Winning nine out of Needham’s 10 precincts while sweeping both Dover and Medfield, school principal and former Green Beret Josh Tarsky earned a surprisingly comfortable victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the 13th Norfolk seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Tarsky won 2,709 votes to outpoll runner-up Patrick Gatto by nearly 700 votes. The victory advances Tarsky to November’s general election where he will face unenrolled candidate Bill Dermody of Needham.
There were no Republican or other party candidates in the field to succeed retiring incumbent Denise Garlick. The election drew 4,878 voters in Needham, or roughly 20% of the town’s total registered voters.
Ken Ruetenik, the third candidate on the ballot, received 567 votes, while write-in candidate Bhuren Patel appears to have received no more than 142 votes.
“I’m thrilled,” said Tarsky. “I was not sure it was going to turn out like this.”
Tarsky moved to Needham in 2021, and in 2022’s town election he finished 26th out of 27 candidates for the 24 spots on Town Meeting from Precinct D. He received 70 votes in the 2022 election.
On Tuesday, Tarsky carried Precinct D with 175 votes of the 388 cast. He also carried eight of the other nine precincts in Needham, losing to Gatto only in Precinct A.
Tarsky gave ample credit to his 20-something campaign manager, Kyle McGrath of Dover, for helping devise a strategy to greatly expand his electoral reach and overcome the challenge of running in a field against Gatto, a fifth-generation Needhamite from a politically active family.
“We spent time identifying the voter universe and then came up with a plan for how to reach them,” Tarsky said after the results had come in. “And then we just worked hard. I knocked on a lot of doors.”
“These campaigns are a lot of work,” he added. “They’re rewarding but it’s a lot to do.”
Tarsky said Gatto called him around 9:30 p.m. to extend his congratulations.
“Patrick was a total gentleman,” Tarsky said. “It was a clean campaign. It didn’t get into the mud.”
The 24-year-old Ruetenik had said his candidacy was based on representing his age cohort more than on winning. “I was baffled by the number of votes I got, to be honest with you,” he said Tuesday night. “I was not expecting to get more than 100 to 125 votes.”
“Many people were appreciative that I put myself out there,” he added. “Hopefully, my peers are seeing that we can win these things going forward.”
As for November’s general election, Tarsky said he would think about that in a few days. “There’s a lot of work left to do, and I want to make sure we’re organized again.”
“For now, I’m going back to my school (Holbrook Middle-Senior High) and I’m looking forward to that. I get a lot out of that work. I think I would get a lot out of this one, too.”
“I knew that win or lose, I was going to be doing important stuff,” he said. “I think I can do good —not just for my school, but for the entire commonwealth — and I’d like to get that opportunity.”
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