One Walker starts a sentence, another a job

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Daily Point

Nassau GOP helps compensate a loyal family

Rose Marie Walker, the lifelong Hicksville resident who represents Nassau County’s 17th Legislative District, began working part time last week at Republican headquarters on Post Avenue in Westbury.

It was not immediately known how much Walker will earn above her $78,710 legislative salary for her new administrative duties for her party. But her side role happened to begin the same week that her son Rob Walker, the former chief deputy to former County Executive Ed Mangano, surrendered to serve an 18-month federal sentence following his 2019 conviction on an obstruction-of-justice charge.

As a popular community figure who was by all accounts uninvolved in the criminal cloud that engulfed her son, Rose Walker has been in the legislature for over a decade, and before that, was an Oyster Bay Town councilwoman between 2004 and 2010. She was most recently reelected to represent the 17th L.D. in November with 75% of the vote against Democrat Raja K. Singh.

GOP sources told The Point she is expected to work part time two or three days a week in the Oyster Bay office of the county headquarters run by Nassau OTB Chairman Joseph Cairo, who is both the county and Town of Hempstead GOP chairman. A hiring of this type is nothing new; other elected officials have had part-time jobs at county headquarters in the past.

Ex-Assemb. Rob Walker’s case involved the attempted cover-up of a $5,000 cash payment from a county contractor in 2014. While sentencing Walker in December, U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack suggested his conduct was "business as usual" in the "corrupt culture" of Nassau County politics.

Legislator Walker, on the other hand, is a "good person" who has always played a constructive role, a county insider told The Point.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Endorsement fights

With three experienced politicians now vying for the Democratic nomination in New York’s newly redrawn 1st Congressional District, endorsements are a key currency.

That’s the underlying dynamic beneath some of the district shows of support, including the labor unions and local officials behind Suffolk Legis. Bridget Fleming, the former CD1 contenders boosting Legis. Kara Hahn, and the 11 members of Congress announced on Wednesday by Jackie Gordon. She had been expecting to make a second run for the House in the neighboring CD2 against Andrew Garbarino and only targeted CD1 after her Copiague home was switched there via redistricting.

Campaign operatives tell The Point endorsements can serve as a validation of what you stand for, or help introduce you to voters. They can highlight different aspects of a candidate’s background, provide a rationale for potential donors to lend their support, and give voters something to remember you by on mailers or digital materials.

And of course, there are real-world consequences: Unions or other organizations can get members out to vote, community leaders can help strategize and make grassroots connections, and other politicians can help fundraise.

Take Hahn, whose endorsement from 2018 CD1 Democratic candidate Perry Gershon came through on Tuesday, following Hahn endorsements from Nancy Goroff and Anna Throne-Holst, the 2020 and 2016 Democratic nominees. One of the other CD1 primary hopefuls this cycle, John Atkinson, also gave Hahn the thumbs-up. Gershon told The Point he’d be speaking at an upcoming Hahn fundraiser.

Among the list of endorsements provided by Fleming’s campaign beyond unions like Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW are Democratic leaders like county party chairman Rich Schaffer and committee members from Brookhaven, where Hahn has also competed for local support.

The full lists of endorsers for the three leading Democratic candidates are exhaustive and not particularly thrilling reading to any but the junkiest of politicos. But there are certainly some big names missing: an often-coveted endorsement from EMILY’s List, which supports pro-choice women, and now has a plethora of options, is expected to be released this week for CD1.

And there’s even overlap, given that Gordon had already started compiling local and national-group endorsements in her bid for the pre-redistricting CD2.

That’s how we have a dual endorsement for Gordon and Fleming from the Voter Protection Project, a group that helps its preferred candidates in ways ranging from monetary to providing email addresses of potential donors. The group had endorsed both women when they were running in different primaries, says executive director Heather Greven.

As a former campaign manager she said she didn’t "love" dual endorsements, "but for this circumstance it was the best we could do."

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

So they say

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Quick Points

Known and unknown

• If Russia does invade Ukraine, the Ukrainians might have more to worry about than Russian tanks. Russia recently reported a record 200,000 daily coronavirus cases.
• Gov. Kathy Hochul and two progressive state legislators want to change welfare laws so recipients won’t be denied further benefits when the money received exceeds outdated caps on those benefits. Given how well cash bail and accessory housing units were handled, is this a bid for a three-peat?
• Inflation and crime are rising, but a new poll from CBS News and YouGov finds the general measure of respondents’ thoughts on how things are going in America rose by 7 points last month. That juxtaposition will tell a lot about the 2022 elections.
• After Saturday’s video call between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House referred to the call as "professional" and the Kremlin termed it "businesslike." Who said the two foes couldn’t find common ground?
• Rep. Adam Kinzinger says he expects Rudy Giuliani to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot because "that’s the law." That’s too cute.
• Asked whether she will mount a bid for yet another term as Speaker of the House should she be reelected in November, Nancy Pelosi responded, "That’s not a question." By which she really meant, "That’s not a question I want to answer."
• The two-decade-plus drought ravaging the American West is the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years, a new climate study found. To which climate change skeptics said: See, it’s just a cycle, a very looooooooong cycle.
• A new study shows inflation most affects low-income Americans. Did we really need another study to tell us that?

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie

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