Mondello clashes over endorsements

Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Mondello is wearing a cast on his right hand after an angry clash with Suffolk Conservative chairman Edward Walsh over endorsements for this year's bi-county crop of State Supreme Court candidates.

No, Mondello didn't punch Walsh. He punched a locker during a telephone argument with Walsh that delayed the GOP judicial convention at Levittown Town Hall in Hicksville, where some 200 party activists were waiting in the main room.

The result: a "boxer's fracture" of a finger bone on his right hand, Mondello said.

"I got so angry I punched a locker, a small locker, and I broke my hand," Mondello said. "You'd think I'd be old enough to know better than that. I did it. I don't deny it. I was ticked off at the way things were going, I lost my temper. I punched the locker."

Mondello, 73, said his orthopedist told him he must wear the cast for a month.

"At least it shows I'm still passionate," Mondello said of the Sept. 22 injury. "It was because I felt they were going back on their word. I won my point, for what it's worth."

Walsh said Conservatives had gotten "their point across" by getting three party members on the judicial slate. "As far as Mondello's injury, it could be worse -- at least lockers don't punch back," Walsh said. "I hope he gets better."

Sources with knowledge of the argument say it started when Mondello learned on arrival at the convention hall that a Suffolk Conservative candidate that he had agreed to cross-endorse -- the county's top homicide prosecutor, John Collins -- also had accepted the Democratic Party line. State Supreme Court candidates run in both Suffolk and Nassau. For the nearly three decades that Mondello has been head of Nassau Republicans, he has opposed major party cross-endorsement of judges, though a few have received both party lines.

"This is the way I feel," Mondello said last week. "This is a lifelong thing. I think we have to stand for something. If you're going to be Republican, Democrat, Conservative and Independent, what's the point? You've got to give people a choice."

Collins' Democratic endorsement surprised Mondello, who had agreed to back two Suffolk Conservatives for judge after, sources said, Walsh threatened to instead make a cross-endorsement deal with the Democratic and Independence parties.

The argument lasted two hours before Collins agreed to turn down the Democratic nomination, sources said.