Smithtown GOP abstains from John Jay LaValle election vote
Smithtown Republicans abstained from voting on John Jay LaValle's re-election as Suffolk GOP chairman. Credit: James Escher
John Jay LaValle may have been reelected as Suffolk Republican chairman on Sept. 22, but Smithtown Republican chairman Bill Ellis and his entire town committee abstained from the vote.
Ellis, who was fired a year ago from his patronage job at the Suffolk Board of Elections, told the party convention that the Smithtown GOP was withholding its votes because party rules about filling committee vacancies weren’t followed
Since Smithtown was the eighth town out of 10 called in alphabetical order, LaValle’s election already was determined before the town boycott.
Steve Losquadro, the convention parliamentarian, said LaValle had the support of more than 40 proxy votes from Smithtown, or about 30 percent of Smithtown’s committee vote.
It was unclear how many proxies Ellis held, since he did not turn his votes in. There are 146 GOP committee members from Smithtown.
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