Calone's not giving up yet

Daily Point

Democrat open to a 2027 run for Suffolk executive

Only days after his crushing defeat Tuesday, Democrat Dave Calone said he hasn’t ruled out running again for Suffolk County executive four years from now.

“I’m open to everything,” Calone told The Point on Thursday evening following his 57% to 43% loss to Republican Ed Romaine. When asked specifically about seeking the county’s top job once again, Calone replied, “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

The conversation then ambled into a review of the fall campaign, including how the GOP managed to win despite a bigger Democratic countywide registration, and what may be in store for the future, including his own.

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s defeat, Calone plans to spend more time with his wife and three kids, after many months of campaigning to become the successor to incumbent Democrat Steve Bellone. Calone laughed when he said one of his first tasks right now is to get two family cars inspected before their registration expires at month’s end.

The wealthy 50-year-old businessman and private attorney says he must first return full time to his job in the private sector and earn some money before he can think of seeking a new role in the public sector. Calone forked over some $750,000 out of his own pocket for this race. But Calone, who grew up in the Mount Sinai and Port Jefferson area, said there were many priceless campaign moments that he will hold on to forever. For instance, he said, his oldest child, Sarah, an 18-year-old freshman at NYU, cast her first vote for her father on Tuesday.

Later this month, Calone plans to travel to Colorado, where he runs a venture capital firm that he started with his longtime personal friend, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, whom he first met when they were undergraduates at Princeton University. Last summer, Polis was featured in a Manhattan fundraiser for Calone’s campaign. After Tuesday’s defeat, Calone said he received a call from his old pal offering his condolences. Polis also backed Calone when he ran unsuccessfully in a Democratic primary for Congress in 2016.

Going into Election Day on Tuesday, Calone said, spirits were high because he was leading Romaine by a few thousand votes cast during early voting sessions around the county. (Suffolk GOP chairman Jesse Garcia told The Point that Calone’s early pre-Election Day lead likely was even bigger than Calone estimated in this interview, as much as 20,000 votes.)

But on Election Day itself, the GOP mounted a furious voter turnout for Romaine that led to the Brookhaven Town supervisor’s lopsided victory. Calone praised the efforts of Suffolk Democratic Party chairman Rich Schaffer who, he said, did the best possible job to urge Democrats to the polls. Ultimately, though, Calone said Suffolk Republicans “were more motivated to get out at this moment in time” than Democrats.

In retrospect, Calone said he had no particular regret or things he would have done differently. Employing a national political consulting firm, Technicolor Political, Calone ran a series of blistering video ads against Romaine that called him “Crook-Ed” and tried to tag him with Brookhaven corruption cases from years past.

Throughout the campaign, Calone emphasized his background as a former federal prosecutor in promising to fight crime and add more police. And he tried to strike a delicate balance by keeping his distance from Working Families Party progressives, who worked for changes in bail and other criminal justice and police reforms, while accepting that group’s endorsement. In his own campaign ads, Romaine blasted Calone as a “Hochul Liberal,” a reference to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. Political experts say polls show Hochul is deeply unpopular on Long Island because of the ongoing migrant crisis impacting the state and the public perception that crime is high, even though statistics show otherwise.

“People see headlines on migrants, bail reforms and they think that Democrats are soft on crime,” Calone rued, like a man who felt himself fighting an uphill battle with the political winds in his face.

Some political experts thought that Calone, a relative unknown to Suffolk voters, didn’t spend enough time and video ad money early in the campaign introducing himself, and that his negative ads against Romaine appeared too quickly before a positive image of Calone could be established. But Calone, who previously received praise for his service on the Suffolk County Planning Commission and other boards, doesn't have any regrets. He remains optimistic about the Democrats' chances of regaining the county executive’s chair in Hauppauge next time. Tuesday’s victory for Romaine marks the first time in 20 years the GOP has gained the county executive’s job. But Romaine is 76 and hasn’t committed yet to running in 2027 for another term.

By that time, Calone will only be 54, and he says he's willing to consider another run. During this past campaign, despite his stinging defeat, Calone said he enjoyed shaking hands, rallying support in different places, and speaking about Suffolk’s future. “I really enjoyed meeting so many people,” he said wistfully.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Talking Point

Prior Nassau Hub lease transfers never required an environmental review

The state Supreme Court decision that sided with Hofstra University and voided the lease agreement between Nassau County and Las Vegas Sands for the Nassau Coliseum site surprised those around the county and the development community across Long Island.

Nassau County appealed the decision Friday and was expected to seek a stay that would keep the lease transfer intact until a ruling. The decision isn’t expected to stop Sands from applying for one of the three available downstate casino licenses or from moving forward with the other steps in that process.

Justice Sarika Kapoor, who handed down the decision, graduated from Hofstra Law School in 2004 and was appointed to the Court of Claims in 2022 by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Kapoor’s decision would require the county to go through a full state environmental review, known as SEQRA. That order particularly puzzled those who’ve watched attempts to develop the Nassau Hub for decades.

Before approving the lease transfer, the county issued what’s known as a “negative declaration,” saying that a full environmental review was unnecessary at the time because the lease approval only allowed site control and did not authorize development. That would mean it would be up to the Town of Hempstead to do the full review when it was amending zoning and approving Sands’ proposed development.

But Hofstra has argued that the legislature should have conducted the full review before even approving the lease transfer.

“They’re acting as though the lease is just a piece of paper,” said university attorney Adam Schuman, according to a transcript of an August hearing. “They ignore the fact that this lease commits Las Vegas Sands to this project. No coincidence the County was receiving 54 million upfront just by signing the lease. It’s a real project.”

Kapoor sided with Hofstra, determining that the county should have issued a “positive declaration” that would have required Nassau to go through its own extensive environmental review.

But those who’ve watched or been a part of Nassau Hub redevelopment efforts in the past noted that the lease for the Hub has changed hands multiple times over the last two decades without the county ever issuing a positive declaration or conducting a full environmental review.

Even when extensive development was contemplated, as it was for the Lighthouse Project 20 years ago and under a proposal by developer Bruce Ratner 10 years ago, a full environmental review wasn’t conducted by Nassau County when the lease was transferred. Indeed, it was the environmental review later done by the Town of Hempstead that eventually sank the Lighthouse plan.

One source told The Point that generally, whoever does the zoning — in this case, the Town of Hempstead — traditionally acts as the lead agency on the environmental review.

Nonetheless, if a stay is not granted, Nassau now could have to issue a positive declaration and start its own environmental review. It’s likely, sources told The Point, that in that scenario, the town could later piggyback on that review when it’s ready to zone the property, so as to not have to do the work twice and delay the process further.

That would take time, but it could be done simultaneously as the state casino gaming application process plays out, sources said. Another vote of the Nassau County Legislature would then be necessary.

By choosing to focus on SEQRA among the issues it raised, Hofstra, sources said, took a play out of an often-used playbook.

“The way to attack all big projects on Long Island is through SEQRA because it’s a slippery area of the law,” said an attorney who specializes in environmental law. “And that’s what they did.”

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

Pencil Point

Overvalued

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Final Point

Billionaire parts ways with Columbia University over failure to protect Jews

Billionaire investor Henry Swieca has a residence in Atlantic Beach and an undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University. But what he no longer has is a seat on the Board of Overseers for Columbia University's Business School because he decided to quit — declaring that the Ivy League school has failed to adequately protect the safety of its Jewish students during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war crisis.

“With blatantly anti-Jewish student groups and professors allowed to operate with complete impunity, it sends a clear and distressing message that Jews are not just unwelcome, but also unsafe on campus,” Swieca said in an Oct. 30 letter to Columbia, according to published reports. “My resignation is an expression of my deep concern for the direction in which the university is heading.”

Meanwhile, on Friday, Columbia suspended until the end of the fall semester two pro-Palestinian groups for holding an unauthorized demonstration Thursday that “proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

Swieca’s sharp rebuke to his alma mater, where he earned an MBA degree, is just part of a larger reaction by many Jewish alumni at some of the nation’s top schools, including Harvard University, about what they consider a weak response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel as well as the poor handling of Jewish student safety amid the Middle East crisis. These actions also come about as the FBI has reported a sharp increase in antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents around the nation.

Swieca, 66, a child of Polish Holocaust survivors, has been on the Columbia biz school’s Board of Overseers, its main fundraising arm, since 2014. According to Forbes, Swieca is worth $1.9 billion, built on his remarkable success as an investment manager and owner. Though his main address is in Manhattan, he owns a $5 million residence in Atlantic Beach, records show, making him one of the richest figures on Long Island.

Swieca didn’t announce his decision to quit publicly, but news of it slowly leaked out in Israeli news outlets abroad. In his note to the university, Swieca said he was also offended by what he considered Columbia’s inadequate response to campus protests that have supported Palestinian rights and been critical of the Jewish state.

“Statements from the university are meaningless when pro-Hamas students march on campus calling for the complete destruction of Israel,” he said. “To my deep regret, the reputation and integrity of Columbia University, and by extension Columbia Business School, have been significantly compromised by a moral cowardice that appears beyond repair.”

The Columbia campus has been in turmoil with protests since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last month, including angry accusations, bitter rallies between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel student and faculty groups, and some physical confrontations. While pro-Israel supporters like Swieca have criticized Columbia for tolerating hateful rhetoric against Jews, others have criticized the school’s administration for emailing students a message of concern that they said ignored Palestinian suffering.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

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