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Daily Point

GOP establishment rejoices in red, white and blue

The location that Robert Cornicelli and Anthony Figliola chose for their primary night parties on Tuesday — the America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma — was a statement in itself about what kind of Republican Party they hope to build.

The event space, established in 2019, is packed with red-white-and-blue images and signs supporting former President Donald Trump, questioning his loss in the 2020 election, and trashing “Demoncrats.” The spot welcomes local grassroots so-called patriot groups and has hosted book events, comedy, and Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani. Kellyanne Conway is scheduled for a Wednesday appearance, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is supposed to show up in the fall.

Both Figliola and Cornicelli lost in their bids for the 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts, respectively. The winners in both contests were the party-endorsed candidates, Nick LaLota and incumbent Rep. Andrew Garbarino. Both winners were helped by the existence of a third candidate in each race who might have siphoned away votes from the others’ grassroots efforts.

Notably, neither organization-backed candidate got much more than 50% of the vote in unofficial election night tallies, meaning the wing of the Long Island conservative movement visible in Ronkonkoma will continue to play a role.

Certainly that was what the candidates said Tuesday night.

“This place is our home,” said Figliola, a former Brookhaven deputy supervisor, after thanking a long list of groups like Moms for Liberty, the Bellmore Patriots, and New Yorkers Against Medical Mandates. “This is where we’re going to continue the movement of America First, bringing patriots in here,” he said.

Cornicelli, a military veteran with a radio background, urged attendees not to “lose hope.” He noted there were school board elections coming up, and said “we have to make this America First Warehouse the home of the anti establishment party.”

That appears to be happening. Multiple attendees spoke about being activated by issues like vaccine mandates and school curriculums. Brianna Richardson of Moms for Liberty decried the “woke education that's coming down the pipeline” and suggested that this year was “the year of the parents.”

The gathering spot’s decor reinforces the defiant message. “Truth. It’s the new hate speech,” says a sign near the entrance. A display with a “Stop the Steal” logo included “ballot” boxes labeled “dead people vote here” and “sponsored by G. Soros.”

There are fissures even in the America First crowd. Long Island Loud Majority, once highly affiliated with the warehouse, was not given a public shout out.

But the larger question may be how much the self-described anti-establishment comes out for the establishment in hot general election races, long after primary emotions cool down.

Cornicelli told The Point Tuesday night that he called Garbarino. Asked if he would help the primary winner, Cornicelli said “that’s up to him.” He elaborated: “If he asks me to help him out I’ll help him.”

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

Over in CD3 ...

Robert Zimmerman won the CD3 primary with 35.2% of the vote. But in Queens, he took nearly 42.5% of the vote. The New York City borough makes up about a quarter of the district centered in Nassau County and clearly played a significant role in Zimmerman’s surprisingly big win. 

Josh Lafazan won 19.7% of the vote overall, but took only 12.9% of Queens – garnering just over 800 votes in the borough, compared with more than 2,700 for Zimmerman.  And Jon Kaiman, who came in second with 25.6% of the district wide vote, ended up with just 22.5% in Queens. His strong relative showing in Nassau County likely came in part due to name recognition, as Kaiman, the former North Hempstead Town supervisor, was well-known across that part of the district. In Nassau County, Kaiman took 27% of the vote, compared with Zimmerman’s 33.5% and Lafazan’s 22%.

In the general election, Zimmerman, 67, will face Republican George Santos, 34, who ran against Rep. Tom Suozzi in 2020 and lost, with about 44% of the vote. 

The contest apparently marks the first general House election in which both major party candidates are openly gay. 

Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a political action committee that supports LGBTQ candidates, confirmed that the PAC doesn’t know of another general election for a congressional seat in recent history where both Democrat and Republican candidates were openly gay. 

The Victory Fund supported Zimmerman in the primary, and it will continue to do so in the general election, Meloy said.  He said Santos didn't seek the group’s endorsement. 

“There’s going to be a national focus on this one. And this is a key opportunity for LGBTQ people to gain a representative in the House of Representatives where, just like in all levels of government, we are wildly underrepresented.”

One Democratic consultant told The Point he expects the Zimmerman-Santos race to garner the attention of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which hopes to keep the seat blue.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Statue of Oligarchy

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Final Point

Schumer’s choice, Nadler’s stance echo beyond the primary

One of the expected wins in Tuesday’s low-turnout Congressional primaries belonged to veteran Rep. Jerry Nadler, best known nationwide the House Judiciary Committee chairman during the 2021 impeachment of President Donald Trump. 

In the newly-drawn CD12, Nadler defeated his longtime colleague Rep. Carolyn Maloney with 56% of the vote; she got 24.1% and Suraj Patel, who’d challenged her before , got 19.1%.

A Maloney ally told The Point that a big boost for their opponent was the late support of Sen. Chuck Schumer, whose bond with Nadler began decades ago when both served in the state Assembly .

Maloney, of course, also had sought the senator’s nod in CD12  or else to stay neutral, a source close to Schumer told The Point. But Schumer had an “owe” to Nadler from 1998, in the Brooklynite’s  first  bid for U.S. Senate.  During a three-person primary,Schumer initially trailed in polls by as much as 30 percent against Geraldine Ferraro of Queens, a national sensation after running as the first female major-party VP candidate, and against Mark Green, the New York City public advocate.

As the source tells it, Nadler -- who served with both Ferraro and Schumer in the state’s Congressional delegation -- gave Schumer the credibility he needed early on to build momentum and win the nomination, and later the, election against three-term Sen. Al D’Amato.

 Nadler and Maloney would never have faced off this year, if not for the fact that a court-assigned special master did something the state legislature would not have done – stick Manhattan’s Upper West Side (Nadler terrain) in one district with the Upper East Side (Maloney’s terrain). 

And this week, some seasoned Democratic fixtures were still irked that Nadler did not keep both himself and Maloney in Congress by moving to run in CD10 -- where former prosecutor Dan Goldman prevailed in a multi-way race with 26 %, assisted by his spending personal wealth.

A veteran Brooklyn Democrat told The Point that Nadler, after all, “had parts of that district for years. If he’d announced for CD10, you can be sure that most everyone else would have gotten out of the way.”

Perhaps. But as it happened, Rep. Mondaire Jones pulled up stakes from north of the city to run in CD10. He was unknown there, and it showed; he landed third with 18 percent.

Nadler indeed has represented a former incarnation of that same district,  which until this year ran south into lower Manhattan and then several Brooklyn neighborhoods, to which he’d have held on if he’d changed to CD10.

As if to address that question, Nadler said in his victory speech Tuesday: “This place is my home. I have lived for my entire adult life. I love the people of this community and what they represent. Why would I want to be any place else?”

— Dan Janison @Danjanison