After Smithtown fight, officials reveal what really happens in closed-door executive session

The precise details of what happened behind closed doors on April 7, during a meeting of the Smithtown council, might never be disclosed.

The cameras were off, but this much is known: Deputy Supervisor Thomas J. McCarthy said his colleague, Councilman Thomas Lohmann, punched him. A day later, Lohmann was arrested on an assault charge.

The episode cast a harsh glare onto the all-Republican town board, where there's seldom a whiff of disagreement. 

The altercation marked a rare episode of violence at town board meetings, where the polarization shadowing the country's politics, at worst, bubbles over into screaming matches before the public. It's put a spotlight on a lesser-known, high-stakes gathering of public officials that's a fact of life among Long Island governments: the executive session, where confidential matters, such as legal settlements, hirings and firings, are weighed outside of public view.

While tension brews, officials never resort to violence, numerous elected officials, and retired ones, told Newsday. Alternatively, it's when the public is watching, and the cameras rolling, that fights play out — but even then, the displays of pugilism are verbal lashes, not fistfights.

The image of a physical altercation involving two 68-year old Republican lawmakers elicited reactions of amusement, surprise and condemnation from Long Island's political class. 

Glen Cove Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck said she was "shocked" to see reports about the alleged fight.

"I've never seen anything like that in my life," said Panzenbeck, a Republican who previously served as a city councilwoman.

Former Huntington Town Board member Gene Cook, who sat on the board for 12 years, first as an Independence Party member and later as a Republican, recalled several testy exchanges behind closed doors. 

“I’ve been in a lot of heated executive board discussions, but it never got to that extent. You had your opinions, you shared them, voices would be raised, but never to the point of ever hitting anybody,” Cook said.

Jay Schneiderman, a former Democratic supervisor of the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton, said in an interview that during executive session, tensions usually cooled. 

“You don’t have the playing to the camera that you might have in a regular session,” Schneiderman said in an interview. “Most people actually get along, regardless of party. When it comes down to doing the business of the town, there’s way more agreement than disagreement.”

Confidentiality is central to the process, he said. Executive sessions are treated as a kind of “Vegas” for local government — what is said there is not supposed to leave the room, he said.

Matthew Green, a professor of politics at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., said physical altercations in politics are "pretty rare."

"It's not unheard of," he said in an interview. "Political differences can turn physical. It certainly goes against norms of democratic conduct, which is why you rarely see it." 

'The original Wild West'

Early 1990s Suffolk County Legislature meetings were known for frequent verbal jousting between lawmakers, recalled Huntington Station lawyer Paul Sabatino, who had served as counsel to the body.

“We were the original Wild West,” recalled Sabatino, who later served as a chief deputy county executive for Suffolk. “We had all kinds of incidents. We had shouting and screaming.”

But those arguments played out in public, he said.

The legislature at that time included a host of colorful personalities, he noted, including future Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, future South Shore Rep. Rick Lazio and current Babylon Supervisor Rich Schaffer.

In 2000, then-GOP Legis. Fred Towle was accused by then-Suffolk Republican chairman Tony Apollaro of placing his Glock pistol on Apollaro's desk in act of intimidation, Newsday previously reported. And in 1988, Sondra Bachety whacked lawmaker Steve Englebright with her purse during a party caucus.

“The warfare was out in the open,” Sabatino said. “There was no secret ambush.”

When the same group of warring lawmakers went behind closed doors for executive session,  it got down to business, he said.

“Executive sessions, quite frankly, were probably the most professional part,” he said. “The fighting was out in the open, like it should.”

'Get your heads together'

John Cochrane, a Republican, served on Islip’s Town Board from 2012 until 2024. He said some closed-door sessions grew “heated” with raised voices and cursing when officials felt strongly about a given topic.

But nothing to prompt someone to "go after a person physically, because it’s not worth it,” Cochrane told Newsday.

“Certain politicians have egos. … A lot of times, when there was a point to be made, it did get a little into the slang faster,” he said. “But 99% of the time, when we walked out of the room, we were in agreement as to how to move forward.”

Cochrane learned of the Smithtown executive session fight when his wife texted him a link to Newsday’s article.

“I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,' ” Cochrane said.

The former Islip councilman said he believes the altercation was a bad look in particular for Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim, a Republican who was reelected in November.

“It’s embarrassing for Smithtown, for Ed as supervisor, to let this closed board meeting get out of hand,” Cochrane said.

Former Huntington Supervisor Frank Petrone, a Republican turned Democrat who served from 1994 until 2017, said disagreements were not uncommon during executive sessions. But when things took a turn toward the personal, he would step in, he said.

"I would normally stop it. I’d say ‘take a break; get your heads together’ and that usually worked and I would follow up later with them to see if I could be of any help," Petrone said. "Many times ... it just went away. I think there’s room for settling down. There’s no room for any kind of violence.”

Craig Burnett, professor and chair of the political science department at Florida Atlantic University, said it's unusual for conflicts to escalate to violence. He suspects the issue between Lohmann and McCarthy was likely rooted in personal animus, rather than policy disagreement. McCarthy defeated Lohmann in a town council primary in 2017, but McCarthy voted to appoint him to the town board the following year, Newsday has reported.

"There's a clear value in doing this in public, not fighting necessarily, but making your grievances known in public, because you're allowed to credit claim, or you're allowed to say, 'Look, I did my best,' " Burnett said. "If it was over policy, that would probably have come out [during the meeting], because again, somebody is going to try to make some hay out of this." 

A more hostile world

Assemb. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-St. James), who served on the Smithtown council from 1988 through 2002, said the board frequently sparred during his tenure. At times, he disagreed with longtime Supervisor Patrick Vecchio, who died in 2019. Vecchio served 40 years leading the town until losing a Republican primary to Wehrheim in 2017. 

Vecchio “played hardball from the very first pitch, so you either learned to survive, or you go down swinging,” Fitzpatrick said.

“I’ve had my disagreements with friends, and even opponents, but you don’t raise your voice, you don’t call anybody names, you just state your point. You stick to your guns and principles, and say you respectfully disagree,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’ve had some good back and forth, I can recall. But it never rose to somebody raising a fist to a colleague.”

Lazio, the Republican former congressman of Brightwaters, said the Smithtown incident speaks to an alarming loss of respect between public officials, even among those from the same party.

“It’s clear to me that we have entered an era where profanity, bravado and violence in the public square are no longer shocking,” said Lazio, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2000 against then-first lady Hillary Clinton. “We make partisan excuses when the person misbehaving is from our party. We are outraged when similar conduct is perpetrated by someone from the opposition party. We are slowly losing our ability to see hypocrisy."

Mark Lesko, a former Brookhaven supervisor, was one of three Democrats on the seven-member town board. That made doing business in public, rather than behind closed doors, even more of a necessity, he recalled in an interview. With more meetings livestreamed now, that can help keep elected officials honest, he said. Lesko, an attorney in private practice, is a former acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

“Sometimes those are hot-button issues for people,” he said of the legal and personnel issues that are usually deliberated in private. “I think having television cameras in town hall is … an optical guardrail. It can stop you from losing your cool or losing control because you might be on the evening news that night."