Another Nassau GOP’er tapped for Trinidad, 30 years later
Politics is cyclical, as Nassau Republican chairman Joe Mondello reminded us a few years ago when his party was staggering through a losing streak at the polls.
Thirty years ago, President Ronald Reagan reached into Nassau County for an ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. He nominated Charles Gargano, a well-connected GOP fundraiser from the construction business, who had headed the president’s New York re-election effort.
Five presidents later, a certain cycle has swung back around. President Donald Trump is nominating Mondello, 80, who traveled in the same Nassau circles as Gargano for decades, for the same ambassadorship Gargano held from 1988 to 1991.
In this time of Trumpian drama, a conventional patronage pick seems like a respite of normalcy. Here, a veteran operative is due to be rewarded with the kind of government sinecure that officers of all parties covet.
Gargano was kept on by Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush. Later, Gargano became a power broker in Gov. George Pataki’s administration, doling out contracts as economic development commissioner while also raising campaign cash for the Republican governor.
The phone would be answered “Ambassador Gargano’s office” — just as you’d still address “Governor Pataki” or “Senator D’Amato” or “President Obama.”
So expect Nassau to hear the honorific “Ambassador Mondello” in Nassau as well. No roadblocks have been identified toward his Senate confirmation.
The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has roughly the same population as Nassau County, more than 1.3 million. It is multiethnic and multiracial and has more heavy industry than other English-speaking Caribbean nations.
In 2016 Mondello, who earlier served as state GOP chairman, became the first of Long Island’s two county Republican bosses to endorse Trump, who ended up winning Suffolk chairman John Jay LaValle’s county but losing Nassau.
Mondello says he spoke with the president about a prospective appointment a year ago. One could say it has taken quite some time for the White House to fill the slot, but this delay doesn’t stand out.
After all, the U.S. still lacks a full-fledged ambassador to South Korea, and that’s in a region facing a nuclear-arms crisis.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
