Angie Carpenter: Hoping to beat the odds

Angie Carpenter was 33 years old, raising two young sons with her husband, Joe, when the print shop where she worked as a typographer closed.

Undeterred, Carpenter opened her own typography business in the basement of the family's West Islip home. About a year later, Joe joined her when he was laid off from his job as a surveyor.

The business, founded in 1976, is still going strong, run by those two sons, Richard, 45, and Robert, 43. Looking back on the experience, County Treasurer Carpenter, Republican candidate for Suffolk executive and the first woman ever to run for the office on Long Island, sees it as another in a long of line of hurdles she has been able to overcome.

"I didn't think it was stressful," she recalled. "I thought it was exciting."

Carpenter, 68, is pursuing what many political experts see as an uphill campaign against Democrat Steve Bellone, 42.

Bellone, Babylon Town supervisor for the past decade, is outrunning Carpenter in fundraising -- with $828,000 on hand compared with Carpenter's $293,000, according to campaign reports filed Oct. 7.

Moreover, Democrats in Suffolk -- stung by County Executive Steve Levy's switch to the GOP to run for governor last year -- are eager to reclaim the executive's office. The party is pushing hard to get out the vote in a county where Republicans hold an edge in enrollment, 300,000 compared to the Democrats' 289,000.

But Carpenter notes that she's surmounted big obstacles before, and expects to do it again on Election Day.

Most who know her say her optimism isn't far-fetched. The persistence Carpenter showed in building a successful family business, winning a long-shot race for county legislature and in earning an associate degree in applied science at the age of 57 make her a formidable candidate against Bellone, they say.

Legis. Thomas Barraga (R-West Islip), who has Carpenter's old seat, recalled her first race for county legislature in 1992. "She was a community activist and she was a long shot -- just like this race -- and she won by a narrow amount," Barraga recalled. "I may not agree with her on every issue, but she's very determined."

Community roots

Carpenter began her political climb as a community activist. During the 1980s, she helped found a program for latchkey elementary school students and also served as president of the West Islip Chamber of Commerce.

Her work on such issues, Carpenter and her supporters say, helped prepare her for the county legislature, where she served from 1993 until 2005 -- and where she became known for attending relentlessly to local issues in her district.

Carpenter shepherded the county's purchase in 2002 of Sagtikos Manor in Bay Shore. She brought together architects and officials from the county and Suffolk County Community College to curb construction costs for the Brentwood campus' Health, Sports and Education Center, which opened in 2000.

Carpenter, in summing up her 12 years in the legislature, called herself "a hands-on legislator, having served on almost every committee." The experience gave her a breadth of knowledge about county government and issues: "I know the whole county, from Melville to Montauk," she said.

Carpenter said that as treasurer, she shuffled county deposits into bank accounts providing the greatest return; interest earnings jumped from $11 million in 2005, the year before she took office, to $21 million in 2006, she said. She said she has allocated more staff to speed up processing of tax grievances.

Now, on the stump in the county executive's race, Carpenter says that if elected, she'll work to hold down taxes and government spending. In her first 100 days in office, she said she would meet with top private employers to learn what Suffolk can do to help them.

She also plans to create a small-business advocate's position in the county executive's office -- a proposal that stems in part from her experience starting a business more than 30 years ago.

"You bring real-life experience and that's how the forefathers meant government to be," she said. "I have the whole package -- the experience in private business, in the legislature and here in the treasurer's office."

An immigrant experience

Richard Carpenter, Angie's eldest son, says he has no doubt about the origin of his mother's drive: her immigrant parents. Angie's father, Guiseppe Linarello, laid tracks for the Long Island Rail Road; his wife, Ida, worked as a seamstress. Both drilled into Angie, her younger sister Mary and the rest of the family the value of hard work.

"Taking it easy is not part of my DNA," Angie Carpenter said. "I grew up with parents who always worked hard. They left me the sense of doing the best you possibly can."

Angie Linarello was born in Bay Shore on Sept. 30, 1943.

When she was 4, the family moved to Hollis, Queens, then back to Freeport when Angie was 12. Carpenter showed persistence early, when she tried to land a job as a Newsday carrier.

"I wanted to earn money but they wouldn't let me because they said girls didn't deliver the paper -- it was a boy's job," Carpenter recalled. But the rejection "only whetted my entrepreneurial juices and I found another job -- selling flower corsages."

Carpenter graduated from Dominican Commercial High School in Jamaica, Queens, in 1961, having taken the Long Island Rail Road to and from school each day.

She and Joe Carpenter married in 1964. In 1968 they bought the house in West Islip where they still live.

Inspired by family

Duties stemming from Richard and Robert's involvement in Cub Scouts, youth sports and other activities laid the groundwork for Angie's future involvement in community activism and politics.

"My dad would wake up in the mornings at 6 and line the football field," while Angie volunteered to run the concession stand at youth football and baseball games, recalled Richard Carpenter, of West Islip. "It was just because we lived here; you're not supposed to sit on the side."

From 1966 to 1976, Angie worked in Merrick as a graphic designer and typographer, sometimes at night. She worked side jobs as a holiday sales clerk and a lecturer for Weight Watchers, sharing the story of how she lost 84 pounds as a young woman.

She ran the family printing business, ACT Communications Group, from 1976 to 1993. She was co-founder of the monthly West Islip Record.

In 1992, Republicans asked Carpenter to run in a special election for Rick Lazio's county legislative seat after his election to the U.S. House. Carpenter beat Deborah Pfeiffer, now the spokeswoman for Suffolk Off Track Betting, by 41 votes and won a full two-year term the following year. She served until 2005, when she ran for treasurer.

Carpenter also returned to school, earning a degree from Suffolk County Community College in 2001. She said she was inspired by stories she heard as a lawmaker at graduation ceremonies. "There were graduates who were older than I was," she recalled.

As a county lawmaker, Carpenter was a "quick learner," said Suffolk Commissioner of Jurors Michael O'Donohoe, who served briefly with Carpenter as a legislator.

"She was on the Budget Committee and she got up to speed quickly. She asked a lot of questions," O'Donohoe said.

Lazio, who worked with Carpenter on a project that brought Touro College's health center to a county-owned site in Bay Shore, called Carpenter "a person who throws herself into a job. . . . She wants to make a positive change. She realizes it's not easy living here," said Lazio, noting Long Island's high cost of living.

But former Legis. Dave Bishop, a West Babylon Democrat who served from 1993 through 2005, recalled Carpenter as "extremely partisan in the beginning when the Republicans controlled everything."

Bishop said Carpenter would not support even routine bills sponsored by Democrats. In 1995, Bishop filed a measure to authorize a new traffic light in front of South Bay Elementary School in West Babylon. The vote was 15-0 in favor with one abstention -- Carpenter.

Carpenter said she was concerned about the precedent of the county paying for a Babylon Town responsibility.

Change in tax stance

While Carpenter says she won't raise taxes as county executive, she was among 13 legislators who in 2001 approved a 13 percent property tax hike as well as increases in the sales tax for home heating fuel.

"In the uncertain days and weeks following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, we saw sales tax revenues drop, and law enforcement and public safety overtime skyrocket," said Carpenter, noting the hike in property taxes, which represent a small portion of the average tax bill, represented only a 2.1 percent increase in residents' overall tax bill. "It became apparent that we would need to increase revenue so as to properly protect our citizens."

As a legislator, Carpenter also had conflicts with Levy.

In 2006, Levy proposed merging the treasurer's office with the comptroller's to eliminate Carpenter's $175,000-a-year position. County lawmakers never took action on the measure.

Last December, Carpenter and Suffolk's district attorney, comptroller, clerk and sheriff backed a bill to strip Levy of his authority to approve new hires for vacancies in their offices. Levy said he needed the tool to control costs. But the legislature sided with the officials, voting 16-2 to allow them to hire for jobs already approved in the county budget.

Levy bowed out of the county executive's race in March and agreed to turn over his $4.3 million campaign fund to the Suffolk district attorney after prosecutors raised questions about his campaign finances. He is not planning to endorse either county executive candidate.

As Suffolk treasurer since 2006, Carpenter has been enmeshed in the minutiae of managing the county's investments and cash flow, and monitoring its payroll.

Legis. Edward Romaine (R-Center Moriches) recalled that when GOP lawmakers recently proposed to sell county-owned tax liens, Carpenter raised questions about the implications for Suffolk's cash flow, prompting the legislators to re-evaluate the proposal.

Romaine also noted that Carpenter has witnessed the rise in delinquent property taxes, and "definitely understands the financial condition the county is in."

Looking for the upset

Now, as she campaigns for county executive, Carpenter is hoping her varied background, the Republicans' edge in voter enrollment and public dissatisfaction with the economy will yield an upset victory.

Carpenter and the GOP also have been hammering Bellone for increases in town taxes in Babylon. They note that general fund taxes have risen by a total of 108 percent since Bellone voted on his first budget as a town councilman, and that total town taxes increased by 51 percent in the period.

Bellone says only the years in which he oversaw budgets as supervisor should be counted; in that period, total taxes increased by 16 percent, which Bellone notes is less than the cumulative rate of inflation.

Carpenter's camp also says she could gain some advantage from female independents and Democrats attracted by the fact that she is a woman.

But Michael Dawidziak, a Bohemia political consultant with a primarily Republican clientele, said any gender advantage would be short-lived. Eventually, voters "want to know about the issues and what the candidates stand for," he said.

For her part, Carpenter said, "I'm not going to be making history because I'm a woman, but because I have practical life experiences as a mother and a grandparent. and the professional experience as a businesswoman, a county legislator and county treasurer."

ANGIE CARPENTER, A BIO
AGE 68
HOME West Islip
FAMILY Husband, Joe; two sons, Richard and Robert; one granddaughter, Sydney.
EDUCATION Dominican Commercial High School, Queens, 1961; Suffolk Community College, AAS, 2001.
CAREER Office manager, graphic designer, typographer, Merrick Typographers and Maverick Publications, 1966-76; founder, vice president, AC Typesetters and Printing Inc., West Islip, 1976-93; co-founder, West Islip Record, 1986-91; columnist, The Graphic, The Beacon, 1985-87; Suffolk County Legislator, 1993-2005; Suffolk County Treasurer, 2006-present.

5 THINGABOUT ANGIE CARPENTER
-In 1976, she she started her family’s printing and advertising business in her home, putting a rented computer in the playroom.
-Volunteered for several years with the West Islip Little Conference Football.
-After overcoming her own battles with weight, she was a lecturer with Weight Watchers.
-“Gone With The Wind” is her favorite book and movie.
-Her most far-flung vacation was to Italy, the nation from which her parents immigrated, to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary in 1994.