Congress, State Senate primaries feature divisions within Dems, GOP

Many Long Island residents will be voting in new congressional or State Senate districts in the Aug. 23 primaries.
Divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties will be put to the test, in very different ways, when New Yorkers from Montauk to Buffalo head to the polls Tuesday in an unusual set of congressional and State Senate primaries.
It’s a rare election in August, when voter turnout is expected to be so low that almost any challenger can claim he or she has a path to victory.
“The great tragedy will be lack of turnout,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Voting is habitual and ritualistic, and people are being told change their rituals and turn out on a Tuesday in August. So this will be a test of whether organizations can turn out votes, whether the left or the right is more efficient at it.”
He added the New Yorkers who are most likely to participate are “voters who have a history of coming out in all conditions, no matter what, or those have a specialized reason for coming out, an ideological reason.”
The primary is being held in August because of a lawsuit that resulted in courts declaring New York’s original redistricting maps for Congress and State Senate to be illegally gerrymandered to favor Democrats. The maps were redrawn by a court-appointed master and the primary was moved from June 28 to Aug. 23.
In multiple Republican contests, including two on Long Island, party-backed candidates are trying to fend off a field of challengers who say they are more aligned with Donald Trump and the party’s extreme right. It will be a gauge of strength of local Republican Party organizations as well as a measure of whether Trump-centric campaigns that have succeeded in other states’ GOP primaries can do so in New York.
For Democrats, the action is centered on open races and newly created districts that feature no incumbent. And there's one heavyweight matchup in Manhattan.
In many of the races, candidates are testing whether Democratic voters want progressives, traditional liberals or centrists to represent them.
And unlike the high-profile Republican contests, Democratic contests aren’t testing party organizational strength, but rather how any individual candidate can muster a strong get-out-the-vote operation to generate enough votes to win.
Two of the key contests are on the Island, where decisions by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) and Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City) to not seek reelection have sparked wide-open races with a total of nine contenders.
If past Island primaries are any indication, far less than 10,000 votes could be enough to win the nomination in a scattered field.
Five Democrats are vying to replace Suozzi in the 3rd Congressional District, which runs from a sliver of northeast Queens to all of Nassau County’s North Shore and dips south along the Nassau-Suffolk border to Massapequa Park:
Activist Melanie D’Arrigo, former North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman, county Legis. Joshua Lafazan, businesswoman Reema Rasool and Democratic National Committee member and longtime public relations executive Robert P. Zimmerman.
Similarly, Rice's decision not to run in leaves the 4th open for four Democratic candidates: Malverne Mayor Keith Corbett, former Hempstead Town Supervisor Laura Gillen, physician Muzibul Huq and county Legis. Carrié Solages.
In Manhattan, the marquee race is in the 12th Congressional District, where the once-a-decade redistricting process of drawing new election boundaries placed veteran Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney in the same district. Now, they are battling one another and newcomer Suraj Patel, an attorney hoping to score an upset.
Also in Manhattan, the reconfigured 10th Congressional District included no incumbents — prompting more than 10 hopefuls to jump in the race.
That includes Rep. Mondaire Jones, who has been representing the 17th District based in Westchester and Rockland counties. If he’d stayed in the 17th, he would have had to run against another Democratic incumbent, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. Instead, Jones relocated to Brooklyn and began running in the new district.
Maloney didn’t avoid a primary, however. He’s being challenged by State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi of Westchester in the 17th — a race pitting an established Democrat against a member of the party’s progressive wing.
On the Republican side, a key race is in Suffolk County where Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) is facing two challengers, David Cornicelli and Mike Rakebrandt, who say he isn’t sufficiently pro-Trump.
The scenario is similar in the 1st Congressional District, which covers the eastern end of Suffolk as well as the county’s North Shore. The GOP committee is backing Nick LaLota, a county legislative official and former elections commissioner, against two others: lobbyist Anthony Figliola and Michelle Bond, who heads a cryptocurrency organization and is supported by Long Island Loud Majority, a pro-Trump organization listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as among “extreme anti-government groups.”
The highest-profile Republican primary upstate arguably is in Western New York where state Republican Party chairman Nick Langworthy is running against Carl Paladino, the 2010 Republican candidate for governor who has drawn headlines over the years for, among other things, the time he spoke highly of Hitler and suggested children were being brainwashed into accepting homosexuality.
Langworthy has told news outlets he’s running partly because he believes that if Paladino is on the ballot in November, it could hurt the statewide Republican ticket.
The State Senate has a dozen primaries with seven Democratic incumbents facing opponents — from a more progressive challenger, in most cases.
One is in northwest Nassau County where Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-North Hills) faces Democratic Socialist Jeremy Joseph.
One of the most intriguing open races is set in Suffolk County. Two veteran pols are vying for the Democratic nomination in a newly realigned district centered around Brentwood: former Sen. Monica Martinez and Assemb. Phil Ramos. Hispanics account for 43% of the population, which makes it Long Island’s first-ever Latino plurality State Senate district.
Divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties will be put to the test, in very different ways, when New Yorkers from Montauk to Buffalo head to the polls Tuesday in an unusual set of congressional and State Senate primaries.
It’s a rare election in August, when voter turnout is expected to be so low that almost any challenger can claim he or she has a path to victory.
“The great tragedy will be lack of turnout,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Voting is habitual and ritualistic, and people are being told change their rituals and turn out on a Tuesday in August. So this will be a test of whether organizations can turn out votes, whether the left or the right is more efficient at it.”
He added the New Yorkers who are most likely to participate are “voters who have a history of coming out in all conditions, no matter what, or those have a specialized reason for coming out, an ideological reason.”
The primary is being held in August because of a lawsuit that resulted in courts declaring New York’s original redistricting maps for Congress and State Senate to be illegally gerrymandered to favor Democrats. The maps were redrawn by a court-appointed master and the primary was moved from June 28 to Aug. 23.
In multiple Republican contests, including two on Long Island, party-backed candidates are trying to fend off a field of challengers who say they are more aligned with Donald Trump and the party’s extreme right. It will be a gauge of strength of local Republican Party organizations as well as a measure of whether Trump-centric campaigns that have succeeded in other states’ GOP primaries can do so in New York.
For Democrats, the action is centered on open races and newly created districts that feature no incumbent. And there's one heavyweight matchup in Manhattan.
In many of the races, candidates are testing whether Democratic voters want progressives, traditional liberals or centrists to represent them.
And unlike the high-profile Republican contests, Democratic contests aren’t testing party organizational strength, but rather how any individual candidate can muster a strong get-out-the-vote operation to generate enough votes to win.
Two of the key contests are on the Island, where decisions by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) and Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City) to not seek reelection have sparked wide-open races with a total of nine contenders.
If past Island primaries are any indication, far less than 10,000 votes could be enough to win the nomination in a scattered field.
Five Democrats are vying to replace Suozzi in the 3rd Congressional District, which runs from a sliver of northeast Queens to all of Nassau County’s North Shore and dips south along the Nassau-Suffolk border to Massapequa Park:
Activist Melanie D’Arrigo, former North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman, county Legis. Joshua Lafazan, businesswoman Reema Rasool and Democratic National Committee member and longtime public relations executive Robert P. Zimmerman.
Similarly, Rice's decision not to run in leaves the 4th open for four Democratic candidates: Malverne Mayor Keith Corbett, former Hempstead Town Supervisor Laura Gillen, physician Muzibul Huq and county Legis. Carrié Solages.
In Manhattan, the marquee race is in the 12th Congressional District, where the once-a-decade redistricting process of drawing new election boundaries placed veteran Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney in the same district. Now, they are battling one another and newcomer Suraj Patel, an attorney hoping to score an upset.
Also in Manhattan, the reconfigured 10th Congressional District included no incumbents — prompting more than 10 hopefuls to jump in the race.
That includes Rep. Mondaire Jones, who has been representing the 17th District based in Westchester and Rockland counties. If he’d stayed in the 17th, he would have had to run against another Democratic incumbent, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. Instead, Jones relocated to Brooklyn and began running in the new district.
Maloney didn’t avoid a primary, however. He’s being challenged by State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi of Westchester in the 17th — a race pitting an established Democrat against a member of the party’s progressive wing.
On the Republican side, a key race is in Suffolk County where Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) is facing two challengers, David Cornicelli and Mike Rakebrandt, who say he isn’t sufficiently pro-Trump.
The scenario is similar in the 1st Congressional District, which covers the eastern end of Suffolk as well as the county’s North Shore. The GOP committee is backing Nick LaLota, a county legislative official and former elections commissioner, against two others: lobbyist Anthony Figliola and Michelle Bond, who heads a cryptocurrency organization and is supported by Long Island Loud Majority, a pro-Trump organization listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as among “extreme anti-government groups.”
The highest-profile Republican primary upstate arguably is in Western New York where state Republican Party chairman Nick Langworthy is running against Carl Paladino, the 2010 Republican candidate for governor who has drawn headlines over the years for, among other things, the time he spoke highly of Hitler and suggested children were being brainwashed into accepting homosexuality.
Langworthy has told news outlets he’s running partly because he believes that if Paladino is on the ballot in November, it could hurt the statewide Republican ticket.
The State Senate has a dozen primaries with seven Democratic incumbents facing opponents — from a more progressive challenger, in most cases.
One is in northwest Nassau County where Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-North Hills) faces Democratic Socialist Jeremy Joseph.
One of the most intriguing open races is set in Suffolk County. Two veteran pols are vying for the Democratic nomination in a newly realigned district centered around Brentwood: former Sen. Monica Martinez and Assemb. Phil Ramos. Hispanics account for 43% of the population, which makes it Long Island’s first-ever Latino plurality State Senate district.

Things to do now on LI Rock climbing? Indoor beach volleyball? Water parks? Arts and crafts? NewsdayTV's Elisa DiStefano and Newsday deputy lifestyle editor Meghan Giannotta have your look at ways to spend your winter break.

Things to do now on LI Rock climbing? Indoor beach volleyball? Water parks? Arts and crafts? NewsdayTV's Elisa DiStefano and Newsday deputy lifestyle editor Meghan Giannotta have your look at ways to spend your winter break.