CD1 getting crowded on the GOP side, too

February 23, 2022

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Daily Point

Crowded horseshoe

Nicholas LaLota, Republican chief of staff to the Suffolk County Legislature, is now in the crowded race for CD1, joining other legislative denizens, Bridget Fleming and Kara Hahn, who sit on the other side of the aisle.

"Might make for some awkwardness around the horseshoe," joked the Republican former county elections commissioner.

There was also a bit of awkwardness at his being chosen in recent days as the county Republicans’ pick for the district, given that LaLota did not participate in the first screenings for the nomination last year. Other candidates that did were passed over.

The party’s pick for Lee Zeldin’s soon-to-be-vacated seat had been up in the air pending the new district lines devised by Albany Democrats in the traditional post-census reshuffling. Suffolk GOP chairman Jesse Garcia told The Point on Wednesday that the new district makeup prompted a reappraisal after the early screenings.

Garcia noted that LaLota had screened with the Suffolk Republican committee in 2020 for the neighboring 2nd Congressional District, and he said LaLota was the runner-up behind Andrew Garbarino, who went on to win the seat.

The Navy veteran lives in Amityville, just outside the gerrymandered CD1’s lines on the new maps, but said he would move into the district and pointed to his ties to the territory, which includes the Town of Huntington, where he went to high school and met his wife, and the Town of Oyster Bay, where his three kids (ages 12, 10, and 7) go to school.

Some other CD1 GOP hopefuls aren’t thrilled about the newcomer. Radio presence and veterans advocate Robert Cornicelli’s campaign manager called the GOP’s endorsement of LaLota "a slap in the face to every committee person who attended screenings this summer."

Anthony Figliola, a former Brookhaven Town deputy supervisor, told The Point that he had announced his run for Congress in January and "nothing has changed."

If that results in a primary, it will just be the first of a series of challenges for the eventual CD1 Republican contender. There are easier seats for Republicans to take around the country, ones with cheaper media markets where national money could go much further. The new CD1 configuration would have gone for President Joe Biden by about 10 percentage points last cycle.

But it’s an uncertain political time. LaLota pointed to the 2021 wave gubernatorial election in Virginia where Glenn Youngkin overcame a similar Biden advantage. LaLota said it was too early to have received big fundraising assurances from national groups, but he set a goal of raising $100,000 in his first 10 days, and $300,000 in his first 45 days.

Garcia suggested the "smart money" would flow to LaLota, saying the "path to taking back the House is going to always go through New York 1."

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

One Suffolk resident’s Cuomo defense

Michelle Landa of St. James, a retired teacher, has no background as a political operative, or party activist, or cultist, or conspiracy theorist.

By all appearances, she’s a Long Islander who plainly insists that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was railroaded out of office based on what’s been made public so far. And she isn’t letting it go six months after his resignation in the wake of now-famous sexual harassment allegations.

"I don’t work for Gov. Cuomo, I’ve never met him, probably never will in my life," Landa told The Point on Wednesday — and says the same of others who belong to the ad hoc New Yorkers for Justice. "I am doing this because I believe in due process. I do not believe Cuomo was treated fairly by the press or that the AG treated him fairly."

The fact that he hasn’t faced criminal charges despite complaints officially deemed credible, she said, supports the idea that Cuomo quit because "the deck was stacked against him." She echoes some of the Cuomo camp’s critiques of the report issued by Attorney General Tish James. She says he was a fine leader and governor, emphasized by his performance during the pandemic during which she was stuck for part of the time in Florida — but that her goal is not to return him to office but to redeem his reputation.

This week, people connected with organized labor who don’t know Landa or the group received postcards in the mail. One side has a photo of Cuomo signing legislation surrounded by a slew of state labor leaders. The text on the other side calls his ouster "a politically motivated ambush" and says he "understands, respects and appreciates the value of organized labor and has set standards for the rest of the country."

The card she sent out states the message was sent "for the sole purpose of public awareness, not in conjunction with any political candidate or campaign." So far, she says the group has several hundred people, among thousands in other circles who agree. "We feel we have been disenfranchised," Landa said.

It will take time before that becomes more than a minority viewpoint — if it ever does. A Siena poll released Tuesday found that far more New Yorkers surveyed believe James than Cuomo regarding the harassment allegations. It said 47% agreed Cuomo is a "serial sexual harasser" while 27% say they saw the probe as a "political hit job."

But he isn’t going away, and neither are his sincerest fans.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Pencil Point

Food for thought

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Final Point

Lines of another kind

There may not be the brightest of legal lines currently drawn between the expediencies of state party leaders and the activities of New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission.

That’s been one of the essential dilemmas of the bipartisan system, created in the middle of the last decade, under the declared goal of preventing gerrymandering.

But Republicans now mounting a court challenge to the maps recently approved by the Democrat-run State Legislature are looking to test at what distance from the political fray the panel is supposed to conduct itself.

In other words: How independent were they, given the result?

In a lawsuit pending before State Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister in Steuben County, the 14 GOP plaintiffs represented by former State Sen. George Winner of Elmira are asking for emails and materials that could tell them whether the Democrats "acted with impermissible partisan intent" in drawing district lines.

Or, the desired communications could show whether the lawmakers or Gov. Kathy Hochul "worked with the Democratic IRC Commissioners, politicians, officials, or interest groups to frustrate the mandatory constitutional process for redistricting," the lawyers say.

As laid out in the constitutional amendment creating the new process, the IRC was going to agree on legislative lines, submit them to the legislature, and have another try at it, if necessary. If lawmakers couldn’t agree to approve those maps, the party leaders would be free to do the job the old-fashioned way, on their own.

Instead, the bipartisan panel ended up sending separate partisan plans to the legislature, and when both were rejected, the IRC fell short of sending an alternative, allowing the Senate and Assembly leaders to finish the task.

Jack Martins of Nassau County, who served as Republican vice chairman on the IRC, said disclosing exchanges between the commission members, as state appointees, and the government leadership, could help the public understand how this first-ever process worked and who was involved in it.

Democratic operatives say there is no transgression in commission members communicating with anyone on the outside. Disclosures could depend on whether they are internal exchanges between, say, a legislator and staff, which are generally protected, or between state officials and those who are not.

This tactic of exploring for bias in the process to challenge legislative lines has occurred in past redistricting litigation. In the 2012 process, before the IRC was created, then-State Senate Democratic Conference leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, then in the minority, challenged not just the maps but the GOP majority’s addition of a 63rd Senate seat.

The Democrats’ lawyer that time was Eric Hecker of Manhattan. And in a twist of circumstance, Hecker is now a key attorney defending rather than challenging the legislature’s lines in court.