A look at who Newsday's editorial board is supporting this election season.


Opinion

With our choice for president of the United States, Newsday’s editorial board begins its endorsement of candidates seeking federal and state offices in 2020. 
Our recommendations to Long Island voters will be published in the coming weeks, the culmination of a process that began in September and will include interviews, via Zoom or by telephone, with nearly 70 candidates. We ask each candidate about a range of issues relevant to the seat for which they are running, from major topics of wide-ranging interest to issues that are specific to the district they hope to represent. The candidates the board endorses in your districts will be listed at <a href="http://newsday.com/endorsements2020">newsday.com/endorsements2020</a>. 
Our decisions are relative; we compare the major candidates in a race and decide which one we think will best represent Long Island’s interests. The editorial board operates independently of Newsday’s newsgathering operation. 
This is an election season unlike any other. It is being conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, and features an unprecedented surge of early voting and mail-in voting all around the country, all of it occurring amid unfounded attacks on the integrity of the process. Do not let that dissuade you from doing your duty as a citizen of this country. 
Please vote, by whatever means is best for you. You can vote absentee, by mailing in the ballot you have requested or by dropping it off at a board of elections headquarters, an early voting site, or your polling place on Election Day. Or you can vote in person on Nov. 3. Whatever you decide, please choose to make your voice heard. 
— The editorial board

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Introducing Newsday's 2020 endorsements

Inside Newsday's 2020 endorsements

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Look up who was endorsed in your district

generic LI voting booth--cropped

Suffolk County residents: Flip your ballot. 
It has two sides this year, whether you vote in person or by mail. Candidates for elected office are on the front page. But the reverse side of the ballot also is important, with three propositions that seek your vote. All Suffolk residents can vote on two of them; the third is only for those who live in Riverhead Town. 
The issues are significant. Your vote will matter. Please turn the ballot over and make your voice heard. 
Proposal One: This would lengthen the term of office for a Suffolk County legislator to four years from the current two years. A similar proposal put to voters in 2002 was defeated handily. County residents would be right to again reject this proposition. Continuity in county government is provided by a four-year term for the county executive, which is appropriate for that position. A two-year term for lawmakers gives the public a way to more frequently register disapproval and course-correct if it is dissatisfied with the direction of county government. 
Newsday recommends voting no on Proposal One. 
Proposal Two: You won’t know it from the obtuse and misleading language in this proposal, but Suffolk County is asking to avoid repaying $183 million of the money it took from a Drinking Water Protection Program reserve fund meant to stabilize sewer district taxes. The county was required to pay back the money by a court order and a settlement agreement that ended two lawsuits. County Executive Steve Bellone wants the money to help balance Suffolk’s perennially stressed budget, in more trouble now because of coronavirus-related expenses and revenue shortfalls. 
The first borrowing, of $29.4 million, took place in 2011 under former County Executive Steve Levy to balance the budget. A state Supreme Court justice and the Appellate Division have ruled that the county must repay the money. The second borrowing, of $171.3 million, also to balance the budget, was part of a settlement between Bellone and environmental groups that let the county take the money from 2014 to 2017 and repay it through 2029, a proposal approved by Suffolk voters in 2014. Some $154 million is still owed. This referendum also proposes to take another $15 million from the fund for budget relief. 
In other words, Suffolk wants voters to overrule a court order and to undo an agreement they previously voted to approve. That’s wrong. And it’s bad faith, and it might make voters distrust the entire referendum process. 
Newsday recommends voting no on Proposal Two. 
Proposal Three: This would lengthen the term of office for the Riverhead Town supervisor to four years from the current two years. Though Riverhead voters have rejected similar proposals, this is a good idea. Town supervisors, like other executive positions in government, need time to develop the plans they were elected to implement, and by the nature of their position must think of the long-term future of their towns. 
Newsday recommends voting yes on Proposal Three. 
— The editorial board

Editorials

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Suffolk voters must turn the ballot

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America is in peril. Our nation is buffeted by crises, and the warning lights are flashing red. We need a president with experience and character, someone who can extinguish the flames and rebuild the foundation. 
America needs Joe Biden. 
The former vice president believes that we can find our way back from the precipice, that progress can be made, and must be made, by working with the other side. That’s essential to solving our baseline crisis — the way our nation is being torn apart by our differences. 
Biden’s promise to work with Republicans, a hallmark of his 36 years in the U.S. Senate, should be celebrated. Our politics are rancid, festering with division and confrontation on nearly every issue. Finding some semblance of bipartisanship will help us deal with other problems. Failing to do that will doom us. Biden repeatedly promised to represent every American, not just those who voted for him. 
It takes two to collaborate, of course, but Biden’s optimism that he can bridge this gulf fosters confidence. He doesn’t boast that he alone can fix the problem — he knows no one person can — but that together we can make it better. 
His faith in America and Americans is inspiring, and it’s a message that’s right for these times. 
As a nation, we face a host of epochal problems. The health and economic impacts of the coronavirus. Rising economic inequality. Racial disparities in criminal justice, health, education, the environment and the economy. The existential threat of climate change. The rise of authoritarianism around the world, and a dangerous surge at home in the belief that government is the oppressor and individual freedom is an end in itself. 
These are complex problems. Some demand fundamental changes. Some beg for a return to the values that long guided this nation. In this regard, Biden is much more than the candidate who is not Donald Trump. He brings a skill set and a big toolbox forged by a lifetime of experience. 
Biden, the 77-year-old Democrat from Delaware, has been here before. As vice president, he and President Barack Obama inherited the Great Recession and guided the country on the long road back. Their stimulus plan helped spark 78 consecutive months of job growth, producing 1.5 million more jobs in their last three years than in Trump’s first three years. The unemployment rate dropped from 10% to less than 5%. 
Now as then, Biden is promoting a big infrastructure initiative to get Americans back to work. This time he is smartly marrying his $2 trillion plan to clean energy and climate change, whose effects threaten Long Island with rising seas and flooding. 
Biden, who also helped successfully handle the Ebola epidemic in 2014, including the preparation of a pandemic response playbook ignored by the Trump administration, has been rightly critical of the president’s response to the coronavirus. Biden would encourage mask mandates and social distancing, develop a strong trace-test-isolate program, and institute new lockdowns if necessary. And he would let science and scientists determine whether a vaccine is effective and when it can be distributed. 
Biden believes in the capacity of government to do good. He would restore and maintain the norms of democracy and decency that have allowed this republic to function for 240 years. And he would criticize and hold to account the world’s worst strongmen as necessary. 
Biden would act to restore the credibility our nation has lost as a world leader, using his deep knowledge and myriad overseas relationships to shore up alliances that have worked for decades to promote order and keep our enemies in check. He would put America back in the Paris climate change agreement and the World Health Organization, and he wants to confront China and Russia with an American-led coalition instead of ineffectively going it alone against the Chinese and coddling Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 
Beyond policy, Biden offers the decency America craves. His inclination is to empathy; by putting himself in someone else’s position and feeling their pain and frustration, he finds the commonality that leads to real change. He will consider facts carefully and calmly, seeking out analysis on all sides of an issue before making a rational decision grounded in reality. 
His career is a study in avoiding extremism. We see that now in debates over health care, racial justice, and the Supreme Court, among others. That’s what our inflamed system needs — someone to turn the temperature down, not up. 
Biden has faith in America’s potential, its ambition, its ability to achieve amazing things, its wide vision and wide arms. He highlights its strengths, not its shortcomings, its dreams, not its divisions. And he wants us to support one another. He’s not looking at some gauzy and unrealistic version of our past but the bright contours of our future. 
Joe Biden believes in America. And America needs that now more than ever. 
Newsday endorses Joe Biden for president of the United States. 
— The editorial board

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Joe Biden for president

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In the 2016 presidential election, the nation tried something new. We elected an outsider promising he’d bust our governance out of its rut and speak plain truths. Donald Trump claimed he’d end the entrenched corruption of insider politics and cozy lobbying and quickly solve the nation’s thorniest dilemmas — ending deficits, lowering taxes significantly for all, rebuilding our infrastructure efficiently and imposing our will internationally. 
Four years ago, Trump’s message convinced enough voters to send him to the White House. And even now his appeal for many goes beyond the ugly attitudes and beliefs that are a constant undercurrent in his behavior — the racism, division and a bleak view of government as the oppressor. In every community in this nation, supporters of President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden work and worship together, volunteer together, socialize together and support one another. Believing either group is devoid of kind, well-intentioned people promotes a corrosive falsehood that ill serves our society. 
But there is no denying that Trump failed to deliver on the vast majority of his promises. 
Even before COVID-19 besieged our nation, the president did not deserve another term. Now, having watched him preen and flounder and emit flashes of anger and self-pity as roughly 215,000 of us died and millions were sickened, it is clear he cannot lead the nation. 
We must move beyond the turmoil and chaos of his presidency. 
The president’s response to the pandemic and his behavior after he was infected are disqualifying. The crisis intensified the impact of Trump’s missteps and malignancies, and laid bare the devastating effects of ignoring science and caring for little else than his own political and personal considerations. 
The roots of Trump’s failed response go back to the disbanding of the White House pandemic response team in 2018. But the crisis began to take shape shortly after the virus was discovered in China, as Trump immediately began double-speaking, telling the American people that we faced no significant threat even as his own scientific experts were telling him the pandemic was the greatest challenge of his presidency. 
Ignoring the experts on the coronavirus and not telling the nation about its severity, ostensibly to prevent panic, was dangerous. In April, as the first wave of infections started to wane, experts projected we could hold deaths in the United States to about 65,000 if we continued to follow restrictions. But Trump led the charge to ignore or lift restrictions. He made fun of mask wearing. He refused to support the plan of closure and reopening issued by his own administration. And he downplayed the dangerousness of the disease as a "hoax." 
Now nearly four times as many Americans are dead from the coronavirus as were killed in the Vietnam War, whose casualties defined two presidencies. Had Trump pushed mask wearing and sensible restrictions on distancing and public gatherings, more Americans would be alive, as shown by far better public health results in other nations. And the economy would be stronger, with fewer jobs lost and less disruption in our personal lives. Trump’s inability to lead responsibly during the pandemic has been devastating, but his biggest shortcomings as president became apparent through his own illness. 
Even after he and first lady Melania Trump tested positive on Oct. 2, Trump continued to mingle with his staff and others, exposing them to his infection. His response, upon being attacked for jumping in a vehicle with Secret Service agents to do a drive-by of supporters outside Walter Reed medical center, was that there was nothing to worry about because he already had the virus. 
He seemed to not even understand the idea that he should care about infecting others. More than 35 people connected with the White House have contracted the virus. And his telling Americans, "Don’t be afraid of COVID," when so many have suffered so much and hardly any have access to the level of care he received, was staggeringly callous. 
For more than three years, Trump largely got away with upending societal norms and flouting rules because of a booming economy and no new wars. The president’s coalition was well-populated with elected officials and religious leaders willing to enter into a sell-your-soul deal. He earned their loyalty by fighting the culture wars they treasure, elevating to the bench the dogmatically conservative judges they demand, and eviscerating the taxes and regulations they despise. 
Trump also escaped impeachment after he was accused of abuse of power and obstruction of justice over Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. An investigation showed obstruction of justice likely occurred repeatedly, but Congress chose not to act on those conclusions. Impeached in the House on a separate accusation of pushing Ukraine to investigate the son of Biden, who he considered his strongest reelection opponent, Trump avoided conviction by the Senate with only one Republican vote against him. Now, because of that refusal to execute the necessary checks and balances on the executive branch, the GOP is in danger of losing its Senate majority. We fear history will reveal that among Trump’s most subversive moves was his effort to use the Justice Department to thwart opponents and advance his own interests. 
Even so, until coronavirus infection rates exploded in the United States and shutdown orders cascaded across the nation, it seemed Trump’s case for another term might find a receptive audience. Most voters who supported him in 2016 still seemed ready to do so, even as Trump’s opponents raged at his trampling of traditions and norms. Loyalists could cite improved trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada, the seeds of a shift in the Middle East that leaves Israel with more allies and fewer threats, criminal justice reform and degrading the threat of ISIS. 
But the positives, even before the pandemic hit, were dwarfed by the negatives. The booming economy was hobbled by his refusal to fight for an additional round of stimulus spending. And Trump’s missteps included attacks on the Affordable Care Act that could cost tens of millions of Americans their coverage, a lack of transparency on personal finances, the enrichment of himself and his family via money from the U.S. government and other nations spent at his businesses, and his refusal to condemn white supremacists. Trump’s willingness to defame non-white immigrants, both legal and undocumented, and to separate children from their parents, is appalling. His inexplicable fawning over Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom U.S. intelligence agencies say worked tirelessly to get Trump elected, is frightening. 
Granting Trump a term as president has cost our nation a great deal. His performance in office doesn’t justify granting him a second. 
— The editorial board

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Donald Trump failed to deliver

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New York State reliably votes Democratic in presidential elections, so candidates don't spent much campaign time here, making big promises. But a Biden presidency would be best for meeting Long Island's needs. 
<h2>INFRASTRUCTURE</h2> 
One of the great broken promises of the Donald Trump presidency is the little interest he had in building America up. There is bipartisan support for a major federal infrastructure package, yet time and again Trump has failed to get the deal done. 
His construction failures have consequences for projects of all sizes. New York megajobs such as fixing crumbling Hudson River rail tunnels and expanding the Second Avenue Subway are key connectors for Long Islanders and the regional economy. They’re stalled. Mass transit does not appear to be a Trump priority, even as protecting and improving the Long Island Rail Road is key to the Island’s growth. 
Joe Biden offers a different future, speaking at last month's debate about electric vehicles and charging stations. That future also includes "the highways of tomorrow," according to his 2017 book, with "dedicated lanes for self-driving cars." He envisions bullet trains capable of traveling more than 220 mph and jets going coast to coast "in an hour or two." 
<h2>TAXES</h2> 
The 2017 Republican tax law included a dagger to the heart of Long Island: capping the deductibility of state and local taxes at $10,000. 
The changes meant that a wide swathe of Long Islanders, got modest tax cuts. But the SALT cap affected New York more than almost any other state, and, overall, it resulted in an even deeper transfer of tax payments from New York to other states. 
Biden has supported repealing the cap, and that’s good. His tax plan in general is much fairer. He has promised not to ask those making under $400,000 per year to pay more in taxes, but he has smart proposals to raise more money from those who can afford it. That includes raising the top individual income rate back to 39.6% and working to ensure that those making more than $1 million pay the same rate on investment income as they do on wages. Those are much better paths to increasing tax revenue than on the backs of New York and other blue states. 
<h2>IMMIGRATION</h2> 
Long Island has been a home for immigrants and the descendants of immigrants achieving the American dream. American Community Survey figures from 2019 show that more than 23% of Nassau County and more than 15% of Suffolk County residents are foreign born. Immigrants represent some 20% of the economic output of Long Islanders, according to a 2015 Fiscal Policy Institute study, and they are crucial to our East End agriculture, our technology corridors and medical and scientific research clusters. 
Biden understands that America must be a beacon for newcomers and that those who have lived productive lives and raised families here need support. That’s why he would protect recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs, who for years have built Long Island lives. He will secure American borders and points of entry with tactics and technology and foreign aid, not rhetoric or boasting about a wall, which isn’t an effective means against the likes of MS-13. Most of all, Biden will work to attract the immigrants of the 21st century who will grant Long Island and the rest of the country an innovative future. 
<h2>LABOR</h2> 
Long Islanders know the value of organized labor in fighting for working people and bolstering families into the middle class. The sometime excesses of powerful union officials and eye-bulging public-sector contracts are well-known, but under Trump, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. The president and his allies have worked to undermine unions and failed to stand up for workers, from overtime rules to economic development. He hasn’t been able to turn back time on American manufacturing jobs. 
Biden, on the other hand, proposes measures that would make it easier for workers to organize and collectively bargain. He envisions a role for labor in the future by requiring labor protections for future infrastructure and clean-energy investments. And he wants to raise the minimum wage, while Trump has left it at $7.25, where it has been for more than a decade. A stronger union ecosystem is the right and overdue path toward reducing inequality on Long Island and beyond. 
<h2>CLIMATE</h2> 
The threat from extreme weather stirred up by climate change is a clear threat on Long Island, hit hard already by the likes of superstorm Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaias. 
Yet Trump has been lost at sea. Apart from inane comments — "It will start getting cooler," he said recently — he has done his best to roll back protections of clean air and clean water and reasonable fuel efficiency standards, all while leading the country out of the landmark Paris climate accord. 
The stakes are high. Abandoning international efforts to reduce emissions threatens our coastlines. Superfund cleanups in the region are moving slow. So are the federal government's plans for wind development in the New York Bight. And consider that we depend on a sole source aquifer for our drinking water, and groundwater that is recharged and partially filtered by wetlands, which also help to reduce floods. Trump has worked to reduce protections on smaller wetlands and streams. 
Biden grasps the gravity of the moment, from his introduction decades ago of early climate legislation in Congress, to his idea for a Civilian Climate Corps to put people to work while improving resiliency and conserving public lands. His $2 trillion clean energy transformation plan is an acknowledgement of the nation’s challenges, eminently obvious here.

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Biden is best for Long Island on ...

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Nicholas J. Caracappa has a familiar name in Suffolk County’s Fourth Legislative District, which covers parts of Brookhaven Town, including Selden, Centereach and Farmingville. His mom, Rose, held the seat until 1995, when his brother, Joe, took it on, filling the spot until he was term limited in 2007. 
Now, Nicholas J. Caracappa, a Selden Republican, is running for the seat in a special election, to complete the term of Thomas Muratore who died last month. 
A retired police officer, Muratore served in the Suffolk County Legislature for more than a decade. He fought illegal dumping, pushed for park land, protested wasteful spending, and always worked on his constituents’ needs. 
This race’s winner should learn from his example. 
There are a lot of similarities between Caracappa and his opponent, Selden Democrat Joseph A. Turdik. Caracappa works at the Suffolk County Water Authority, Turdik at the county Board of Elections. Both talk of deep connections to their community, and of needing to wait until they get into office before committing to specific fiscal proposals. 
But Caracappa, 53, has a stronger handle on his district’s needs, pointing to specific traffic and road-safety concerns, and broader issues like economic development, affordable housing, and the need for sewers. He prioritizes the county’s water quality challenges and needs, and promises to work across the aisle. And while he lacked clear solutions, Caracappa recognizes the severity of the county’s fiscal woes. 
Turdik, 67, has run for the legislature against Muratore before. His central argument is that he’d be part of the majority and could bring more funding to the district. 
If elected, Caracappa should follow through on his pledge to work with the majority, while focusing on water quality matters and other district needs, from tackling unsafe county roads to encouraging new businesses to come the area and create jobs. 
Newsday endorses Caracappa. 
— The editorial board

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Nicholas J. Caracappa to represent New York's 4th Legislative District

Newsday endorses Caracappa in 4th Legislative District

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Election officials in Nassau and Suffolk counties are trying to make early, in-person voting safe and easy during this pandemic general election. If you’re able to, it’s a good way to cast your ballot and keep your neighbors safe by cutting down on Election Day lines and postal mishaps.


The case for voting early on Long Island

Newsday

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New York City looms large in Long Island Republican campaign rhetoric this year, from President Donald Trump down to the State Assembly. Newsday Opinion’s Mark Chiusano looks at why the  GOP tradition of comparing LI to NYC is getting a reboot this year, with bail changes, criminal justice reform protests, and the Amazon HQ2 fight.


Favorite punching bag for Long Island GOP campaigns? NYC

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Newsday Opinion endorsements 2020

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