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Fair New on the ballot: the Boardwalk Party
Democrats plan to bring attention to aging structure
In the Nov. 8 election to fill three City Council seats, Long Beach residents will see a new party on the ballot, the Boardwalk Party. Its candidates, incumbent Len Torres, Fran Adelson and Scott Mandel, will also be running on the Democratic line.
The new party is intended to be a bipartisan effort to attract the votes of residents who are concerned with the condition of the boardwalk. The party was placed on the ballot after its founders, including Republican Leigh Pollet, submitted an independent nominating petition to the Nassau County Board of Elections.
Pollet said that the boardwalk is in a state of decay and is being destroyed, and that come election time, voters will have the opportunity to voice their concerns about it.
“You walk on the boardwalk, you see the nails,” he said. “The rot of the main beams is disgusting. You don’t want to walk on it. It’s falling apart.”
Republican-led coalition council incumbents Thomas Sofield Jr. and Mona Goodman will attempt to retain their seats — and take Torres’s away — by running with Republican Marvin Weiss, who lost a City Council race two years ago. Torres is teaming up with Mandel, an attorney and a Long Beach resident, and Adelson, a former library board trustee who ran unsuccessfully for the council in 2009.
Pollet said that the leaders of the new party are upset with the number of lawsuits that have been filed as a result of injuries that allegedly occurred on the boardwalk. When he collected signatures from residents in order to get the party on the ballot, he said, he was surprised by their reactions.
“I had people grabbing the clipboard out of my hands,” he said, noting that over the course of three to four weekends, nearly 1,500 signatures were collected. “The people in Long Beach are fed up,” he said. “It’s time for a change.”
Long Beach Republicans filed a challenge to the petition, but later withdrew it. “We’re dropping any challenge to the Boardwalk Party,” said party Chairman Jim Moriarty, “because the major news here is that our candidates, Sofield, Goodman, Weiss, have been endorsed by the Republican, Conservative and Independent parties.”
