Turco Wins Democratic Primary

Jeffrey Rosario Turco of Winthrop won the Democratic State Representative Primary in the Nineteenth Suffolk District Tuesday, besting three other candidates for the nomination.

Democratic Primary winner Jeffrey Turco with his wife, Melissa, and children, Sonny, Mary, Joseph, Dominic, Gracie and Matteo.

In the unofficial vote, Turco received 1,706 votes to defeat second-place finisher Juan Pablo Jaramillo of Revere, who received 1,413 votes. Alicia DelVento of Winthrop finished third with 1,224 votes while Valentino Capobianco of Winthrop was fourth with 361 votes.

Turco racked up an impressive total of 1,331 votes in his hometown of Winthrop to pull away from Jaramillo, who carried Revere handily with 917 votes. Turco was second in Revere with 375 votes. DelVento also received solid hometown support with 1,104 votes to finish second in Winthrop.

An attorney-at-law, Turco ran an excellent, high-visibility campaign that included a vigorous door-to-door effort, substantial advertising in newspapers that was particularly effective in personalizing his message, and key endorsements, notably from both Revere and Winthrop public safety unions. Former Mayor Dan Rizzo was a key Turco supporter in Revere.

During an appearance on Revere TV’s Election Night Show hosted by Revere Journal and Winthrop Sun Transcript President Stephen Quigley, Turco thanked the residents of Revere and Winthrop for their enthusiastic support of his candidacy.

“I’m thrilled with the results, obviously,” Turco told Revere TV. “I’m thrilled with the level of support that I received across the district – the people that came out and held signs, went door-to-door, made the thousands and thousands of phone calls and sent text messages and ignored the noise of negativity and really just talked about what we wanted to do to help the people of this district in the mold of Bob DeLeo, in the mold of Billy Reinstein, RoseLee Vincent, Kathi Reinstein, people that I admire and respect tremendously.”

As the Democratic nominee for the seat, Turco advances to the March 30 final election when he will compete on the ballot with Republican candidate Paul Caruccio and Unenrolled candidate Richard Fucillo Jr.

Meanwhile, one of the carryovers from this election will be Jaramillo’s display of tremendous voter strength in Revere which could set the foundation for a future run for office. Boosted by some valuable endorsements from Revere city councilors and School Committee members, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ayanna Pressley, Jaramillo prevailed in Revere by close to a 2-1 margin over his three opponents.

 Jaramillo was upbeat in his interview with Quigley on Revere TV.

“We’re very excited. We won Revere and we won it big,” said Jaramillo. Obviously the voters of Revere came out big for me. And I’m just truly humbled by that. We talked about the important issues, healthcare for every single person, a good-paying union job and those things won in Revere and they won large in Winthrop as well. I look forward to working with Jeff and making sure we’re centering those issues because those issues won.”

Jaramillo also said he was “incredibly proud” of his campaign team. “I get married in just a few weeks and I’m super excited to be marrying the love of my life. Special elections are tough. We were counted out very early and here we are sitting high in second place and our issues really resonated with people and we know that they did, so we’re very excited about that,” said Jaramillo.

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