In season of pointed political ads, Blakeman injects rape into Nassau County executive race against Koslow

A 13-year-old law school research paper on whether a rape victim’s social media posts should be admissible in court has become a political lightning rod in the Nassau County executive’s race, pitting women who support the male candidates against each other as Election Day approaches.

Republican incumbent Bruce Blakeman’s campaign has spent millions on commercials and mailers attacking his opponent, Legis. Seth Koslow (D-Merrick), for making an academic argument in favor of broadening federal and state rape shield laws to consider the proliferation of content on social media sites like Facebook.

Beyond the ads injecting the issue of victims’ rights and sexual assault into a local election, it serves as a prime example of the political vitriol that for weeks has flooded airwaves and mailboxes of Long Island voters. Generally, across various local races, Republicans have aimed at depicting Democrats as soft on crime and Democrats have portrayed Republicans as a corrupt machine.

"This has long been the game ... part of the art of being a political campaigner," Cameron Shelton, director of the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at Claremont McKenna College in California, said of the ads, particularly the one targeting Koslow and his research paper. "This one is just more shocking as we all race to the bottom in our political environment."

From the county executive’s race down the ballot, a big theme for Nassau Republican candidates has been to align their political opponents with the ideas and policies of New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

One ad states, "Seth Koslow is a far left NYC extremist," showing Koslow next to unconnected images of Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens). The same strategy is deployed in attacks against Nicole Aloise, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Anne Donnelly, with mailers depicting her as a law enforcement official who supports releasing prison inmates, defunding the police and closing Rikers Island.

One mailer calls Aloise and Mamdani "Political Twins" with an image of them wearing matching beige suits, a nod to the 1988 movie "Twins" starring Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Aloise sent a cease and desist letter to the Republican Campaign Committee for the "completely fabricated, false and defamatory" ads, which she called an "illegal smear campaign."

By contrast, Democrats have aimed to show Blakeman and fellow Republicans have mismanaged the county and towns. A Koslow campaign mailer slammed Blakeman for wasting taxpayer money on "an unqualified, illegal personal militia," referring to a volunteer program Blakeman created for gun-licensed county residents to mobilize at his discretion.

Suffolk Democrats, meanwhile, have targeted Legis. Catherine Stark (R-Riverhead) for a December 2023 arrest for allegedly driving under the influence of drugs. Stark pleaded not guilty and the case remains pending nearly two years later. She recently told Newsday she expects a resolution soon, and that she was "more anxious than anybody else to get this monkey off my back."

Blakeman's ads

By far the most visible ads have been Blakeman’s attacks on Koslow.

In Blakeman’s 30-second commercial, sisters of Sarah Goode — a 21-year-old Suffolk County woman who was raped and murdered in 2014 — make a short, emotional plea to Nassau County voters to reject Koslow.

The screen pans to Koslow’s research paper, highlighting nine words including "rape" and "fantasy," suggesting he believes women fantasize about rape. Mailers to Nassau County homes on behalf of the Blakeman campaign reinforce the message.

Blakeman has spent $2.2 million this year on TV ads, mailers and lawn signs after taking in $6.8 million in campaign contributions since being elected 2021. That has given him a financial edge on Koslow, who has raised nearly $985,000 and spent about $350,000 on ads this year.

"The fact that he’s outspending me so drastically and outraising me so significantly, means he can create whatever narrative he wants," Koslow told Newsday this week. "And he’s chosen to create a narrative that is completely false and misleading about a research paper I wrote over a decade ago."

Shield laws

Koslow, a defense attorney and former Queens prosecutor, wrote the paper about rape shield laws that were introduced in the 1970s to encourage more women to report rapes, a historically underreported crime. These laws largely prohibit an accuser's sexual history from being admissible evidence in court so defense teams can't use it to discredit rape allegations.

"Before Rape Shield laws ... the defendant’s strategy was to show that the victim had either consented or ‘must have asked for it,’ " Koslow wrote in the paper, published in the 2013 Touro Law Review as part of a graduation requirement. "As a result of these tactics, and in a very real sense, victims were being ‘victimized’ for a second time" as their private lives were on display during a public trial.

Koslow argued that relevant social media information — like messages between an accuser and her alleged attacker — should be considered by the courts in specific instances to "protect a victim’s privacy while simultaneously allowing the accused to conduct adequate discovery to present a viable defense."

The majority of Koslow’s paper is background information on how rape cases were handled historically in criminal court, using 200 footnotes citing his sources.

"Over 90% of that paper is not my words," Koslow said.

The crux of Blakeman’s ads rests on one sentence in the 29-page paper, in which Koslow cited a piece by Denise Johnson, then an associate justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. "There are a myriad of reasons why a woman would fabricate a rape; some of those reasons include a desire to hide her own promiscuity, a desire/fantasy to be raped, or a desire for vengeance," he wrote, referencing Johnson's work.

But in her paper, Johnson, the first woman to serve on Vermont’s Supreme Court, argued the notion that women fantasized about rape was a myth that allowed criminal cases to focus blame on victims.

In describing the myth, Johnson cited another source: A 1975 book called "Against Our Will," written by journalist and feminist activist Susan Brownmiller, who debunked the idea that rape victims are partly to blame for being raped.

History of vitriolic ads

There is a long history of aggressive ads in Nassau County politics.

In 2023, an ad targeting then-county legislator Josh Lafazan, a Democrat from Woodbury who is Jewish, was criticized as antisemitic because it used images of racist tropes of Jewish people. One mailer showed him with fistfuls of $100 bills, his teeth elongated and yellowed, his nose enlarged and a plume of smoke above his head that forms shadows in the shape of horns.

At the time, a spokesman for the Nassau GOP said religion did not play a role and the committee did not associate illustrations of politicians holding money with any ethnic group, race or religion.

In the 2017 Nassau County executive's race between Democrat Laura Curran and Republican Jack Martins, civil rights activists and religious leaders condemned a flyer put out by the Martins campaign featuring three bare-chested, heavily-tattooed Latino men that read, "Laura Curran: She's MS-13's choice for County Executive. She shouldn't be yours."

Legal exercise or personal belief?

Blakeman, who was elected in 2021 and holds a law degree from California Western School of Law, told Newsday he thinks Koslow espoused the views he put forth in the research paper.

When Newsday asked this week if he personally believes Koslow thought women wanted to be raped, Blakeman said, "Yes" through his spokesman, Chris Boyle, adding he also believes Koslow supports looser penalties for rapists.

"He's got some issue with women that he needs help for," Blakeman told Newsday.

"He has crazy ideas about women ... fantasizing or desiring to be raped and that's why they make false claims of rape. There's something wrong with him," Blakeman said.

Koslow's campaign rejected Blakeman's claims. "Bruce Blakeman is a liar and a disgrace," Koslow said through his campaign manager, Sean Gregory. "He's trying to smear me to distract from his own failures. I've spent my career fighting for women's safety and the toughest punishments for sexual violence ... Nassau County deserves better than a coward who exploits survivors to try and save his political skin."

Oscar Michelen, a criminal defense attorney and adjunct professor at New York Law School, said it's typical for law school students to analyze legal issues.

"Lawyers take up positions many, many times that are not their personal beliefs but they are causes for their client. But a law student writing a law review article — particularly one that is looking to discuss a new technological trend that's occurring — that's just an analysis," said Michelen, who was editor of his law review when he attended law school.

Opposing views 

The issue appeared to strike a nerve for women on both sides of the issue in competing public events in Mineola this week.

About 30 protesters rallied Monday outside the Nassau County Legislature building, where Claudia Borecky, president of the South Shore Women’s Alliance, demanded Blakeman "stop using women’s trauma as a political ploy."

Inside the legislature building an hour later, about 100 women dressed in red gathered to support Blakeman. They held signs that read, "Seth Koslow: Women desire to be raped" and "Koslow puts rapists’ rights ahead of women’s rights."

State and Nassau County Democratic Committee Chairman Jay Jacobs this week told Newsday he believes the Blakeman campaign is "smearing" Koslow to distract from his own record.

"Any time you are seeing a lot of mail and digital and television ads accusing someone of something it's going to have an impact on how we see that person," Jacobs said.

"This is a perfect example of why people hate politicians."

Newsday's Joe Werkmeister contributed to this story.

By Candice Ferrette

candice.ferrette@newsday.com,bahar.ostadan@newsday.comcandiceferrette,

Candice Ferrette covers Nassau County government and politics on Long Island. She has been a reporter at Newsday since 2011.