Luke Feeney and Will Sheeline
Sea Cliff Mayor Elena Villafane secured another term in office alongside village Trustees Mark Sobel and James Versocki in the village election Tuesday night. Despite the unusual events of the preceding week, the evening was business as usual for the village officials and those in charge of counting the ballots.
Villafane thanked village staff and her constituents for putting their faith in her for another term.
“This was an exercise in democracy,” Villafane said. “We got organized, reached out to our people, put our message out there and it paid off.”
Villafane captured 1,064 votes, out of a total of 1,149 cast, to win her third term. Sobel, who was appointed to the board in 2023, garnered 1,055 votes to earn his first full term on the board, and Versocki won a third term with 1,027 votes.
“There was never a doubt that when Mayor Elena Villafane asked me to run for another term as village trustee, I would say yes,” Sobel said after the votes were tallied. “The opportunity to represent the residents and citizens of Sea Cliff is one of the great joys in my life. It’s a village that cares, and one that has made me and my family feel so welcome. There are so many items left to be done, and I can’t wait to tackle them with the mayor and our board to make decisions that will help citizens of all ages feel proud to live within our one square mile.”
“I am honored to serve another term with Mayor Villafane and Mark Sobel,” Versocki added. “Our village has elected a great mayor for another term, and I appreciate the trust our community has placed in this duly elected board.”
The founder of Pirate’s Booty, Robert Ehrlich, received 62 votes as a write-in candidate. Eight days before the election, Ehrlich showed up at Village Hall with three other men and attempted to seize control under the Citizens Empowerment Act, a 2009 law that gives people the right to dissolve their local government if they can attract the support of 10 percent of a municipality’s population.
According to a statement by the village, Ehrlich declared that the entire village staff was fired but could reapply for their jobs, falsely claimed his authority as mayor and demanded access to office space. Village staff directed him to leave, saying that law did not support his claim. The statement said that Ehrlich and the other men became confrontational, raising their voices, using profane language and harassing village personnel, and that their behavior created a hostile environment that required police intervention.
In an interview with the Herald on Friday, Ehrlich claimed that village officials refused to stamp his paperwork, which he claimed held 1,800 signatures supporting the dissolution of the village government, despite numerous village officials’ denial that he ever presented them with it.
Villafane told the Herald that when she requested a copy of the petition for the village to review, he refused to give her one.
“He came in with three other people, and he really struck at the heart of local government by trying to disrupt their activities,” Villafane said. “We are examining our options at this point.”
Ehrlich said that he was trying to assert his legal rights “as a taxpayer, as a citizen, and as a human being.”
“I’m interpreting the law any way I want, the way (President) Trump would interpret laws as he sees fit,” Ehrlich said. “It’s called trickle-down politics, which is what we’re doing.”
The Citizens Empowerment Act would require the collection of at least 500 signatures of village residents to dissolve the government. Ehrlich repeatedly claimed that he had 1,800, and added that he was gaining national support for his movement, and that he had even been invited to the White House.
Asked about his motivation for mounting such an unorthodox mayoral campaign, Ehrlich said he believed the village government had been operating without transparency for years and had not been serving its citizens — noting, as his only examples, a lack of outdoor seating and “limits on creativity.”
“It is our belief that there are situations that are not transparent or not common sense in the village,” he added. “You know, when someone takes Austria or Ukraine, they don’t go and ask for permission, they just do it. I’m asserting my rights to have a free, open life, and have transparency.”
In a now-deleted comment on the village’s Facebook page, Ehrlich said that he had met with Gov. Kathy Hochul about the Citizens Empowerment Act. Gordon Tepper, a spokesman for Hochul, said that the governor’s Long Island team had not been in contact with Ehrlich, and that the office was unaware of his claim until media outlets began reporting on it March 13.
Asked about that, Ehrlich asserted that he had never claimed to have met with Hochul, despite the posted comment.
