Nassau County, NY for Smash and I

[Smash255]

Just watched Kathleen Rice's victory speech.  Dillon has been a LONG entrenched incumbent and this race suprises even me.  A bit of Suozzi coatails here most likley

Could have seen a Dem increase to 11-8 in gainging a seat, but John Ciotti was able to pull of a victory over Dem Ali Mirza (early returns showed Mirza ahead)  All incumebtns in the Nassau leg won

Other than the DA race most of the big news on Long Island came from Patrick & mine neighboring county in Suffolk.  GOP had an 11-7 majorits in the Suffolk Leg, its now 10-8 Dem, also took control in the town of Brookhaven winning the Supervisor & town board majority in HEAVILY Republican Brookhaven, the heart of Suffolk's GOP which has neem hit hard by scandlals which has earned themselves the "Crookhaven" name

[Smash255]

Could have seen a Dem increase to 11-8 in gainging a seat, but John Ciotti was able to pull of a victory over Dem Ali Mirza (early returns showed Mirza ahead)  All incumebtns in the Nassau leg won

It was actually closer to swing back-  Meijas barely won- Guy called the race for himself at 9:01 and he won by under 400 votes.  Rather ballsy.

For D.A.- Rice ran a good campaign and had some very good commercials- she really hit a soccer mom chord with that commercial about plea bargaining DWI cases. 

Town of hempstead is the last GOP refuge.

Was closer to swing back.  I was just mentioning what I was thinking because Mirza held the lead in the early return (up till about 45% or so of precents).  The Mejias race was closer than I thought it was going to be & closer than it looked at first, but by the time Ciotti looked like he had it pulled out n L.D 3, Mejias seemed to have it wo so I wasn't worried about it swinging back..


The Denise Ford vs Tom Solomon race actually finished a bit closer than the Ciotti vs Mirza race.  The regsitered Dem Ford (who runs & cacuses as a Republican) held on to her seat by a margin slightly larger than Mejias held on to his seat by.  Ford wins by 3.44%, 51.72% to 48.28%, Meijas wins by 2.72%, 51.36% to 48.64%.  The other two races that were potentially vulnerable, as I mentioned above Ciotti held off Mirza & won by 5.52%, 52,76% to 47.24%, and Toback defeated Katz by a larger margin than most people though 9.2% 54.6% to 45.4%.  All other Leg districts the incumbent won by 20% + most by at least 30-35%

Suozzi won by 21.24% with a 59.11% to 37.87% with Bruno picking up 3.02%

Rice defated Dillon for DA & won by 2.7% 51.35% - 48.65%

Reps did win the County Clerk race Maureen O' Connel defeated Trish Ferrel by 5.88%  52.94%- 47.08%

County Comptroller Dem incumbent Weitzman beat Claven JR by 6.20% 53.1% to 46.9%

Ralph Suozzi a Democrat, Tom Suozzi's cousin who was running on the GCF line defeated incumbent Glen Cove Mayor by a 43.43% to 40.45% with Republican Drew Fonrose picking up only 16.12% of the vote

[Smash255]

The GOP in Suffolk is doing the exact same thing the Nassau GOP did a few years back.  Basically imploding.

The GOP still holds power in the Town of Hempstead & the Town of Oyster Bay, but at the county level they have nothing except for clerk with the entrenched Dillon getting knocked out by Rice.

In 99 the GOP lost the Nassau Leg to disastifaction with the Republican leadersip, which followed the 2001 cakewalk for Suozzi in which he was easily elected to an open seat  after Gullotata was forced out by the GOP ( Gullotta would have lost by 50 if he ran again)

Basically the only chance the GOP had to gaining power back was if the public was disastisfied with how the  Dems did.  The GOP hammered the Dems on reassement (which actually has very little to do with the taxes) & used distortions on the increases to lure votes (most of the increases came from school taxes which have gone up the last few years especially after Pataki cut aid in 03, something Suozzi has little power over, or anyone on the county level).  Tried to scare people into voting for the with the recent home invasions (though crime was down even from the 04 levels, which was the lowest the county had in 35 years & listed as the safest county in thhe IU.S by the FBI.  Basically the public called them on their bs.  It was interesting to see the GOP slam Suozzi & some legislatures (Mejias & Toback) on crime, at a time when their own DA's main platform was the historic low crime rate.  The stuff that came from Delarbbara & the PBA was over the top & basically turned off many voters (& they could be in quite a bit of trouble for breaking various campaign finance laws).  Basically in the end Nassau came down to the public turning on the GOP a few years back, giving Dems a chance & the voters liked what has been accomplished over the last few years and turned off by the hard core negitive attacks.

Suffolk was a different story.  Had an open game with term limits & higher office making way for 6 open seats, toss in a popular Dem County Exec, not so likeable GOP incumbents in some cases, tons of corruption in the Town of Brookhaven, along with party infighting in Brookhaven & Islip and you have a sharp change.  Not to mention the demographic shift of both regions, the Dem shifrt on the national level, 9/11 impact from last year being gone, Bush basically being despised here (which could have turned some people off from voting for anything with an R next to its name) it could be a long time for the GOP to get their traction going again & get their power back.  Especially if the Dems taking over in Suffolk has similar results to what happened when the Dems took over in NAssau