Suffolk exec candidates run low-key race

Steve Bellone has spent $2.6 million blanketing the region with ads touting his bid for Suffolk County executive. But the Democrat has used them mostly to introduce himself to voters, not to attack his Republican opponent, Angie Carpenter.

With a steep fundraising disadvantage, Carpenter, the Suffolk County treasurer, deems few events too small to attend. She generally sticks to remarks about her record, with an occasional barb for Bellone, the Babylon Town supervisor.

Suffolk's county executive race has been unusually low-key, say political experts who cite the candidates' aversion to the negative, lower interest in off-year elections and the anti-politician climate.

"Given all that's going on nationally and internationally, with unemployment, the debt limit crisis and collapse of the European debt market, it's difficult to crack through on a race like this," said Bruce Gyory, a political science professor at the University at Albany and a Democratic consultant. "It just hasn't generated a great deal of controversy."

Stanley Klein, a political science professor at Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus and a Suffolk GOP committeeman, believes a general frustration with politicians is a factor.

"This year, for many people, there's an anti-government feeling that wipes everything away," he said. "I think more of the stuff coming in the mail is being thrown away without being read than ever before."

Recent Long Island county executive battles drew wider attention.

The 2001 race in Nassau was marked by the county's fiscal crisis and Thomas Suozzi's upset of Thomas DiNapoli, the favorite of Democratic leaders, in the party primary.

In the 2003 county executive race in Suffolk, Democrat Steve Levy put together a successful campaign by highlighting a series of corruption scandals involving Republicans.

This year, the fireworks are few.

Levy, who became a Republican last year in a failed gubernatorial bid, bowed out of the county executive race in March after prosecutors raised questions about his campaign financing.

That left two relative unknowns to focus on introducing themselves to voters, rather than attacking their opponent.

"At the start of this race, Bellone wasn't known outside the Town of Babylon, and Carpenter had even less recognition, given the fact that the only countywide elected offices people know are the executive and district attorney," said Patrick Halpin, a former Democratic Suffolk County executive who backs Bellone.

Early Bellone campaign ads focused on his efforts to lower Babylon's debt and improve government efficiency.

Carpenter focused ads on her experience as a county legislator, treasurer and one-time small-business owner.

Surrogates have accounted for most of the campaign's sparks.

Suffolk GOP chairman John Jay LaValle has attacked Bellone for the 108 percent increase in general fund taxes for the average Babylon homeowner since 1999, the first budget Bellone voted on as a councilman. Bellone says he's cut taxes by $4.3 million since he became supervisor in 2002, and argues that budgets before that aren't relevant.

Suffolk Democratic Chairman Richard Schaffer notes that Carpenter, as county treasurer, this year sought an $800,000 increase in the department's budget before calling the request an error.

He branded Republican attacks on Bellone as "typical distortion. They're trying to blame Steve for everything from the earthquake in Turkey to global warming."