By Doug Miller
While Suozzi's office refused to comment on the firings, one of the officials, Deputy Public Works Commissioner Steve Polcer, said he was "guillotined" because, as leader of the Long Beach Democratic Party, he refused to order his committee members to support Suozzi in his failed campaign for governor against Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
"Tuesday's the primary, Friday I'm no longer employed," Polcer said Monday. "What do you think?... Anybody who has any type of smarts knows what took place."
Polcer said he received a dismissal letter Friday from his boss, Nassau Public Works Commissioner Raymond Ribeiro. "He's a nice guy - it wasn't him," Polcer said. "Basically, in a cutesy little letter, '... Due to a change in the direction of the management and goals of the department...'"
Also fired was Nassau County Youth Board Executive Director George Siberon. A woman who answered the phone at the youth board office confirmed that Siberon was no longer executive director as of last Friday, but refused to say what had happened.
Siberon could not be reached for comment, but a county official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Siberon had remained loyal to Suozzi through the primary, even campaigning alongside him at a Puerto Rican Day event in Albany.
Top Nassau County officials were aware of the dismissals this week but did not appear eager to comment on them. The presiding officer of the county Legislature, Judy Jacobs, who endorsed Spitzer in the weeks before the election after initially supporting Suozzi, issued a terse one-sentence statement: "As presiding officer of the Legislature, I don't get involved in administrative hirings and firings."
Other top Democrats, including Legislator Joseph Scannell, an occasional Suozzi critic, also declined to comment.
Ed Ward, a spokesman for the Legislature's Republican leader, Peter Schmitt, said the firings were inevitable. "There's no surprise here that a purge has begun," Ward said. "A lot of these people were hired to assist [Suozzi] in his gubernatorial aspirations, and now their usefulness has ended."
For Polcer, the firing ends a three-year career with the county in what was largely seen as a political appointment to begin with. He was Long Beach's director of operations, a virtual deputy mayor, when the Democrats lost their majority on the Long Beach City Council in 2004. He then jumped ship to the county.
Polcer was also the top deputy in the once all-powerful Long Beach Democratic Party, serving under leaders Eugene Cammarato, Scott Nigro and Joshua Ketover. When the Democrats took back City Hall last November but failed to oust Long Beach Republican Denise Ford from her county Legislature seat - a top Suozzi priority -Ketover stepped down and Polcer became party leader.
But while the Long Beach party was at first united in support of Suozzi, who posed for pictures at last spring's Long Beach Democratic Party dinner, that allegiance dissipated as the summer wore on and Spitzer began to look like a sure thing.
The final straw was when Polcer sent a letter to Long Beach Democratic committee members, freeing them to support whichever candidate they wanted, a huge break from party tradition: Cammarato and leaders before him insisted on a unified front as a show of strength.
"I allowed anybody to support whoever they chose," Polcer said. "That's only fair to the committee. We lived through a period where you were told what to do, and I knew what people's reactions were."
And Long Beach, like the rest of the state, came out strongly for the attorney general last week.
"[The firings were] very small-minded and also revealing," said Denis Kelly, a former Democratic Long Beach City councilman and a longtime Suozzi supporter. "I'm disappointed in Tom." Suozzi had courted Kelly to run against Ford in 2004, an offer Kelly eventually refused. "I'm disappointed [Suozzi] didn't have the mental acuity to see what was coming, what we all saw as inevitable as early as July," Kelly said.
When asked who he would vote for in November, Polcer didn't hesitate. "Eliot Spitzer," he said with a laugh. "Early and often."
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
