Everett City Councillor Sal DiDomenico will now be Senator Sal DiDomenico following a razor-thin victory in a hotly contested special election which ended Tuesday evening with a 1 percent difference separating him from his chief opponent, Cambridge Attorney Tim Flaherty.
DiDomenico claimed victory at 9:21 p.m. inside the Silver Fox, where hundreds of his supporters, friends and family had gathered for a victory celebration.
“We won tonight,” he said to the cheers of the crowd.
“We prevailed and our message got out,” he added.
Holding his young son, Sal, in his arms and his other son, Matthew, tugging at his leg, DiDomenico sighed with relief.
“Now my sons can really say, ‘Daddy is going to be a senator!’”
Official figures were unavailable Tuesday evening.
However, campaign officials for both sides said the difference was perhaps 100 votes.
Everett, where DiDomenico carried the city with more than 70 percent of the vote, was the clear difference.
Flaherty won Chelsea by 200 votes, Charlestown by 300 votes, and Revere by 72 votes.
But in the end, it was DiDomenico cashing in on his power base in Everett.
There was no word from the Flaherty campaign about whether he will seek a recount.
DiDomenico is replacing former Senator Anthony Galluccio who resigned because of legal problems.