By Doug Miller
, former Councilwoman Mona Goodman and newcomer John McLaughlin, running as a coalition slate on the Republican line. Low voter turnout was expected in an off-year election, but according to insiders, there was a breakdown in the organization's execution. Democrats simply weren't rallied to the polls, while others may have worked behind the scenes against the candidates.
"There was no campaign," former Democratic Councilman Bruce Nyman said Tuesday. "There was no Election Day pull. There were no phone calls. There weren't even those auto-dial phones that people hate. Had the local party done any one thing, like a pull on Election Day, a letter from Sen. Charles Schumer - anything - they might have won. This was the worst local campaign since Napoleon invaded Russia."
Certainly, infighting played a role. Steve Polcer, chairman of the Long Beach Democrats, repeated on Monday his previous statements that his party's council majority was "dysfunctional," and added that he considered his longtime friendship with City Council President Leonard Remo to be over. "When there is no expectation that what the party leader is told by the council president is truthful," Polcer said, "there's a problem."
It was a combination of things, Polcer said. He claimed that Remo told him last November that he was committed to a $10 million infrastructure bond - and then voted with the rest of the council to approve just $5.575 million. "Then another member of the council declares that the leader is telling them how to vote," Polcer said. "Which is a federal offense, by the way." Polcer has not been to a council meeting since February, he said.
Thus ended a friendship that began to ice over when the council passed its notorious 25 percent tax increase in May 2006. When it attempted to deal with the PR nightmare the hike caused, but failed to come up with a solution, Polcer exploded, telling a Herald reporter that Remo's administration was "inept" and declaring, "Every resident here would be better off with an entirely new council."
Remo would not comment for this story.
Polcer's problems began long before Election Day. After the GOP took City Hall in 2003, he left his position as Long Beach's director of operations to become the county's deputy public works commissioner. But Polcer said when Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi ran for governor and Polcer did not throw the Long Beach Democratic Committee's support to his boss, he was fired.
He wasn't betraying Suozzi, Polcer said, but rather giving his committee members a choice. He said his loyalty to them was not repaid.
"I've had a tough two years," Polcer said. "And I'm still very disappointed in this administration. Friends of mine who were disenfranchised are still disenfranchised. I lost my job because I chose Long Beach over the county.
"I'm a bitter guy," Polcer added. "I'm trying carefully not to keep picking at this scab."
There have been plenty of other intramural squabbles. Newsday reported that Democratic Councilwoman Denise Tangney taped over Tepper's name on her lawn sign. Tangney did not return a call for comment.
Tepper shrugged off the significance of the gesture, but added, "It wasn't helpful."
When asked what the issue was that caused the rift, Tangney answered with a terse, "I have no comment."
The more effective enemy, Tepper suggested, was the changing demographics of a booming city. With its old rest homes - populated, he said, by elderly Jews - giving way to million-dollar boardwalk condominiums, the Democratic presence is believed to be merely a plurality rather than the strong majority it once was. Tepper also blamed a lack of resources. "The Republicans had more money and manpower than us," he said. "We didn't have a strong Election Day pull-out."
According to at least one Democrat, who asked to remain nameless, it also didn't help that one of the party's candidates, Gina Guma, left town the week before the election. Guma spent a week on vacation with her family, returning home Nov. 1. "That had absolutely nothing to do" with the defeat, Guma insisted. "If I knew what we could have done better, we would have won the election."
Nyman, who now runs Suozzi's press office, said it came down to math. "The Republicans will always get their base of 3,000 votes," he said. "That's like their ceiling. The Democrats' base is more like 6,000 votes."
So what went wrong? "I'm not going to tell you on the record," Nyman said.
On election night, Polcer's deputy, Steve Kohut, made a speech to his troops that seemed to echo that. "I don't know where this organization will be four years from now, but you have all effectively seen this organization fall apart tonight. I really believe that the Democratic organization in this community has reached a turning point, of whether we will go forward or fold our tents."
Polcer agreed that the effort wasn't there, but insisted that the loss was at least passively engineered by Suozzi and Nassau County Democratic leader Jay Jacobs, who, he said, chose to deploy their resources to reinforce the campaign of a Democratic Nassau County legislator, David Mejias, whose seat was in trouble. "They sucked everybody out of Long Beach and sent them to Mejias's district [in Massapequa]," Polcer said. "Everyone with a job in the county was sent to work for Mejias."
But a New York Times story after the election quoted Jacobs as saying Long Beach Democrats had only themselves to blame. "If you try to do it on your own and can't even cooperate with one another," Jacobs told the Times, "you're going to fail."
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