The blue pipeline to office

Daily Point

‘Blue bloods’ on a blue-state ballot

Here and there, over the years, regional police officers have gone on to become elected officials. One of them, Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, took office in 2022. This year, Republican ballots will have at least three ex-NYPD officers in key spots for federal office on the ballot.

First-term Rep. Anthony D’Esposito seeks reelection in the 4th Congressional District in Nassau County. He was a detective in Brooklyn’s 73rd Precinct, having joined the NYPD in 2006 before retiring in 2020.

Alison Esposito, who was then-GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin’s ticket-mate for lieutenant governor two years ago, had nearly 25 years in the NYPD, rising to the rank of deputy inspector and commanding officer of the 70th precinct, also in Brooklyn. This year she’s running for the 18th Congressional District seat north of the city, and resides in Goshen, Orange County. She’s challenging the incumbent, Rep. Pat Ryan, an Army veteran who did two tours in Iraq.

The NYPD retiree running statewide, in the highest ballot position, is Long Islander Michael Sapraicone, who this week saw his potential June 25 primary opponents, Cara Castronuova and Josh Eisen, disqualified from competing for the nomination against U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Sapraicone retired in 2000 after 20 years in the NYPD with the rank of detective. He founded Squad Security, a private firm that during his former tenure as its top executive hired active-duty and retired cops, according to its website.

Of this emergence of cops-turned-candidates, Sapraicone told The Point on Friday: “I think it’s about time. You’ll have people in office who know what is going on with crime.”

In New York, Republican candidates have been blasting Democrats across the board in recent years as failing to respond to breaches of the peace from street crime and, more recently, transgressive political demonstrations.

One front-line law enforcer’s congressional candidacy, in Maryland, skews a different partisan way. Harry Dunn said his experience as a Capitol Police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, where he went head-to-head with violent demonstrators, inspired him to run for Congress, as a defense of democracy.

Dunn, who testified before the Jan. 6 probe in Congress, said in a book he wrote: “I want the people responsible for that day, including (Donald) Trump and anybody else who conspired to breach the Capitol and try to halt our democracy, to pay a price, just like we paid a price.”

Dunn is considered among the top four of 22 candidates running in Maryland’s May 14 Democratic primary, in his state’s 3rd Congressional District.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Student confusion

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Final Point

A survey — not a poll — on the Nassau casino

Assemb. Taylor Darling is surveying residents of her central Nassau district on issues ranging from housing to education to public safety.

But perhaps the most interesting questions in the online and mailer survey come in its last section, labeled “Proposed Casino/Economic Development.”

Whereas most of the survey is multiple choice, the last section provides space for open-ended questions to seek residents’ opinions on Las Vegas Sands’ proposal to build a casino resort on land around Nassau Coliseum. Darling told The Point that the survey came from her Assembly office and was not a poll nor part of her campaign for State Senate, in which she is vying for the Democratic nod in a primary against Nassau County Legis. Siela Bynoe.

But the survey’s questions are particularly interesting in light of that campaign, since Bynoe voted last year in favor of the county’s transfer of the Nassau Coliseum lease to Sands after she got the promise of additional community benefits from Las Vegas Sands.

County officials recently have said they plan to restart the process of assessing and approving that lease but it’s unlikely Bynoe would have to vote on it again before the June primary.

Darling’s survey asks whether a casino would be “good or bad” for Long Island residents, whether a casino would “fit in with the current character of the community,” and whether respondents had concerns “about a casino co-existing in a family-friendly neighborhood.” The survey also asks about community benefits — and whether residents had ideas for “other economic development projects” in Nassau County.

In each case, the questions included a “Please explain,” with room for longer answers.

Darling told The Point that her Assembly office has been “inundated with calls and emails and texts” about the Sands’ proposal.

“It was the best way to really gauge in an organized way how the community’s feeling about that and other issues,” Darling said. “Instead of sitting here and trying to make sense of all the calls and visits that come, we wanted our community to put pen to paper.”

During her 2022 endorsement interview with the Newsday editorial board, before an official Sands proposal was revealed, Darling was asked how she felt about a casino on the Coliseum land.

“My constituents don’t want it. We don’t want it,” Darling said in the fall of 2022.

But now, Darling told The Point, she didn’t yet have a definitive opinion about the casino resort proposal.

“I am open to it. Something has to be developed. I am open to hearing what the plan is,” Darling said. “But I am going to let the constituents speak, and the process play out.”

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

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