Great Neck lawyer Jonathan Stein last week charged Village of Great Neck Plaza officials with “stroking” Atria Great Neck assisted living home residents to send in absentee ballot votes that provided Trustee Gerry Schneiderman with the votes needed to defeat Stein in his race for the village board.
“It’s more than just saying ‘would you like an absentee ballot’ – they are either giving them the ballots or coming with requests and ballots,” Stein said following his loss to Schneiderman and Trustee Larry Katz in Wednesday’s election.
Stein, who has criticized the Great Neck Plaza leadership and engaged in a series of heated public exchanges with Schneiderman, said he didn’t think Atria residents were forced to hand in absentee ballots for the incumbents, but said unnamed officials other than Katz and Schneiderman used “undue influence” to garner votes by either providing absentee ballots or requests for absentee ballots to the Atria residents.
Stein finished third in the race for two open seats, receiving 229 votes. Katz was the top voter getter with 331 votes followed by Schneiderman with 286. Village Justice Neil Finkston, who ran unopposed, was also re-elected Wednesday with 370 votes.
Stein did get more votes at the polls than Schneiderman – 198 opposed to Schneiderman’s 172 – but received far less votes from absentee ballots. Katz received 231 votes at the polls.
Schneiderman received 114 absentee votes and Katz received 100, while Stein only got 31.
“You’re dealing with a certain segment of the population,” Stein said. “These people are susceptible to undue influence.”
Schneiderman, who has criticized Stein’s lack of previous involvement in the village, said the village trustees do go to the Atria a couple of times a year to visit residents, but did not have any knowledge of whether village officials hand out absentee ballots. If residents of the Atria do vote for incumbents, Schneiderman said, it is because they spend a lot of time with them and know them on a personal basis.
“We put on a Veterans Day program each year where we bring Scouts in for the colors – We read poems and read every individual’s name who served as a veteran,” he said. “That’s why they know us.”
Stein, who said he intends to run again for the Plaza board, said he was told in December by people including two who had run in Plaza elections unsuccessfully in the past who he would not name that village officials would give absentee ballots to Atria residents telling them to re-elect trustees to the board.
“I got calls from people who had been involved in village government elections who said [village officials] go to the Atria on Valentine’s Day and do arts and crafts with the residents and do whatever they have to do to stroke them for votes,” said Stein. “I would dismiss if it was one person who told me this but it was over 10 people, and they are people who wouldn’t necessarily know each other.”
Describing the village board of trustees as a country club, Stein said the village officials want to keep current board leadership unchanged and without dissension.
“I wasn’t running against one person, I was running against the entire board of trustees and the mayor,” Stein said. “There is a desire to have everyone on same page – if you don’t keep the group together then you have a situation where everyone is not on the same page.”
Efforts to reach Katz were unavailing.
Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender declined to comment on Stein’s complaints, saying only that “the voters spoke.”
Schneiderman said he thought Stein ran an ugly campaign.
“Mr. Stein has accused me of being a fascist, he has accused me of paying off or offering a bribe to our parking consultants,” Schneiderman said. “Whatever comes into his head comes out of his mouth – true or false.”
Earlier this month, Schneiderman demanded that Stein retract what he called libelous statements Stein made in his campaign literature about a $2,500 payment made to consultant hired by the village to study parking congestion downtown.
On his website, Stein characterized Schneiderman’s support for the contract with Level G Associates as “Trustee Schneiderman Caught Urging $2,500 Payoff by Plaza Board” in the headline of a release.
Schneiderman and Stein then challenged each other to a debate. The debate talks ended after Stein demanded that he and Schneiderman engage a one-on-one debate and Schneiderman demanded that Katz be included in a debate moderated by the League of Women Voters.
“We arranged for a debate but [Stein] wanted a slugfest,” Schneiderman said. “That’s not what local politics should be about.”
Though he said his supporters have urged him to challenge the election results, Stein said he won’t.
In the future, Stein said, he might request to see the ballots through the Freedom of Information Act, but mostly views the alleged scam as a “rallying cry” for the next village election.
“It just seems like I would be going further into the mud with them,” Stein said. “I keep thinking back to Bush v. Gore – it’s nothing on that magnitude, but I have to get back to work. There will be elections in the future.”
Schneiderman said residents came out to vote against Stein because of the statements he made about Schneiderman, and what he described as Stein’s “nastiness.”
“People don’t like that in small village elections,” Schneiderman said. “If you want to be a candidate you have to take part in village government, serve on smaller committees and work within the community.”
Though he declined to comment on whether he would be willing to work with Schneiderman in the future, Stein said he wanted to take back any negative comments he made about Katz, who he had criticized as being a “rubber stamp” and an absentee trustee.
Katz responded to the absentee trustee charge, saying he has been to nearly every meeting since he was elected. Katz also said his support of important issues such as approving the budget, 50 conditional-use permits and authorizing the mayor to implement more than $4.5 million in grants for traffic safety and beautification made him an effective trustee, not a rubber stump.
On Stein running for trustee again, Katz said he would look forward to him or anyone else running, but that if Stein wanted to run again he should attend more trustee meetings to get an idea of how village government works.
When asked about Stein running for trustee, Schneiderman said “It’s a free country.”
Schneiderman has been a trustee since 2000, and served as chairman of the Board of Zoning Appeals from 1982 until 2000. Katz has been a trustee since 2012, and served as a member of the Board of Zoning Appeals from 2010 until 2012.
Great Neck Plaza trustees each receive $10,000 a year in salary.
A total of 355 people came to the polls, more than double the average turnout, Village Clerk and Treasurer Patricia O’Byrne said.
Typically 100 to 150 people will vote in Plaza elections, O’Byrne said, and the fact that the race was contested definitely drove more people to the polls.
O’Byrne said there are about 4,300 residents are registered to vote in the village.
