Face of town, county govs up for grabs

The Island Now

Nassau County voters will head to the polls Tuesday, with top countywide seats, races for Town of North Hempstead supervisor, council and clerk, a newly redistricted county Legislature and five judgeships up for grabs 

Voting will take place from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and residents will have the chance to weigh in on a series of hotly contested races.

Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano (R-Bethpage) and former County Executive Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) are locked in a rematch race at the top of their parties’ tickets, as Suozzi seeks to regain the seat he narrowly lost to Mangano in 2009.

Mangano has stuck to a no-new-taxes platform, crediting a freeze on the county’s property tax levy with boosting economic growth and reducing financial burdens on homeowners. Suozzi has defended the 23 percent tax increase he instituted early in his first term as necessary to fix the county’s bottomed-out finances, and accused Mangano of backdoor tax increases by raising fees and failing to fix the county’s assessment system.

The campaign has also seen a dispute over the county’s debt load, as the Nassau Interim Finance Authority maintains state control over Nassau’s finances. 

The campaigns have repeatedly used different numbers to portray the other as wasteful spenders. 

Suozzi, citing NIFA’s analysis, has argued that Mangano continues to run big deficits, while Mangano has pointed to audited numbers that exclude the county’s hundreds of millions in unfunded tax certiorari liabilities to argue that he has borrowed less than Suozzi.

The Nassau County comptroller’s race features more faces familiar to voters, with Comptroller George Maragos (R-Great Neck) squaring off against former Comptroller Howard Weitzman (D-North Hills). 

The two candidates have echoed their ticket-mates disputes over the county’s finances, with Weitzman accusing Maragos of misleading accounting and false claims of a budget surpluses and Maragos defending his record as an independent financial watchdog.

And in the race for District Attorney, incumbent Kathleen Rice (D) is being challenged by Republican law clerk Howard Sturim (R). Rice, who is the president of the District Attorneys Association of New York and is serving on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s anti-corruption commission, has promoted her office’s efforts to crack down on prescription drug abuse and Medicaid fraud, and Sturim has said he would reduce plea-bargain opportunities for violent offenders who could not provide useful information to law enforcement.

The conversion of documents to e-filing in the Nassau County clerk’s office is the prime issue in the race to head the office between two-term Republican incumbent Maureen O’Connell and Democratic challenger Laura Gillen. O’Connell said her office has been in the forefront of converting paper documents to electronic form, while Gillen said O’Connell’s office has lagged in making the conversion. 

In the Town of North Hempstead, Legislator Judi Bosworth (D-Great Neck) and Town Councilwoman Dina De Giorgio (R-Port Washington) are fighting to claim the seat recently vacated when former Town Supervisor Jon Kaiman took two jobs with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration.

Both candidates have promised to reform the town’s troubled building department, which Bosworth and De Giorgio say is still beset with delays and subpar service years after a kickback scandal rocked the department in 2007.

The candidates differ in their assessments of the town’s fiscal health and philosophies on government spending. 

Bosworth has praised Kaiman’s administration for putting the town on strong financial footing and supported the town’s purchase of the Great Neck Arts Center’s headquarters in a move that shored up the non-profit’s flagging finances. De Giorgio has warned of looming debt payments and was opposed to the $800,000 purchase, saying that town had no business making that large an expenditure to bail out a private group.

And the town clerk race was the scene of a partisan shuffle earlier this year, as Nassau County Legislator Wayne Wink (D-Roslyn) announced his run for the post against current clerk Leslie Gross. 

Wink, who was redistricted out of his seat this year, initially launched a run for the Democratic comptroller nomination but dropped out to run for clerk after Weitzman racked up the support of unions and party officials. Gross, who served as a Democrat under Kaiman, joined the Republican ticket after the town Democratic party did not renominate her.

The race for the Town of North Hempstead council seat in the 3rd district is a face-off between four-term incumbent Republican Angelo Ferrara and Democratic challenger Sidhartha Nathan, a political newcomer who is currently on a leave of absence from his job as a public information officer with the town. 

And in the town’s 5th district, veteran Councilwoman Lee Seeman (D-Great Neck) is facing a challenge from attorney and first-time candidate Jeff Benjamin (R-Great Neck), who has said one of his top priorities would be to cut spending and taxes.

In the legislative races, Town of North Hempstead Intermunicipal Coordination Director Ellen Birnbaum is seeking to win Bosworth’s 10th District seat against Republican candidate Jane Centrella, who thus far has been a no-show on the campaign trail.

The redrawn legislative map approved earlier this year separated the Roslyn community into four districts, as the 9th, 11th, 16th and 18th will each represent a section of Roslyn’s incorporated villages and unincorporated areas. 

Incumbent Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton (D-Glen Cove), who previously represented the 18th district, is facing off against John DiMascio (R-Glen Cove) for the new 11th district in a race dominated by opposing ideologies on the county’s spending practices. The new 18th district represents parts of the Incorporated Village of Roslyn, the Village of Roslyn Harbor and a sliver of the Village of Flower Hill, in addition to parts of Glen Cove and Sea Cliff, Sands Point, Manorhaven and Baxter Estates.

In the new 18th district, the current chief of staff for the Legislature’s Democractic caucus, Dave Gugerty (D-Bayville), faces off against Donald MacKenzie (R-Oyster Bay), a commissioner of the Village of Oyster Bay Water District. 

The 18th district now covers area as far south as the Village of East Hills and as far north as Bayville, representing the Town of Oyster Bay area north of Jericho Turnpike and extending to the Nassau-Suffolk border. Included in the district are the villages of Brookville, Old Brookville, Upper Brookville, Muttontown, Matinecock, Oyster Bay, Oyster Bay Cove, Lattingtown, Mill Neck, Laurel Hollow, Cove Neck and Centre Island.  

In running for her 10th term representing the 16th district, Legislator Judy Jacobs (D-Woodbury) takes on a challenger in Louis Imbroto (R-Plainview) who is nearly half her age but touts diverse experience in municipal governments and the court system in his career. On the new legislative map, the 16th district’s Legislator would serve parts of the Village of Roslyn and Roslyn Heights in addition to Old Westbury, and all or part of Jericho, Syosset, Hicksville, Woodbury and Plainview.

In the 9th district, longtime Legislator Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) faces off against Democratic challenger Dolores Sedacca, who Nicolello has beaten in two previous races. Sedacca is hoping the third time will be the charm for her in a revamped district. 

In addition to the Village of New Hyde Park, part of Floral Park, part of Garden City Park, all of Mineola, Williston Park and East Williston, the district now includes most of Albertson, part of Roslyn Estates and most of Manhasset.

Republicans Elizabeth Berney, Frank Doddato and Lesli Hiller are competing against Democrats Erica Prager, Scott Siller and David Goodsell for three Third District Court judgeships.

And David Ayres (D), David Levine (D), Patricia Harrington (R) and David Sullivan, who is running on the Republican, Conservative, Independent and Tax Revolt lines, are running for two county court judge positions.

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