LI's small donors who are big on Trump

Daily Point

Middle class folks, businesses pony up for his 2024 bid

As a longtime caterer on Long Island, Anthony Pellegrino knows the importance of forking over money for a crowd-pleasing favorite. It’s also a reason why, Pellegrino says, he’s one of the top 20 Long Island contributors so far to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, according to federal records.

“Trump is not a politician, he’s like us,” Pellegrino, 64, of Mount Sinai, told The Point, when asked about Trump’s appeal. In Pellegrino’s view, “Suffolk went all Republican because people are fed up” with the Democrats. Like several GOP supporters on Long Island, he’s given more than $2,000 total to Trump through online contributions and by attending pro-Trump events.

Overall, the Donald J. Trump For President 2024 Inc. has received $6.68 million in individual donations from people in Nassau and Suffolk counties by late September 2023, according to the most recent available federal campaign records reviewed by The Point. Trump’s Long Island contributions represent about 10% of his total nationally up to that point.

As of Sept. 30, 2023, Trump had raised $60.5 million and incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden had raised $56.8 million. (Back then, GOP candidate Nikki Haley had raised $18.7 million.)

But this money is only a modest sampling of the megabucks Trump is expected to raise this year, as the New Hampshire primary leads to the fall general election.

An analysis of the Long Island-based contributions to Trump show that the former president is drawing a lot of his support not from well-known names in the Hamptons but rather from more traditionally middle-class communities in the middle of the Island.

For instance, the top LI community contributing to the Trump campaign is Farmingdale, which straddles the Nassau-Suffolk border, according to records. Overall, it is the listed location for 335 separate contributions totaling $396,541 to the former president. Farmingdale was the site of a big GOP rally last fall which may account for the location being a hot spot.

Other top donor locations to Trump (in descending order of contributions) include Elmont, Patchogue, Nesconset, Hauppauge, Westbury, Valley Stream, Ronkonkoma, East Norwich, Coram, Huntington Station and East Northport, records show.

A review of the top 20 individual Trump donors from Long Island shows that, like Pellegrino, most are local business people, including the owner of a packaging company in Garden City and a stone contractor in Wading River. Eight of the top 20 Trump LI contributors are retirees.

“We’re not talking here about Lloyd Harbor or Head of the Harbor — it does surprise me to see how it [LI donations to Trump] is so spread out,” said Michael Dawidziak, a Long Island-based political strategist. “A lot of people say they are voting for Trump because he’s been good for their 401(k), even if they don’t like him.”

Individuals can donate up to $3,300 for each candidate in the primary season, and again up to the same amount in the general election. Trump, like Biden, is also aided by big money contributed through political action committees which do not have the same restrictions as direct contributions to candidates.

Along with Long Island’s donations, New Yorkers in total have contributed $28.2 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign, records show.

Pellegrino donated previously to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, but said he feels more energy among Trump supporters this year. He blames the COVID-19 epidemic for Trump’s failure to get reelected in 2020 and predicts Trump’s current legal problems won’t deter his success this time around.

“The more he goes to court, the more popular he is,” Pellegrino explained.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Pencil Point

An over-the-top election

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Reference Point

Ain't that right?

Newsday’s editorial board typically concerns itself with the weighty issues of the day.

Typically, but not always.

One such departure came on Jan. 25, 1946, when the board delved into a polarizing bit of etymology: the use of “ain’t.”

“On page 54 of the second edition of Webster’s new unabridged dictionary, an era has ended,” Newsday’s board wrote. “The board of learned professors who protect our pronunciation, guard our diction and straighten out our spelling has acknowledged the existence of ‘ain’t.’ ”

Newsday’s board termed the search for a contraction of “am I not” as one of life’s “irritating little problems,” praised ain’t as “short and simple to say,” and pronounced its use “almost irresistible.” Its popularity, the board wrote, led to “professors barricaded … behind their desks, prepared to keep ain’t out of the dictionaries and drive it from the lips of the American people.”

The board was on the side of the people and rejoiced when Webster’s “capitulated.”

The professors, the board explained, “forgot that language belongs to the people who use it,” and ain’t has had a rich history in America, especially in sports and culture.

Baseball Hall of Famer Wee Willie Keeler, who retired in 1910, told people the secret to his batting prowess was to “hit ‘em where they ain’t.” An anonymous young baseball fan was credited (most likely erroneously) with saying to Chicago White Sox star Shoeless Joe Jackson after indictments were handed down in the 1919 game-fixing Black Sox Scandal, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

In 1927, Al Jolson said, “You ain’t heard nothing yet” in the movie “The Jazz Singer,” commonly known as the first talkie. And in 1943, Boys Town began using the motto: “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

As it turns out, ain’t has had some currency in politics as well, beginning with the 19th century declaration by abolitionist and civil and women’s right activist Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a woman?”

Later in that century, writer Finley Peter Dunne created a character named Mr. Dooley, who talked politics in a Chicago bar. One of his sayings was the now-immortal “politics ain’t beanbag.” One of Dunne/Cooley’s biggest fans was the governor of New York and future president, Long Island’s own Theodore Roosevelt.

As recently as 2022, President Joe Biden used the word in his State of the Union speech when he said, “I may be wrong, but my guess is, if we took a secret ballot in this floor, that we'd all agree that the present tax system ain't fair.”

As for its dictionary acceptance, the current Cambridge Dictionary notes, “This word is not considered to be correct English by many people.” Merriam Webster is more expansive and enthusiastic: “Although widely disapproved as nonstandard, and more common in the habitual speech of the less educated, ain't is flourishing in American English.”

All of which goes to show that Newsday’s board apparently had it right 78 years ago, with the title of its celebratory piece: Ain’t it the Truth?

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com, Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

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