By:Doug Miller
Cammarato, 56, said on Tuesday that the decision to leave was his own, and that he was under no outside pressure. But several people involved in Long Beach politics have been saying for months that his 10-year tenure was nearing its end.
Cammarato's resignation is effective June 12. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Scott Nigro, the former City Council vice president whose failed bid to keep his seat last November likely spelled the end of Cammarato's grip on the party leadership.
Nigro, along with Democrats Joel Crystal and Gina Guma, were swept out of office in November by the coalition ticket of Republicans James Hennessy and Mona Goodman and disaffected Democrat Thomas Sofield Jr. It was the first time the Democratic party had lost control of the Long Beach City Council in a generation.
To make matters worse, Democrat Michael Zapson, the former council president, lost his seat in the Nassau County Legislature to coalition candidate Denise Ford.
Cammarato's dominance could only happen in a place like Long Beach, which can at times seem like Long Island's largest kaffee klatch. While he was no doubt a powerful man, he was the subject of a great deal of hyperbole. Cammarato is one of the few Democrats in the Northeast that The New York Times doesn't like. In one of several articles in the paper's Long Island section that read like they were dictated by the coalition's PR machine, the Times likened the Democrats' defeat in Long Beach to the liberation of Iraq.
Mention Cammarato's name to certain City Hall gadflies and they will choke with rage.
"Gene is no angel," said Crystal. "But he's not the bad guy everyone's painted him as."
The Long Beach Democratic Party has been in disarray since last Election Day, if not before. The well-funded and seemingly all-encompassing organization was routed by four candidates who spent less than $5,000 each. Factoring into the upset was the defection of Democratic City Councilman Denis Kelly, who endorsed the coalition ticket over his fellow regular Democrats.
Since then, prominent Democrats have been giving Cammarato a wide berth. "I don't have anything to say for or against him," said Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, whose district includes Long Beach. "He served his time. The people spoke."
"He worked hard, but it's time to move on," said Zapson. "It's a good move on his part."
Weisenberg said he had told Cammarato to resign his chairmanship after the election, but he refused. Cammarato remembers it differently. "The last conversation I had with him, he said, 'Gene, it's your call,'" Cammarato said. "But then, the next time I listen to Harvey Weisenberg will be the first time."
Leonard Remo, the last regular Democrat on the City Council, could not be reached for comment. Kelly, the other surviving Democrat who crossed party lines to support the coalition, has made no secret of his distaste for Cammarato's leadership style.
Water Department beginnings
Cammarato's career began at the Long Beach water treatment plant in March 1968, where he was a laborer but soon became a shop steward. His position in the Civil Service Employees Association led him to get involved in county and state political action committees, and within a few years he was vice president of the Nassau local and its political action chairman.
He became a Long Beach Democratic committeeman in 1980, and became vice chairman in 1986. He succeeded Kevin Braddish as chairman of the local Democratic Party in 1993.
Braddish was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.
Cammarato's ascent was complete on April 17, 2001, when he became the city's first director of operations, a position that was created two years after he had been in the job as a quasi-deputy mayor. There was a great deal of resistance from members of the community, who said the city was creating a job for the political leader that usurped the power of the city manager, Bruce Nyman.
But several others actually came to the meeting dressed in matching T-shirts that read, "We Support Gene Cammarato."
In August 2000 he represented New York state as a super delegate to the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, where he voted to give Al Gore and Joe Lieberman the party's nomination for president and vice president.
But that was not the highlight of his career, Cammarato said. "I think endorsing Charles Schumer for the Senate before anyone had ever heard of him was bigger," he said. "I'm proud of my support for and friendship with Hillary Clinton. I'm proud of the $2 million I raised for the Long Beach Democratic Party over the years. I'm proud of and respect each and every Long Beach city councilmember I helped get elected.
"Even Denis Kelly," he added with a laugh.
"Gene deserves credit for changing the way the Democratic Party in Long Beach operates," said Crystal. "I was a teacher, I wasn't a clubhouse guy. Gene found good, dynamic candidates from throughout the community instead of from within the organization, as it had done before."
Cammarato turned the reins of the city over to his deputy, Steve Polcer, in 2002 and accepted Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi's offer of a job at the county's Off-Track Betting Palace in Plainview. His title is consultant; he described his duties as negotiating the last teamsters contract and serving as project manager for the palace's construction.
After surviving a cancer scare last year, he describes his health today as good, "other than the agita the newspapers cause me."
"They needed a villain"
After losing a close battle in 2001, the coalition City Council candidates Goodman, Sofield and Hennessey ran again in 2003, focusing even more of their attack on Cammarato, whom they painted as the boss of a bloated, corrupt political boss.
After the "perfect storm" of the Nassau County assessment snafu, across-the-board tax hikes and the prospect of a deficit for the first time in years, it was a message the public embraced.
"I was a schoolteacher for 37 years," said Crystal, the former City Council president who was unseated by the coalition. "I was given this opportunity to lead, and I felt I had been embraced by the public. Then the next thing I know, I'm being vilified as a 'Eugene Cammarato Democrat.'"
Crystal said he does not blame his slate's defeat on any failing by his party's leadership, but instead on the aggressive campaign run by the coalition. "There was a great deal of negativity around," he said. "And they managed to sell the public on the idea that we were a machine. There were all sorts of charges against Gene; meanwhile, we were the ones leading the city. We fought back against the landlords. We got that parking garage from the Long Island Rail Road, despite what you may read on its plaque. We got the movie theater. We left the city with a near-zero-percent retail vacancy [rate]."
"They needed a villain," Cammarato said of the 2003 campaign. "In the 10 years I was head of the Democratic party, homes in Long Beach tripled in value and the taxes stayed constant. History will write the facts."
