There are few surer bets than placing one on an incumbent Needham official being returned to office should they choose to run.
This is especially true at the top of the ticket, where only two sitting members of the Select Board (in 2003 and 2021) and one on the School Committee (in 2017) have failed to earn re-election this century.
The town ran true to form this year. Cathy Dowd won re-election by more than 2,000 votes in the Select Board race. And long-time members Michael Greis and Matt Spengler were returned to the School Committee by four-figure margins.
Needham turns out
This year’s election drew 6,263 of the town’s 25,100 registered voters, a 25% turnout.
This marked a slight decline from last year’s 29.2% turnout, but that race featured seven contested townwide races compared to this year’s three. And there were 141 Town Meeting candidates in 2025 compared to this year’s 106.
This year’s slight decline broke a four-year streak of increased turnouts dating back to 2022 when just 12% of town voters went to the polls.
Town Meeting
The preliminary results in the 10 Town Meeting precincts ran slightly counter to the incumbent-friendly trend. Six of the 57 incumbents running for re-election for three-year terms failed to achieve the top eight finish required to return.
Those six election setbacks, combined with the 23 incumbents who did not seek re-election, means there will be 29 newbies in Powers Hall when Town Meeting convenes May 4. They range in age from 23 to 89 and are generally younger than the incumbents they are replacing. The average age of the departing members is 64 while the newbies average 56 years of age.
Precinct I had the most rookies with five, while Precinct D saw only one seat turnover. Three of the precinct races (D, E and I) were decided by four votes or fewer between the 8th and 9th place finishers. Recounts may be requested, as happened last year in one precinct with a low single-digit margin. Candidates have 10 days after the election to request a recount.
Dowd declines Select Board chair role
One expected outcome from the Select Board race was that second-term member Cathy Dowd would follow board tradition and be elevated from Vice Chair to Chair for the next year.
At the Select Board meeting the day after the election, Dowd was nominated for the role but announced she felt the need to decline due to the expected demands of a new job she will be starting in the fall.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to give the chairmanship the time that it deserves,” she said. She then nominated last year’s chair, Heidi Frail, to remain in the role “for continuity purposes.”
The board then voted unanimously for Frail to continue as chair and for Josh Levy to succeed Dowd as vice chair.
Dowd will be graduating from Northeastern University School of Law this spring and has been chosen to be among the seven participants in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Stephanie Lovell Honors Program. It is a two-year fellowship starting in the fall during which she will rotate through the A.G. office’s six core bureaus.
Interviewed after the meeting, Dowd explained that “I am starting a new job and I can’t do a good job at both.”
“That’s the reality. You think you can do it but then you get yourself in a bad situation where you are not able to meet your obligation.”
The high and low costs of running
Seven of the eight candidates running in the three contested townwide contests (Select Board, School Committee and Planning Board) submitted their campaign spending reports tracking financial activity up to eight days prior to the election. Only School Committee candidate Lauren Soper has not submitted a report.
The top spender was Select Board third-place finisher Rich Adduci, who self-funded his campaign with nearly $23,000. He spent about $8,000 more than his two opponents combined as ticket topper Bill Dermody spent $9,411 and Cathy Dowd spent $6,497.
The two School Committee winners, incumbents Michael Greis and Matt Spengler, both reported no fundraising activity while each spent less than $500.
And Planning Board winner Oscar Mertz also won while spending less than his opponent, allocating just over $4,000 to outpoll Gary Lesanto, who was self-funded by advancing his campaign $7,700.
There’s a new sheriff constable in town
The office of constable was once kind of a big deal — a combination old-school sheriff, tax collector and civic enforcer. But that was in the era when horses were the primary mode of transportation.
Today, the town‘s two constables are largely authorized process servers for the town. When both incumbent constables opted not to seek re-election to the unpaid post, only John Longley filed papers to run, meaning the other constable would be chosen via write-in votes.
This inspired former Select Board and Planning Board veteran Maurice “Moe” Handel to pass the word among his legion of acquaintances that he’d be willing to take on the role, partly to head off the outside chance that some less well-intentioned rascal may get the nod.
“It is a very minor but important function,” Handel said. “I’m pleased and honored by the result.”
He also expressed his sympathy for the town election workers whose workday extended past 4 a.m. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning due to the hand counting of votes the write-in process required.
“I felt terrible about the impact that write-in campaign had on the Town Clerk staff and the volunteers,” he said. “But I thought it was important not to leave it up to random chance.”
Handel ended up receiving 440 of the 576 write-in votes cast to join Longley (who received 4,116 votes) in the role of supporting the Town Clerk when needed to deliver legal documents and, if necessary, maintain the peace at Town Meeting.
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