Francesca Carlow on ballot for primary

It wasn’t easy, but Francesca Carlow has officially made it onto the ballot for the Democratic state Senate primary.
  
A court decision last week cleared the way for Carlow to challenge former county Legislator David Mejias in the Sept. 14 primary. The winner will take on longtime incumbent Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Republican, in November.
   
It took a grueling legal fight for Carlow to make it onto the ballot. The Nassau County Democratic Party, which chose Mejias as its candidate, challenged more than 3,000 signatures on the petitions submitted by Carlow’s camp.
   
As lawyers spent days going over each signature line by line, Carlow said she continued to walk the communities and campaign. “It was a way to wear me down,” she said. “They failed miserably.”
   
Carlow, a Plainview business and community leader, said she brings to the race the perspective of someone who is not looking for financial gains or special advantages. “It’s about time to have a change in the regime that is up there,” she said of Albany. “Not to have career politicians who have been institutions up there for so long, and not listening to the voice of the people who are down here.”
   
Mejias, of Farmingdale, served four terms in the county Legislature before he lost to Republican Joseph Belisi last November. Hannon, who is from Garden City, has represented the 6th Senate District since 1989.
    
Carlow is the immediate past president of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Chamber of Commerce (she served as president for seven years) and the 2nd vice president of the Nassau Council of Chambers of Commerce. She and her husband of 28 years, Bruce, have owned Trio Hardware in Plainview for nearly 30 years. She has also participated with the Empire State Development Council and the Long Island Regional Planning Council. Having been active in her children’s school PTAs and booster clubs, she was once named a Nassau County Trailblazer, an award honoring female community leaders.