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Huntington Conservatives are looking to clear the way for electing recently appointed District Court Judge Marian Tinari, who is married to town Conservative chairman Frank Tinari.
The minor party has already made a cross-endorsement deal in which Democrats are backing Tinari for the $156,200-a-year post. In exchange, sources say, the Conservatives put forward at least one of their own party members as a town board candidate. That move would help Democratic town board incumbent Susan Berland, who is expected to run with the Independence and Women's Equality lines.
Democrats also named for town board Keith Barrett of Melville, an auto repair shop owner who heads the Huntington Station Business Improvement District.
Sources say Conservatives also offered to back Independence Party town board member Gene Cook if he can persuade the GOP to support Tinari. But Conservative cross-endorsement talks with Republicans broke down when town GOP chairwoman Toni Tepe wanted Conservatives to back the entire town GOP ticket.
Some Democrats remain nervous because Conservatives, by inserting their own candidates, could have them later decline the nomination should a deal materialize with Republicans.
Democratic County Executive Steve Bellone earlier this year appointed Tinari to replace District Court Judge G. Ann Spelman who left three years before her term was up. Tinari is running in November for full six-year term.

Tinari

Huntington Conservatives seek to elect chair's spouse judge

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I have known Marian Tinari for 39 years. Regardless of our muddled system for electing judges, she is one of the most qualified candidates to sit on District Court and is well qualified for the higher courts in the county as well [“The making of a judge, Long Island-style,” News, July 31]. 
Having sat on the Suffolk County Bar Association’s judicial screening committee, and being frequently asked to comment on New York State and federal appointees, I can say Tinari has all the qualifications a screening group looks for in a candidate. 
That said, the entire election system of judges is not working or workable. I say this from the perspective of having litigated all the way to the Court of Appeals in an attempt to restore Suffolk residents’ right to pick our own district attorney. There is no way voters can fill judge positions in a responsible way. 
When bar association committee members, who number more than 20, interview judicial candidates, they frequently walk into the room as total strangers to the committee. Other than the rough screening done by the bar association, there is no system of qualifications or avenue for a voter to get to know candidates. The bare-minimum legal qualifications for the job do not screen out the unqualified candidates nor identify those who are highly qualified. 
It’s time we adopted the systems used by the state to fill the Court of Appeals and by the federal government. When someone from the governor’s office contacts me to learn about the candidate, it’s someone I’ve had numerous cases before in the course of many years, and I’m well qualified to comment on his or her legal abilities and character. This is how judges should be selected, by a neutral committee evaluating real qualifications. 
Even though a highly qualified candidate like Tinari occasionally slips through under the current process, it’s a failed system. 
Maureen S. Hoerger, Islandia 
Editor’s note: The writer has been a trial lawyer for 40 years.

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Letter: New York’s way of choosing judges is flawed

SLVOTE

Justice is blind.
But political patronage sure as heck isn’t.
So what are Suffolk residents to make of a Newsday report Sunday that shows the county’s judicial selection process to be pretty much a patronage mill? A complex web of a mill, with the machinations that virtually guarantee election of favored candidates.
One of the questions raised by the report:
Are judicial slots, like heirlooms, passed along to political “family” members?
In 2010, political leaders, in a rare move, agreed to give a District Court spot vacated by a Republican to a Conservative — with a promise that when the Conservative stepped down, the seat would revert to its “rightful” owner, the Republicans.
The deal went south, however, four years later after a Republican leader attempted to hold a Conservative leader to the agreement, according to the report. But that’s not the norm: Usually when judges of one party step down, they are replaced with judges of the same party, the report said.
Has a Tammany Hall-era reform — “fusion voting,” which was supposed to give minor political party candidates a boost against Republicans and Democrats — morphed into hard knots of cross endorsements that deny voters choice?
Marian Tinari, a Conservative married to county Conservative Chairman Frank Tinari, gained a six-year term as a District Court judge — even before elections were held last fall.
How did she pull off such a feat? Pay attention, now:
Tinari’s, husband, Frank, then the Huntington Conservative party leader, went to the Huntington Town Democratic leader, Mary Collins, with a deal. His party would back two Democrats in exchange for Democrats backing one Conservative candidate in 2014. The deal also called for the Democrats to endorse a Conservative judicial candidate in 2015, who would end up being his wife.
Talk about a long game.
In March 2015, Tinari was appointed to a vacancy on District Court to fill out the three-year term of a retiring judge; by November, her candidacy to a six-year term was bullet proof — with the her husband’s Conservative Party, along with Republican, Democrat, Independence and Reform, cross endorsing her candidacy.
Is it any wonder she had no challenger?
James Sample, a Hofstra University law professor who has studied judicial selection, best characterized such selection of judges. “It’s unseemly, it’s unbecoming; but it’s legal and business as usual for New York state judgeships,” he said.
But doesn’t Nassau do the same thing?
Well, yes — but not to the same degree — which keeps Nassau’s process political but not as hardened as Suffolk’s.
In Nassau, according to Newsday’s report, about 10 percent of judicial candidates in the past 10 years were cross endorsed by major parties; in Suffolk, the percentage is 25 percent — which would appear to give Nassau the more competitive system. 
Except — as voters, no doubt, have noticed — that the rate of cross endorsements is accelerating for both counties. Between 1996 and 2005, one judicial candidate in Nassau and 31 in Suffolk were cross endorsed by major parties; in the past 10 years, the numbers jumped to 25 candidates in Nassau and 63 in Suffolk.
What happens come November?
Well, the parties will have made your selection for you, with cross endorsements for all four of Suffolk’s higher court spots — one County and three Family — that are up come Election Day.
And the mill grinds on.

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