Seeing red in North Hempstead

Daily Point

Mailers target ex-supervisor Jon Kaiman's record

In what is not yet shaping up as a red-hot election season, the race for town supervisor in North Hempstead may be the standout.

Incumbent Jennifer DeSena, who ran as a Republican, is already out with two mailers attacking Democrat Jon Kaiman who is seeking to return to the job he held from 2004 to 2013.

One GOP mailer accuses Kaiman of raising town taxes during his nine years as supervisor. The other, headlined “dangerous by definition,” goes back about three decades to his years as a practicing lawyer.

But it's August, traditionally a time when voters aren’t paying attention to upcoming local elections, so why is the GOP spending money? Is it testing out tried and true messaging to see what resonates? Or does it see a tough race ahead — especially if the Nov. 7 ballot includes a special election for CD3, assuming the indicted Rep. George Santos is out of the House one way or another in the next two months.

Kaiman sees the early attacks as a sign that GOP polling shows DeSena trailing. “Very early on, people aren’t paying attention, this is an initiative to knock me down a few points,” Kaiman told The Point.

Mike Deery, a spokesman for Nassau County Republicans, says mailers are an effective strategy but not because they are behind. “We are confident that she leads Jon Kaiman,” Deery said. “Jen DeSena is extremely popular.”

The entire town is within the congressional district and while registration skews Democratic, the town did elect DeSena and Santos. Kaiman is mum on whether he will respond in kind to these early salvos with his own mailers.

Whatever the timing, Santos will be on the ballot in some measure, even if he is still in Congress when November comes around. DeSena endorsed Santos in 2022 and campaigned with him. There are photos and the Democrats are expected to use them.

But Deery disputes such a connection will resonate and says the GOP will focus on her tax cuts: “Jen DeSena is running on her record, she has no nexus to Santos. “

— Rita Ciolli rita.ciolli@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Four favor, merci

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Reference Point

Old vices, new routes

Trolling the trove of Newsday’s opinion pages produces a range of reactions. One might chuckle at the use of language in the 1940s or wince at a hopelessly outdated opinion from the ‘50s. Frequently, one simply nods at seeing proof on many pages that Long Islanders have been plagued by traffic, high taxes, housing woes and political corruption across every decade of Newsday’s existence.

But sometimes, you just grimace.

That happened this week when we came upon an editorial from Aug. 17, 1974, called “The Heroin Trail Reopened.” This nearly 50-year-old piece recounted a news story dominating headlines and retold by Newsday’s editorial board like this:

”Federal agents kicked in some pseudo-Louis XIII furniture this week and uncovered 165 pounds of heroin worth more than $100,000,000 on the street. It had been processed in Marseilles from opium poppies grown in Turkey, shipped to Newark and then stored in a Long Island City warehouse. Four of five persons seized by the police are in Nassau County Jail in East Meadow. The Heroin Trail, it seems, has been reactivated on a grand scale.”

That last reference was to Newsday’s famed 33-part series that tracked heroin from those same Turkish poppy fields to Long Island, a project for which Newsday was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service earlier that year. The piece conjured memories of “The French Connection,” the 1971 Oscar-winning film which chronicled New York City Detective “Popeye” Doyle’s attempt to stop a shipment of heroin from Marseilles and whose director William Friedkin died last week.

But the grimace was generated by the realization that The Heroin Trail could have been “reactivated” so quickly after Newsday’s exposé — and that 49 years later the war against the importation of such drugs is still flailing along.

The details change. Most of the world’s opium, from which heroin is made, now comes from Afghanistan and most of the heroin in the U.S. arrives via Mexico. Prominent on the illicit drug scene now is fentanyl with China and Mexico as the primary sources, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

But the general contours of the war on drugs remain. The nation still fights and the spigot is still open.

“The ultimate answer to America’s drug problem lies in vigilant law enforcement, better drug treatment facilities, and a renewal of the American dream for those denied it unjustly,” the editorial board wrote in 1974.

Few would quibble today about the need for better treatment and some solution to the despair felt by many Americans who turn to drugs to deal with disappointment, frustration, or physical and emotional pain. But the role of law enforcement is hotly debated with opinions ranging from cries of “smash the drug cartels” to pleas of more focus on education, prevention and treatment.

“This week’s headlines provide a reminder how urgent a task lies ahead,” Newsday’s board wrote in conclusion — a sentence that, sadly, is just as true today.

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