than 50 years at electing a member of their party to be the county’s district attorney.

Aitken, a former city administrator for Fall River who is being advised by Hoogerzeil, accused Democratic leaders in Boston of being “totally disengaged” from the problems facing working-class people in the region. That, he said, helped fuel Trump’s rise in the area.

“Those folks that were already kind of moderate … they got upset,” he said.

State Representative Christopher Markey, a Dartmouth Democrat running for the open district attorney seat against Aitken, chalked up Trump’s gains to the perception that “the Democratic Party and the Biden administration lied to everybody.”

“They lied about [Biden’s] physical condition. It was an affront to everybody, and the people who were the independents said, ‘I’m not dealing with this anymore,’” Markey said.

State Senator Michael Rodrigues, a powerful Westport Democrat who chairs his chamber’s budget-writing committee and whose district includes Fall River, said voters on the South Coast are “fiercely independent.”

“They’re practical, and they’re not blindly partisan,” he said in an interview. “They’ll vote for Democrats. They’ll vote for Republicans. They’ll vote for Donald Trump, and then they’ll vote to remove Tom Hodgson, who was the leading Republican voice in the South Coast for years.”

Rodrigues this year will face one of two conservatives running in a relatively rare GOP Senate primary. Manny Silva, one of the Republican hopefuls, said the region’s growing embrace of Trump prompted him to run.

“We had good results in our district,” the Somerset Republican said. “But I kept thinking for a couple of months, ‘Hey, why has Michael Rodrigues gone unopposed again?’”

Worcester County has long been considered the bastion of Republican politics in Massachusetts. And to be sure, central Massachusetts still holds clout in the party.

The Mass. GOP flipped a state Senate seat in the region two years ago. One of the two Republican sheriffs in the state is in the county. (The other is in Plymouth County.) And about a third of the 30 Republicans on Beacon Hill hail from central Massachusetts.

Both regions tend to have similar demographics, which could explain the ideological shift, said state Senator Peter Durant, the Spencer Republican who flipped his district in 2023.

“I see areas that are pretty middle-class,” Durant said. “They’re blue-collar workers. They’re people who affordability really affects them.”

But it’s in southeastern Massachusetts where Republicans see an opportunity to expand their reach. For those vying for the governor’s office, it starts with targeting voters there, said Jim Conroy, a long-time Republican political strategist who advised former Governor Charlie Baker.

“You certainly need to hunt where the ducks are,” he said.