Local pols fend off challengers

In Elmont and Franklin Square, incumbent legislators held onto their seats by comfortable margins last Tuesday.

In the 3rd Legislative District race, Republican incumbent John Ciotti defeated Democratic challenger Nina Petraro Bastardi, garnering 6,252 votes to Petraro Bastardi’s 4,654 with all 49 districts reporting. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” Ciotti said. “The people have spoken. I’m pleased that the Democratic voters had the courage to cross party lines and vote for their community.” The 3rd District has twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

Petraro Bastardi said that voter turnout was low because people are feeling disenfranchised by their elected officials. She added that she was still encouraged by the number of people who supported her campaign.

Republican Vincent Muscarella, incumbent legislator in the 8th District, retained his seat, delivering a thumping to his 26-year-old Democratic challenger, Gaspare Tumminello. In unofficial results from the Nassau County Board of Elections as of press time, Muscarella had 11,005 votes, and Tumminello 3,154. Those totals are likely to change when the results are certified sometime in the next few weeks.

At a rather somber Election Night gathering at Democratic Party headquarters in Uniondale, Tumminello said that even if given the chance, he would not have changed anything about his campaign. “If I could do it all over again, I would do exactly what I’ve been doing,” he said. “I’ve walked door to door, and I’ve knocked on as many doors as possible. Win or lose, I’m back again the following year and the year after that. I’m going to be fighting hard, and I really want to get in office and be the public servant of the people.”

Muscarella, by contrast, basked in the glow of victory for a newly resurgent local Republican Party at Mirelli’s in Westbury. He believes he has served his district well for 14 years, he said, and takes nothing for granted. “Going into an election, there’s always trepidation, but I thought that I had represented the district well,” Muscarella said. “I had hopes that that would be reflected in the election results, and was happy to see that the citizens seemingly agreed with that.”

With Republican challenger Howard Kopel defeating Democratic incumbent Jeff Toback in the 7th District, the GOP now has the majority in the county Legislature, and, Muscarella said, “I think that ... there will be a shift toward more of a fiscal responsibility in the way county government goes forward. I think the residents have made it clear that they want a Legislature which is more concerned about finances of the county, and that although the residents understand that taxes are necessary, they expect that government will not look to them for increased revenue every time a problem arises or the economy starts to falter.”

Many observers concluded that residents went to the polls to register their displeasure with the economy, a message that appeared to reach both Republicans and Democrats. As the first unofficial count concluded, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi led challenger Ed Mangano — who ran on a tax-relief ticket — by a razor-thin 237-vote margin.

Suozzi appeared relieved to be holding onto a slim lead as he took to the podium at Democratic headquarters around midnight on Election Night. “The reason we want to win races is to try and help the people,” he said. “No matter what happens tonight, we’re not going to know the answers. ... This is a tough time to be an incumbent, because people are in a bad mood. They’re concerned about their future.”

The news wasn’t all bad for incumbents, however. Republican Maureen O’Connell recaptured the county clerk’s office with 142,774 votes, easily outdistancing her Democratic challenger, Carrie Solages, who collected 86,842. Solages chalked his loss up to voters’ unwillingness to make wholesale changes in government, saying that they sometimes side with “the devil they know rather than the devil they don’t know.”

Incumbent County Comptroller Howard Weitzman, a Democrat, trailed Republican challenger George Maragos, 115,473 to 114,897, when the unofficial counts were completed.

One Democratic party member who was restored to office without question was District Attorney Kathleen Rice. Rice, who spent much of the summer and fall locked in a bitter re-election struggle with former Assistant District Attorney Joy Watson, held onto her office by a margin of nearly 20,000 votes.

Rice, who has made her name in the county by aggressively pursuing drunk drivers, tallied 129,508 votes, while Watson came in with 109,526.

The district attorney was grateful to have seemingly dodged a bullet, and credited her supporters with being a passionate group. “I made a number of promises four years ago — I kept every single one of them,” she said. “I think the voters weighed in on the job that I think I’m doing tonight.”

At Democratic headquarters in Uniondale, Rice’s race was the only countywide contest that had secured a positive outcome for the party, and she was sent out at one point to pacify worried supporters.

“I’m incredibly honored and humbled to be returned for another four years as your district attorney,” she said to a cheering crowd. “This is a difficult night. But we still have to have a lot of hope. ... We are a great party, we are great public servants.”

The conciliatory notes that Rice struck in her speech helped lift the mood somewhat by the end of the evening, once Suozzi had pulled into a lead after trailing for much of the night, though Weitzman still trailed.

In the end, Democrats chalked the evening up to voter unrest and fear of what the future holds, while Republicans — especially those challengers whose races are still up in the air — turned the election into a referendum on one thing: local taxes.

County executive candidate Mangano was not shy about making a post-campaign promise on that very subject. “Now that Republicans are in the majority, we’re going to save money, we’re going to stop the waste, and we’re going to cut the bloated managerial staff in Nassau County,” he said.

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