Hochul's wind veto seeks to bring renewed energy to Long Beach Dems

Daily Point

Will Election Day winds blow blue?

It's no coincidence that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s sudden veto of a bill that would have paved the way for an offshore wind project off the coast of Long Beach came less than three weeks before Election Day.

The bill would have allowed for the potential alienation of parkland — in this case, the beach itself — to permit offshore wind company Equinor to bring a transmission cable ashore at Long Beach.

And on Friday, everyone seemed to be taking credit for the governor’s veto — from Republican House member Anthony D’Esposito to state and Nassau County Democratic chair Jay Jacobs.

But sources told The Point that most of the credit for Hochul’s action goes to Jacobs, who’s trying to hold on to Long Beach as a Democratic stronghold in the face of fierce opposition. Republican candidates for the Long Beach City Council and the Nassau County legislature have been hoping the offshore wind issue would propel them to turn Long Beach red.

Whether Hochul’s veto is enough to keep the city blue remains to be seen.

D’Esposito’s focus on the issue indicates that it likely will carry over to next year’s congressional race. After all, State Sen. Kevin Thomas, who is running for the Democratic nod for D’Esposito’s seat, voted for the bill back in June.

On Friday, Thomas doubled down on his support — and put the blame at D’Esposito’s feet.

“D’Esposito should take credit for killing union jobs,” Thomas said. “This [bill] would have actually helped the community. And we are trying to get to a point where we no longer need to use fossil fuels and D’Esposito led the charge in making sure that we are nowhere close to where we need to be on Long Island.”

But for now, Hochul’s veto clearly marked a win for the current Long Beach City Council — made up entirely of Democrats. Sources noted that had Hochul signed the state bill, it would have required a Long Beach City Council vote on the alienation. The City Council had made clear it wasn’t going to support the plan. As a result, it was easier politically for Hochul to just veto it now — and find a new path forward.

And Hochul’s veto language left no doubt she was listening to local elected officials.

“It is incumbent on renewable energy developers to cultivate and maintain strong ties to their host communities throughout the planning, siting and operation of all large-scale projects,” Hochul said, adding that the Long Beach City Council “made it clear … it would not support or authorize any alienation of parkland in furtherance of this project.”

It was, however, a remarkable change of heart for a governor who just a few months ago was talking about overriding local zoning to build the housing she thought the region needed. The same perspective doesn’t appear to carry over to renewable energy.

Or perhaps Hochul learned a thing or two from the housing battle.

Either way, the veto leaves the offshore wind industry in a particularly precarious spot, especially after last week’s Public Service Commission decision to deny rate increase requests from Equinor and Orsted.

“It sends another troubling signal to renewable energy developers after what happened last week,” one industry source told The Point, adding that the timing of the veto was “surprising.”

But given the proximity to Election Day, perhaps it’s really not that surprising at all.

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

Pencil Point

Tale of two tapes

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Final Point

Ex-LI ‘quant’ shuts UPenn $$ spigot over Hamas

Former Suffolk County resident David Magerman, a wealthy donor to various causes, is in the headlines this week after cutting off his contributions to the University of Pennsylvania, and calling for all “self-respecting” Jews to do the same. He’s among a number of donors arguing that the university administration failed to squarely condemn a Palestinian literature festival on campus where several speakers had a history of making antisemitic remarks.

“I am deeply ashamed of my association with the University of Pennsylvania. I refuse to donate another dollar to Penn,” Magerman wrote in the letter to UPenn president Liz Magill and Scott Bok, chair of the school’s board of trustees. Magerman earned a B.S. from the university in computer science and graduated summa cum laude.

A tandem blend of anti-Israel demonstrations and anti-Jewish intimidations exploded on campuses immediately after Hamas, which is backed by the Islamic theocracy in Iran, launched out of Gaza a series of massacres of unarmed civilians including children and the elderly in southern Israel along with multiple kidnappings. Many university administrations have put out vague and tepid responses, prompting criticism from the Jewish community, among others.

Six years ago, Magerman also made headlines when he spoke out on a different controversy. While associated with the megasuccessful investment management firm Renaissance Technologies, based in East Setauket, he openly protested what he considered the racist political views of his far-right boss Robert Mercer, leading to Magerman’s ouster after 22 lucrative years with Renaissance.

In a federal lawsuit he filed following his termination, Magerman said Mercer “made a series of racist comments” to him, reportedly about Blacks in the U.S. and what Mercer saw as the wrongful impact of the Civil Rights Act, purportedly claiming that the only racists in America are Black. Magerman said he responded that segregation was ubiquitous long before the landmark 1964 law was enacted.

Mercer later confronted him, saying, “I heard you're going around saying I'm a white supremacist," and the two reportedly rehashed their conversation in which Mercer took the same positions, Magerman was quoted as saying in published accounts. He dropped the action against Mercer later in the year but without retracting the allegations.

Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, had recommended the hiring of Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway by the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and funded what was widely criticized as Islamophobic online propaganda to help certain candidates.

Magerman, a computer expert, attended Stanford University for graduate school. He was married in Melville in 1999; his wife was from East Northport. Magerman moved with his family to Philadelphia in 2004 while he was affiliated with Renaissance. In 2013, he told Philadelphia magazine that Renaissance “was very Ayn Randian,” and that “In some sense, people inside the company looked down on people who were not making a lot of money and not super-intelligent.”

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

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