Ex-Surrogate Czygier now working as a law clerk for Tinari 

John Czygier, who served 17 years as Suffolk County’s politically potent surrogate judge, has gone to work as the $142,513-a-year principal law clerk for new state Supreme Court Justice Marian Tinari, who earlier spent a decade as his clerk before she became a judge.

Czygier had to leave the $208,000-a-year surrogate job at year’s end because he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 on Election Day. Before his election, Czygier, of Remsenburg, was a private attorney and Southampton GOP chairman.

Tinari, 65, wife of Suffolk Conservative chairman Frank Tinari, originally was slated to be the surrogate candidate as part of a nine-judge Democratic, Conservative and Independence Party endorsement agreement, but she later withdrew when Republican Tara Scully filed petitions to run a Democratic primary against her. Democrats then named Family Court Supervising Judge Theresa Whelan, a Democrat, who beat Scully.

Richard Schaffer, Suffolk Democratic chairman, expressed no concern over Tinari’s choice of a former Republican town chairman and said it was not part of a cross-endorsement agreement. “It was never mentioned, brought up or discussed,” he said. “I’d be shocked if it was anything other than personal.”

He added he did not consider the post a patronage appointment. “It’s based on experience and the most important experience is the relationship between a judge and their law clerk because the clerk has to know how to express the judge’s opinions,” Schaffer said.