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Illustration by Kyle Horne: @kylehorneart • kylehorneart.com

Last week’s special election for the Town of Brookhaven’s 3rd Council District has both major political parties finding silver linings.

Former Brookhaven Councilman Kevin LaValle (R-Selden) vacated his seat in February following a January special election for town clerk. To fill the vacancy and complete LaValle’s unexpired term ending in December, Republican Neil Manzella — also of Selden — defeated Democrat Alyson Bass from Centereach on Tuesday, April 25, by a 57-43% margin, according to an unofficial tally by the Suffolk County Board of Elections.

Manzella’s win reinforces his party’s stronghold on the town government. Republicans again hold a 6-1 majority on the Town Board and occupy nine of the 10 elected offices townwide. Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich (Stony Brook) is the lone Democrat.

“While I wish that there were more people that did vote,” Manzella said, “I am very happy with the decent size turnout for a special election,” which was just over 2,800 ballots cast. “I think both sides did a great job of getting that vote out.”

To Bass, he added, “I think that she should be very proud. They held an incredibly respectable campaign.”

Since the establishment of councilmanic districts in 2002, a Democrat has never held the 3rd District. Despite their historical struggles, there are some positive takeaways for the losing side. 

LaValle won CD3 in 2019 by more than 30 points. Bass cut that margin by more than half.

“Given the fact that my campaign was more of a grassroots campaign, I feel very proud for the level of fundraising that we did and with the outcome,” Bass told TBR News Media. “We were way outspent, we were outmanned. And I think that our numbers were very strong.”

Two-part election

Manzella’s victory celebration will be short-lived as both CD3 candidates are already back on the campaign trail for the general election.

“While I did win now, I will be the acting councilman but only through [December],” Manzella said. “This doesn’t stop. This campaigning continues straight through November.”

Bass also had this understanding, indicating that when she accepted the nomination for the special election, she committed to running in November regardless of its outcome.

“The four-year term was always the goal,” she said, adding that her campaign will continue through November.

Heads of the ticket

The CD3 race provides an early measure of public moods ahead of the townwide elections later this year. As the focus shifts away from the 3rd District, all eyes are on the top of the ticket, where there is an open contest.

Incumbent Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) will not headline the ticket for the first time in over a decade, instead pursuing the county’s top office in the race to succeed Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D), who is term-limited. Romaine’s opponent will be Democratic nominee, Dave Calone.

Brookhaven Deputy Supervisor Dan Panico (R-Manorville) and Village of Port Jefferson Mayor Margot Garant, a Democrat, have each secured their party’s nod for town supervisor.

In separate interviews, both candidates reflected upon the outcome in Middle Country and its implications for their respective quests to succeed Romaine.

“I think Ms. Bass should be extremely proud of herself,” Garant said, referring to the 14% margin of victory. “That’s a pretty significant gain, especially in a special election where you only had about 3 percent voter turnout overall in that district.”

Despite her favored candidate coming up short, Garant said she and her party are “encouraged by that result, and we’re going to continue to work on the messaging and the issues as they exist and continue to make sure we’re knocking on doors, making people aware of what the existing conditions are.”

Panico sang a slightly different tune than his opponent, though also optimistic for November. The deputy supervisor referred to the outcome as “a very strong message for our team” as the party pivots to the general election.

Manzella’s win, Panico said, reflected the strength of the Republican committee’s efforts and the resonance of its platform with Brookhaven voters. He further regarded the outcome as a vote of confidence for the current Town Board.

“When you’re doing the right thing by the residents — and the residents are very aware — they take notice,” Panico said. “The members of the Town Board on my team, I expect, will be reelected as well” in November.

Six months out of the general election, Panico said he has already begun campaigning townwide, expressing confidence that his campaign is registering with Brookhaven residents and forecasting a favorable outcome.

“I expect to be victorious in November and plan on running a vigorous campaign on the issues that matter to the residents of Brookhaven Town,” he said.

Based on recent electoral history, Garant’s campaign faces certain obstacles this election cycle. Her party has not held the supervisor’s chair since 2012 when Mark Lesko resigned mid-term, to be replaced by Romaine. 

The Port Jeff mayor nonetheless remained hopeful about her prospects, viewing her platform as appealing to the centrist wing of the town — a faction she believes will determine the victor.

“We think that we have a good platform,” she said. “We’re going to do our best to make sure that it resonates with the people not on the extremes, but with the majority of people who live here, which are the more moderate voters.”

Assessing political strategies

Anthony Portesy is chair of the Brookhaven Town Democratic Committee. Like Garant and Bass, he regarded the election result in CD3 as promising for the Democratic slate come November. The Brookhaven Town Republican Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

“I’m very, very encouraged” by last week’s outcome, Portesy said. “When you take out the conservative line, their margin of victory was a mere 73 votes. That is incredible for that district, and it shows the quality of the candidate that we put up in Alyson Bass.”

Panico viewed Manzella’s elevation to the Town Board as favorable for Republicans. Citing his party’s sizable majority in town government, he added why he believes Republicans are registering with the electorate.

“There’s no secret recipe,” the Republican supervisor candidate said. “There’s not one thing that I would point to with regard to the electoral edge. With regard to the political composition of the town representatives, it’s simply that the people who are elected do the job they were elected to do.”

He criticized the opposition party’s messaging, stating its recent electoral track record reflects an unpopular platform with voters.

“I think the state of the local Democratic Party is part and parcel of their platform,” he said. “As they embrace a platform that has been rejected by the vast majority of residents — regardless of political affiliation — in the Town of Brookhaven, I think that is going to continue to be a problem for their party, and it shows in their elections.”

Garant rejected this notion entirely, pointing to Bass’ narrowing of the gap in CD3 as a testament to her party’s upward trajectory. The mayor suggested that the current board has not adequately addressed Brookhaven’s multiplying quality-of-life concerns, which may begin cutting into its majority.

“I think there are a lot of people who are very concerned with the declining lifestyle and the declining quality of life and the conditions in their neighborhoods,” she said.

Portesy centered his focus around the town landfill, which constitutes a significant chunk of the town’s overall public revenue and is set to close in the coming years. 

The party leader contended that the current board is ill-prepared for the looming budgetary shortfall precipitating from the facility’s eventual closure.

“The town dropped the ball on replacing the revenue for the landfill,” the Democratic committee chair said. “They love to tell you about the AAA bond rating, but the AAA bond rating doesn’t go into discussing the fact that that’s based on their present finances, not after the landfill closes and we’re losing millions and millions of dollars.”

Still, Portesy committed to recalibrating his party’s messaging over the coming weeks, working on expanding the Democratic get-out-the-vote initiative through additional door-knocking volunteers and other measures to generate voter interest and boost turnout.

“We’re going to be retooling our message over the next couple of months, making sure that we’re hitting the doors that we have to hit and making sure we’re convincing voters that our path is the path forward for Brookhaven Town,” he said.

Though beaten in round one, Bass kept an upbeat attitude for round two. “There are enough Democrats in this district and in this town to make us victorious,” she said. “We need to come across with messaging that resonates, and I think there are some strategic things we need to work on as far as unity and approach.”

She added that the small sample size last week was unreflective of the public will overall, suggesting a larger turnout in November could work in her favor.

Manzella, a former member of the town Republican committee, attributes much of his success to the party operation.

“Getting out there and spreading the word about an election, and then spreading the word of the candidate, is the most crucial part of any campaign,” the councilman-elect said. “Our committee has a lot of volunteers, a lot of people who are passionate about this. It’s that strength, as a unified whole, that is able to get this message out to the voters.”

Portesy viewed Romaine’s run for county executive as a unique opening for town Democrats. Given the scope of the town supervisor’s powers, the party chair maintained that filling that seat with a Democrat would be the committee’s primary objective.

“The vision for the town always comes from the executive,” he said. “Making sure that we get Margot Garant elected in November is going to go a long way,” adding, “Our number one goal is to take back the town supervisor.”

Both parties have just over six months before voters hit the polls on Nov. 7.

Illustration by Kyle Horne

@kylehorneart • kylehorneart.com

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Romaine discussed ways in which local government and New York State must adapt to meet the needs of a changing environment. File photo

Town of Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) has served in elected office for decades. In Part I of this two-part series, Romaine discusses the problem of coastal erosion, innovative ideas for recycling and why you won’t see his name on a sign at a town park.

What sparked your interest in environmental protection and which issues concern you the most?

Long ago, I made a choice between my eyes and my ears, and I chose my eyes. People can argue whatever they want, but I’ve seen what this Island was. I grew up on Long Island. I’ve watched it change and I know what it needs.

The things that concern me about this Island are the threat of climate change and rising sea levels, which is why we’ve bought hundreds of acres at Mastic Beach — to convert them back to wetlands, to act as a sponge.

The week before I was elected in 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit. I went down to Mastic Beach, which was part of my original district in the ’80s. I knew the mayor and I went down with Dan Panico [R-Manorville], who was the councilman, and we took a tour.

Neighborhood Road is the road that runs east and west through Mastic Beach. Everything south of Neighborhood Road was flooded. And the other thing I remember about that disaster was the smell. With all the trees and the downed wires sparking, it smelled of sewage because all their cesspools were inundated, and it smelled of oil because they all had above-ground tanks that spilled over.

It was so devastating when I went down there. Mastic Beach has recovered since, but I will never forget the disaster that hurricane caused and the flooding that it unleashed. Marshlands act as sponges that are capable of handling a flood like that. That is why I am deeply invested in trying to buy up as much of the marshland that was built upon years ago and get rid of some of the small homes there.

The other concern is the carbon footprint we leave. I’m a big supporter of renewable energy. When I was a [county] legislator for the 1st District, I bought more land and preserved more farmland than the other 17 districts combined.

The pattern of development has been so intense that we’ve screwed up this Island by sprawl. We should have thought more carefully about the pattern of development here and what we could do in terms of public transport, in terms of public services — and we didn’t.

What is your preferred approach to the issue of eroding bluffs, a growing problem along the North Shore?

Sometimes people live along those bluffs, so you want to see what type of engineering solutions there are to secure or stabilize bluffs. I know the Village of Port Jefferson is debating what to do about the Port Jefferson Country Club because their tennis courts are going to fall in [the Long Island Sound] and then right after that, probably the clubhouse.

My view would be the same as it would be for Mastic Beach — to retreat from the bluffs. But again, sometimes you can’t do that because people live atop them, so you have to look at engineering solutions that would help stabilize the bluffs. It’s Mother Nature at work. Can man-made solutions resolve it? Sure they can … temporarily. Clearly, what should have been done is something that would have prevented building near or on the bluffs.

Can you discuss the recycling initiative that your office has undertaken?

Back in 2017, China announced its [Operation] National Sword policy. It said, “Hey, we’re not buying any more recycled goods from the United States.” Well, that created all types of problems.

Unfortunately with recycling, a lot of what needs to be recycled rests with the State of New York, and they have not been innovative. The [Department of Environmental Conservation] has chosen to be a regulator and not an innovator. Let me give you an example: glass.

Glass is one of the largest contaminants in the recycling process. To recycle, what do you need? You need a marketplace. Recycling doesn’t work if you don’t have a marketplace to reuse the goods that you’re recycling, which is why recycling has collapsed in large parts of this country.

What we’re looking for from the State of New York is called a BUD — a beneficial-use determination. We believe glass should be an aggregate used in concrete. Concrete is the most carbon-intensive production of any substance that we know. And the way you can end that is by substituting glass in that process as an aggregate, and we’ve allocated for that.

What this requires is the state DEC to give us a beneficial-use determination. Now we’ve proved that because we’ve built these huge drainage rings for our recycling center and we got state permission to use glass as the aggregate in the concrete. They are not even looking at that.

At Stony Brook University, there’s a boathouse. It’s painted blue and was built in 1989. Do you know what it was built out of? Ash. The strength of that building is stronger today than the day it was built in 1989. Guess what we do with our ash? We put it in our landfill. Yet we don’t get a beneficial-use determination to use ash in concrete, in asphalt or in other products. This would create a market for glass and ash.

Also, I’m waiting on the state legislation. I have an ally in the state Legislature — an old friend of mine, someone I served with in the [county] Legislature in the ’80s, and we still work together to this day: [Assemblyman] Steve Englebright [D-Setauket]. I’m trying to say, “Steve, what are we doing here? There’s so much we can be doing.” We need a “Bigger, Better Bottle Bill.” We need to create markets for products because if we don’t, recycling will not work and will not be effective.

If you give enough time and you watch a leaky faucet, that water one drop at a time over a long period of time will make a difference. I always remind myself of the one drop of water. Because if you keep on hammering away at it, change will come. If only incrementally, it will come for the better, for things that should come, for things that are so common sense that even the opposition can’t argue against it. And usually, the opposition tends to be monied interests that have some kind of economic benefit to them, not to the society as a whole.

How did you end up in the supervisor’s office?

I started out as a teacher. I taught for 12 years, almost all of it at Hauppauge. I was very active in the teachers union there. I was the treasurer of the teachers union on their executive committee. In fact, one of my students was Jay Schneiderman, the supervisor of Southampton [D] — I taught him seventh-grade social studies.

I was always active, kind of on the sidelines as a volunteer. In 1979, in the Town of Brookhaven — which had been under Democratic control for four years — the Republicans won everything and they needed people to go into town government. I had done a lot of work for the school district on federal and state aid, so they asked me to become a part-time federal and state aid coordinator.

I started there, and the first thing I got was a massive grant for community development. We got a huge, multimillion-dollar grant, but there were conditions on hiring staff. So they asked me to become the first commissioner on housing and community development for the town. I asked the school district to give me a leave of absence — they were very kind and gave me three in a row. And finally I told them, “Look, I’m not going to come back,” because I was into that job. I did that for five years and loved it.

All the sudden, the [county] legislative seat in which I lived had opened up and they asked me to run. Even though it was a little bit less money, I thought about it for a while and I said “yes.” I ran and was elected to the Legislature in ‘85 and then again in ‘87. I was getting ready to run again when our county clerk died. In between, I had run for Congress and did very well — I got 49.6% of the vote against an incumbent, Mr. [George] Hochbrueckner [D-NY1].

I ran for county clerk, won all 10 towns and went on to win five elections as county clerk. In that time, I had moved, the lines had changed and I got elected to the 1st Legislative District as their county legislator, which included all of eastern Brookhaven from Shoreham to where I live in Center Moriches, as well as Riverhead, Southold and Shelter Island. I loved that district and didn’t lose an election district for the four times I ran. And I was getting ready to run again when Mr. [Mark] Lesko [D], who was the [Brookhaven] supervisor, resigned midterm.

I was asked to run for supervisor and I thought long and hard about that. The major reason I did that was because I had a son [Keith] who was a town councilman and died in office. He always told me that at some point in life he wanted to be a supervisor. That motivated me to say “yes.” I wound up winning five terms as supervisor. So that’s the very short synopsis of a long story.

Brookhaven is an old township that has endured for three-and-a-half centuries. What does it mean to you to be a part of that tradition, and what do you see as your place in it?

The one thing I know about history is that people are quickly forgotten. That’s why I made sure that when I became supervisor, I said, “Other than in Town Hall, I don’t want my name on any town signs or anything.” And you will not see my name on a town park or anything because I made it clear that I’m just passing through.

I believe one of the greatest things I did was save 1,100 acres and put them in the Central Pine Barrens — 800 of which was National Grid property. The legacy that I leave will be a legacy that benefits people, but they will not know it was me.

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