Suffolk redistricting, Take 2

Daily Point

Suffolk GOP has its lineup for mapmaking

Last year, as minority leader of the Suffolk Legislature, Kevin McCaffrey (R-Lindenhurst) chose his members for the bipartisan redistricting commission called for in the county charter.

Long story short: The panel didn’t get started, the Democrats approved lines of their own for new legislative districts based on the 2020 census, County Executive Steve Bellone vetoed them, and now the commission is to be revived for a second try.

So far the Democrats have yet to file their nominees for the commission, which must submit by August maps for the 2023 county elections. Democrats say they will do so once the legislation agreed to by Bellone and McCaffrey goes through. It is expected to be voted on by the full 18-member chamber on March 29.

McCaffrey’s four picks, meanwhile, are filed with the clerk’s office, all with notarized statements that they aren’t seeking legislative seats themselves, nor would serve as paid consultants for any candidates for those seats, nor would serve in any party office above committee person while on the commission.

One of the nominees is Grant Lally, an attorney at the law firm Lally & Misir, in Mineola, who in 2014 was the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Steve Israel in CD3. The Point was told by McCaffrey’s office that Lally’s name substitutes for an earlier nominee, Lorraine Santoianni, vice-chair of the Huntington Republican Committee.

Also nominated is Emily Pines, who served as a State Supreme Court justice in Suffolk’s 10th J.D. between 2002 and 2016. In the 1990s she was Brookhaven Town attorney, and later served until last year as chief of staff to Town Supervisor Ed Romaine.

McCaffrey also tapped Howard Bergson, a practicing attorney in Setauket and former judge in Brookhaven District Court, as well as Belinda Groneman, who has served as an aide to Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) and chair of the Suffolk Community College Foundation’s board of directors.

This commission is designed as an exercise in bipartisanship, not nonpartisanship. So for what it’s worth, nominees are expected to be allies if not members of the party picking them.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Fundraising on the Sound

The money appears to be flowing into the hot Democratic primary for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

At the top of the totem pole so far are Nassau Legis. Josh Lafazan, whose campaign finance filings show $452,548 in receipts between the middle and end of December, and public relations executive and Democratic National Committee member Robert Zimmerman, who declared too late for the most recent filings but on Monday self-reported that his campaign has "raised over $500,000" since getting into the race in mid-January.

Both Democrats are experienced fundraisers — Lafazan in his county legislative races, and Zimmerman in his efforts helping to fund many campaigns over the years.

In other self-reported figures, Oyster Bay businesswoman Reema Rasool’s campaign says she has raised "close to $120K, all from individual contributions, year-to-date."

Melanie D’Arrigo, who challenged Tom Suozzi for this seat from the left in 2020 before the incumbent launched a run for governor, struggled last time out to raise enough to make a dent against Suozzi. She brought in $77,954.34 for the most recent quarter, and even her total receipts for the cycle were below that of the two establishment figures.

One big wild card is State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, who just got into the race this week and whose campaign said it didn’t have an update on fundraising yet — though the Pelham Democrat has been quick to roll out high-profile endorsements from NYC and Westchester County that could help while fishing for dollars.

Then there’s Suffolk Deputy County Executive Jon Kaiman, who also has not yet had to post his first filings.

Will he be able to gather enough contributions to compete in the crowded field?

"I like Jon Kaiman personally," said Nassau and state Democratic Party leader Jay Jacobs. "I just don't know that I can see a lane for him given the resources at this moment in time."

Kaiman told The Point on Friday that his fundraising team "is now up and running and both financial commitments and fundraising dollars are coming in."

He said in a text that the campaign "will have a better sense of the numbers in the coming days."

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

Traitor?

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

Hasidic rabbis want state to get religion on schools

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court ruled that three young men who’d attended a public high school in New Glarus, Wisconsin, could not be compelled to participate in mandatory education beyond the eighth grade.

That case, Wisconsin v. Yoder, is at the root of the Rabbinical Union for the Protection of Traditional Jewish Education’s claim, Rabbi Chaim Lefkowitz says, that ultra-Orthodox yeshivas cannot be forced to prepare their students for college or careers that demand many years of postgraduate education like those required to become a physician or an attorney.

The group sent a letter to the state Board of Regents last month in which it said, "We staunchly oppose any accommodation in Jewish education, secular or religious, because, under Torah law, it is utterly impermissible for us to add or alter in any way, either in quantity or in quality, anything in secular — certainly so in religious — studies from the norm in the past. It is our view that such changes inevitably undermine our core religion passed down to us for millennia."

And that puts Hasidic among the growing fold of advocates arguing that parents, not politicians and educators, should decide how and what their kids are taught. While most of those arguments are not as extreme as the demands of the Hasidic community, state education departments and local school districts are increasingly being thrust into controversy as parents and activists batter schools over "Critical Race Theory," attack books in the library that are too graphic for their sensitivities, and ask that history lessons stop "dwelling" on the uglier aspects of our nation’s history.

New York State requires private and parochial schools to offer secular education that’s "substantially equivalent" to what local public schools deliver. Lefkowitz says his group mostly doesn’t object to that, until high school.

"It’s not that we don’t think ‘substantial equivalence’ is right," Lefkowitz said. "But that’s the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic. We do that. What we don’t do is college preparatory study, because we are not preparing these students for secular colleges, because we don’t want them to attend. That’s not our goal. We’re preparing them for lives of religious study, and certain types of jobs and businesses, and for that you don’t need secular subjects in high school."

One of the foundations of the Yoder decision was that the Amish in question, in traditionally agricultural, successful, and self-supporting communities, were not likely to become a burden to society if they went no further than eighth grade.

In the Yeshiva controversy, critics say many in the community do become a burden, seeking various government benefits because they cannot or will not make a living. Several such students sued four East Ramapo yeshivas in 2015, alleging they were not taught the subjects that are demanded by law, and necessary to become productive citizens.

And some critics of the community say that even up through eighth grade, many boys and girls are learning practically no mathematics, or reading and writing in English, an accusation Lefkowitz decried as simply untrue.

But Lefkowitz objects to the oversight that would be necessary to vet such claims and fix such problems. And he objects to the idea that the state might demand kids be taught in a particular method or manner that could change the way they think, citing "Common Core."

"When I open up the Common Core math, even I don’t understand it," said Lefkowitz, a 53-year-old community activist in Rockland County.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

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