Vowing a greener Suffolk, targeting LI's House seats
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries points to images of five targeted rookie New York State Congress members whom he paints as “MAGA extremists.” Three of the Republicans represent Long Island. Credit: House Democratic Leader Press Office
Daily Point
Suffolk exec hopefuls talk cleaner, greener policies
Edward R. Romaine, the Republican candidate for Suffolk County Executive, talked with passion Monday night about the joys of having a compost tumbler in his backyard, the same way other people talk about their barbecue grills.
Romaine chops up foodstuffs and other throwaways in his tumbler — and then plants it as fertilizer for his garden. That's the way, he suggests, all of Suffolk County could help solve its looming garbage crisis.
But garbage this fall could become a vexing political problem for Romaine.
The 76-year-old Brookhaven supervisor seemed right at home before a crowd of about 300 environmentally minded voters gathered at a Suffolk County executive candidates forum, which included his rival Democrat Dave Calone, 49. Romaine mentioned with pride that the New York League of Conservation Voters, the forum’s co-sponsor, had endorsed him in previous elections as supervisor and former county legislator.
During the two-hour event held at Stony Brook University, Romaine and Calone agreed on several environmental issues facing Suffolk voters — such as the need to establish a countywide sewage system, to encourage wind power and renewable energy, and, of course, to compost.
But the two sharply differed when it came to the Brookhaven landfill and the looming county-wide garbage crisis, which is, in a sense, also in Romaine’s own backyard.
Suffolk County executive candidates Democrat Dave Calone, far left, and Republican Edward P. Romaine, far right, at Monday's candidate forum on environmental issues at Stony Brook University, with Julie Tighe, center left, president of New York League of Conservation Voters, and Adrienne Esposito, executive director at Citizens Campaign for the Environment. Credit: Newsday/Thomas Maier
Calone, a Harvard-trained lawyer and businessman, sharply criticized Romaine’s handling of the landfill, a 250-foot mountain of trash, which he said is full of toxins and endangers the health of those living nearby. “My opponent has done nothing about it,” Calone said.
Calone’s camp believes they can make political inroads in Brookhaven against the well-known GOP supervisor by tapping into public anger about the landfill and overall garbage problem. For example, in May the state NAACP and others filed a lawsuit against Brookhaven Town officials, seeking to stop a waste transfer station they say would also endanger the health of local residents, many of whom are Black.
The Brookhaven landfill is expected to close within two years. But right now under a deal with other Long Island towns, Brookhaven accepts incinerator ash from huge garbage-burning plants in towns like Huntington. When Brookhaven finally closes its landfill doors, it will create a huge problem for Long Islanders, wondering where to dispose of trash. While much of the waste will still be incinerated, increasingly local officials will face the costly problem of shipping more garbage away from Long Island by truck or by rail.
Romaine defended his handling of the Brookhaven landfill and said he wants to lead the way toward a countywide solution if he becomes the next Suffolk executive, replacing the term-limited incumbent Democrat Steve Bellone. Like Calone, he said Suffolk residents must learn to reduce the amount of garbage they generate and develop more effective ways of recycling and composting.
In the meantime, the Brookhaven landfill will remain open, at least through the current county executive campaign. Whether Calone’s focus on it fertilizes his campaign remains to be seen.
— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com
Pencil Point
Biden optics
Credit: Columbia Missourian/John Darkow
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Final Point
Millions for defense — and House seats too
Closing in on the 2024 House races, both national parties will have plenty to say and spin about last week’s vote on a defense authorization bill. It includes divisive culture-war provisions such as eliminating the Pentagon's diversity office, providing service members time off and travel reimbursement for abortions and refusing them health care coverage for transgender-related medical treatments.
Since the 1960s, the annual defense spending authorization had been kept clear of the partisan controversies of the day. Not now.
Here in New York, all four GOP members from Long Island, as well as the other seven Republicans from the rest of the state, voted for the bill which Speaker Kevin McCarthy amended to include measures he said would stop “wokeism” in the military but which are highly unlikely to pass in the Senate. The move sets up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to issue statements tying the state’s GOP incumbents to extremists.
After the GOP amendments were added last week, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, the Democratic leader who wants the speaker’s gavel, wasted no time, saying: “Extreme MAGA Republicans have chosen to hijack the historically bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to continue attacking reproductive freedom and jamming their right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people.”
The altered defense authorization received “Yes” votes from Reps. George Santos, Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota and the Long Island delegation’s senior member, Andrew Garbarino. Jeffries, strategizing on all fronts to claw back seats his party lost last year, last week condemned the New York Republicans in particular.
“Every opportunity they have to show their reasonableness and distance themselves from the most extreme elements of their party, they fail to pass the test,” Jeffries told reporters aided by a prop photo display that included the four Long Island representatives. Jeffries leads the state’s current 19-member Democratic caucus, and had a particular stake in last year’s embarrassing suburban “red wave,” especially in this region.
Four House Republicans voted against McCarthy’s amendments but for reasons other than defending Democratic policies. For one, Rep. Kevin Buck of Colorado said, “I cannot in good conscience vote for its $875.4 billion price tag. Our country is careening toward fiscal ruin, and Congress continues to turn a blind eye by passing these massive spending packages with no attention to their cost or efficacy.”
Service members would get a 5.2% pay increase under its terms. Four Democrats — from Maine, Washington, New Mexico and North Carolina — crossed over and voted in favor. The bill cleared the House 219-210, indicating the high stakes in the New York races next year given McCarthy’s narrow majority and his need to get votes from far-right Freedom Caucus members.
What neither side says out loud is that when one chamber pushes a bill that it knows will not fly in the other chamber, even members who dislike its details will go along to support their leader and caucus. If the measure isn’t going to become law, voters are likely to forget the whole fight by election time — giving those members some separation from criticism. Which is why, for example, Democrats could risk voting against a pay raise for service members.
Such votes bring a rank-and-file member only so much consequence. It’s almost routine business.
More significantly, both parties use such symbolic controversies to whip up fundraising — a crucial factor at this point in the cycle, brought by the national polarization of the moment.
— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com
