U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, easily won a 13th term in Congress in Tuesday’s elections, beating back two independent challenges, including a first-election run by a Greenfield Community College professor living in Shelburne Falls.
Thomas T. Simmons, a Libertarian who has spent 19 years teaching at GCC, from which he plans to retire this year, had told The Recorder, “In an election year with a lot of unhappiness and unrest, from all sides and an incumbent who’s been there 27 years without much opposition at all, it just seemed like now is the time to offer another voice, another alternative.”
He garnered 27 percent of the votes in his own town to come in second there to Neal.
Neal also faced a challenge from Springfield independent Frederick O. Mayock, a math teacher.
Election results were incomplete at press time.
Neal, a 67-year-old former Springfield mayor, is the dean of the nine-member Massachusetts delegation. The First Congressional District, the state’s largest geographically, includes Ashfield, Bernardston, Buckland, Charlemont, Colrain, Conway, Hawley, Heath, Leyden, Monroe, Rowe and Shelburne.