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LOWELL — Voters in the 1st Middlesex Senate District may feel a sense of deja vu at the ballot box with the district race set up as a rematch between the same three candidates who ran in a special election for the seat earlier this year.
For nearly eight months now the seat has been occupied by Democrat Vanna Howard, who won the March 3 special election against Republican Sam Meas and independent Joe Espinola, who are both running for the seat again. That special election was called after the sudden passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy in October 2025.
With the seat now on the ballot for the regularly scheduled midterms on Nov. 3, all three candidates chose to run again, with the only difference being that Howard is now the incumbent.
The 1st Middlesex Senate District consists of the city of Lowell and the towns of Dracut, Dunstable, Pepperell and Tyngsboro.
Espinola came in last place out of the three candidates in the special election with 18.5% of the vote. In a phone call Wednesday he said that Kennedy’s death and the subsequent special election came as a shock to him, and logistically gave him little time to prepare his campaign.
This time, he said it feels “1,000% different,” in part because the campaign has had much more time to work with.
“My name is out there, our contacts are out there. We have taken advantage of just about every efficient way of getting our name out there, and for me the most efficient way is getting out there, shaking people’s hands, going to community events and having face to face contact with people,” said Espinola.
Espinola noted that most of the district is unenrolled voters, and said his goal of running as an independent is to get voters to support him for his policies, not because he is a member of a particular party. These days, Espinola said he is seeing more support for independent candidates “as a form of protest” against both major political parties.
“People have kind of had it with the politics in this state,” said Espinola.
This will be his third attempt at a state Senate seat, with the first being a 2018 Republican bid for the 2nd Essex and Middlesex District, to which Dracut belonged prior to the 2020 redistricting. He has lived in Greater Lowell his whole life, having grown up in the Back Central and Highlands neighborhoods of Lowell, in addition to Dracut and Tyngsboro.
Professionally he was a corrections officer at MCI Concord starting in 1989 before he later joined the Lowell Police Department, a career which was cut short due to cumulative injuries. Espinola served on the Greater Lowell Technical High School Committee from 2011 to 2018.
Among the major issues Espinola wants to address in the Legislature are homelessness and mental health.
“Every time there is some sort of incident in this country, mental health is involved,” said Espinola, noting that in the months since the special election he obtained a certification from Middlesex Community College as a mental health, alcohol and drug counselor, and he works with veterans and first responders who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
On education, Espinola said the state needs to provide more money to school districts, and to distribute it more evenly regardless of economic divides between communities. He said not doing so has led to cities and towns “having overrides just to keep the lights on in the schools.”
“We have to work towards something that actually gets our kids interested in going to school. If they actually want to go to school and learn, you won’t have the same problems with kids dropping out,” said Espinola. “There are a number of different programs in this city that work great for some kids, but not so much for others.”
Part of the issue he says is that the state is allowing immigrants to attend local schools, but not providing districts with the support they need to educate those students, especially when many do not natively speak English.
“So if the state is going to bring kids into the school systems that need these services, they need to pick up the pace,” said Espinola.
Howard led the field in the special election with 58% of the vote. At the time she was serving in the Legislature’s other chamber as the 17th Middlesex District state representative, a seat she first won in 2020.
Now with some time under her belt in the state Senate, Howard noted the differences, like the greater number of constituents and communities she now represents. Howard’s political experience goes back to before her first election when she worked in the office of former U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas and the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
Howard is one of the many Greater Lowell residents who came to the U.S. to flee the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian genocide, which took the lives of her father, three of her siblings and her grandparents before she arrived in Massachusetts in 1981 at age 11.
Now seeking what would be her first full term in the state Senate, Howard said she wants the state to look at funding formulas for schools and transportation.
“The Student Opportunity Act is coming to a close, so moving forward we want to make sure these rural towns are getting funded accordingly,” said Howard.
Howard’s priorities remain largely the same as they were before she won the special election, with public safety and the costs of housing, education and healthcare at top of mind. For some of those things she said she has been able to deliver in a shortened state Senate term, such as securing nearly $10 million for bridge improvements and pedestrian safety signals, and increases in funding and equity for primary education. Beyond those she pointed to an energy affordability bill and a bill to require healthcare providers and insurers to invest more in primary care, both of which she said are in the Conference Committee.
“There is always more work to be done, but that is just in my first seven months. Imagine a two-year term,” said Howard.
She also referred to the Protect Act, which she helped work on for years before it passed in August, implementing restrictions on the cooperation of local and state officials with federal immigration enforcement.
Howard said she is looking at the impacts of cuts to federal programs like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program and the Affordable Care Act.
“SNAP is not just for pregnant women and children, it is for seniors and veterans too who rely on those benefits, and now those are being cut. Many folks have been reaching out to us because their SNAP benefits are being slashed in half,” said Howard. “MassHealth as well. People are being dropped off and have to reapply and have to show their eligibility again. A lot of folks are still being priced out of MassHealth. My office has also received at least 10 unemployment cases where folks have not received their benefits months later.”
While she is focused on her own race in the state Senate, Howard said she is paying close attention to the national landscape during this midterm election in hopes that Democrats can retake Congress.
“We are hoping for change, and we are hoping they get the power of the purse back,” said Howard. “We are working hard to make sure that people have woken up to what is happening, to what we have seen the last two years.”
After the result of the special election became clear in March, where he took second place with 22.9% of the vote, Meas indicated that he would run again for the seat in the regular midterm election.
Though the outcome was not in his favor the first time, Meas said his hope this time around is that the difference can be made up with the higher turnout that can be expected in the midterms.
“These candidates from the gubernatorial down to the congressional candidates have brought in more resources, money and their teams getting people out to vote,” said Meas. “So I am hopeful that the efforts of the Republican candidates statewide will bring more people out to vote for us.”
Meas had hoped to only see himself and Howard running again, and said with Espinola again in the race he is essentially running against two Democrats, calling Espinola “Democrat-lite.”
Meas also made Greater Lowell his home after fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, first arriving in the U.S. as an orphan in 1986 in Virginia before moving to New England to begin his career. He held financial roles in companies like State Street Corp., BlackRock and Fidelity before starting a real estate brokerage in Lowell.
The 2026 midterms have been categorized broadly as a likely tough year for Republican candidates, but Meas said he thinks the landscape is more complicated than that, and that he is hearing more from people about “kitchen table issues” than concerns about political parties.
“They have seen the high cost of living, the high cost of gas, and that plays into their voting choice when they go to the ballot,” said Meas. “Massachusetts has one of the highest costs of living in the country, some of the highest rates for utilities, and people are looking at it, and looking at what their elected officials have done or not done about it.
“People see that elected officials, namely the Democrats, have not done much to help them deal with the high cost of living in Massachusetts,” Meas continued. “Even the 24-cent gas pause [Gov. Maura Healey] proposed, every Democrat in the State House voted against it.”
Meas also took issue with a bill Howard presented in the Legislature, “An Act promoting the civil rights and inclusion of American Muslims in the Commonwealth,” which would have established a state advisory commission to study issues faced by American Muslim communities in the state.
“The U.S. is a secular nation, and we should not be sponsoring any one religion … I find it to be an affront to my core values as an American. We should not be picking winners and losers out of any religions at all,” said Meas.
If elected, Meas said he would sponsor a bill to eliminate utility surcharges, which he said can represent a third of a household’s utility bill.
“What the Public Utility Commission has allowed National Grid to do, is by simply being a customer you are charged $10 before ever switching on a light,” said Meas. “National Grid has 1.4 million customers in Massachusetts just for electricity, right off the bat National Grid is making $14 million scot-free … I think by getting rid of most of these fees, life can get better for Massachusetts.”
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