In Nassau executive race, GOP turnout helped Mangano

A key factor in Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano's 18-point re-election victory Tuesday was that more Republican voters turned out for him than Democrats did for his challenger Thomas Suozzi, voting data show.

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 37,000 in Nassau County. But even in heavily Democratic areas, Suozzi didn't manage the margins of victory he needed to offset Mangano's heavy gains in Republican districts and among minor-party voters.

The 107,000 residents who cast votes for Suozzi on the Democratic line represented less than 30 percent of Nassau County's registered Democrats. Mangano's total of 137,622 votes on the Republican line was more than 42 percent of the county's Republicans. In all, 276,006 ballots were cast Tuesday in Nassau.

Mangano edged Suozzi, a former two-term county executive, in Democratic-leaning areas such as North Hempstead, where he took 52 percent of the vote, and won by a landslide in Republican areas such as Oyster Bay, where he earned more than 65 percent, results show.

The results of Tuesday's election, in which Mangano won re-election, 59 percent to 41 percent, show that Suozzi failed to appeal to voters in the Democratic strongholds he needed to win, said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.

The county executive results did not always mirror the outcome in other races in the county. Democratic District Attorney Kathleen Rice, who won re-election, drew more than 30,000 more Democratic line votes than Suozzi. In North Hempstead, Democrat Judi Bosworth won election as town supervisor. That suggests the county executive results were "a personal repudiation of Tom Suozzi, and not necessarily of the Democratic Party," Levy said.

"For Suozzi to beat Mangano, he has to carry Long Beach plus Glen Cove two to one," he said. "He didn't come close."

Voting in heavily Democratic Long Beach was nearly even, with Suozzi winning by nine votes. Suozzi also won his hometown of Glen Cove, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 2,000 voters, by 200 votes.

Mangano won handily in his own hometown of Bethpage, where the executive carried more than 80 percent of the votes in 15 districts in the area. Mangano's camp attributed his broad appeal across Nassau to his pledge to hold the line on taxes.

"Whether residents live in Glen Cove or Glen Head, residents throughout Nassau County had enough of Tom Suozzi's tax hikes," said Mangano spokesman Brian Nevin.

Minor-party voters also helped propel Mangano. He received 22,206 votes from Conservative and Independence party line voters, while Suozzi collected 4,682 Working Families line votes.

In the 2009 election, when Mangano defeated Suozzi by 386 votes, Mangano was hindered by a Conservative Party candidate, Steven Hansen, who received more than 9,500 votes. This year, Mangano also had the Conservative line, said Michael Dawidziak, a Sayville-based political consultant.

"He would have had those votes four years ago if he'd had the Conservative line," Dawidziak said.