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Daily Point

Well AOC knows about primaries

Former CNBC reporter Michelle Caruso-Cabrera grabbed headlines this week for her primary challenge against House phenom Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

While a handful of Democrats and Republicans are already in the CD14 race, Caruso-Cabrera has the built-in pluses of her TV career and an 80,000-follower Twitter account. Her website describes her as fluent in Spanish. Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, has been public about her ongoing Spanish-language learning. 

But Caruso-Cabrera occupies a different political lane. She is the author of a 2010 book “You Know I'm Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” in which she calls herself a “fiscal conservative and a social liberal” whose favorite president is Ronald Reagan. 

The book includes an introduction by Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to President Donald Trump, plus a chapter titled “Shrinking the Budget.”

A 2010 U.S. News & World Report item around the launch of her book notes the following: “Among her money-saving suggestions: End Social Security and Medicare.”

AOC, of course, is a big supporter of Medicare for All and its standard-bearer, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

While AOC is on the leftmost edge of the Democratic Party, Caruso-Cabrera was once a registered Republican in New York, according to city Board of Elections records. (She’s now a Democrat.)

A Caruso-Cabrera representative sent a statement to The Point on the subject, with a little Amazon filtered in: “We all grow and change. I have. Wish AOC would. She killed 25,000 jobs.”

Could this attack from the right work? There is a conservative and religious element in the district, but conservative Democratic City Councilman Fernando Cabrera is also in the race and could help split that vote. The energy on the left is still strong in the CD, too: insurgent Queens district attorney challenger Tiffany Caban almost won her 2019 primary off the strength of district hotbeds like Astoria. 

Former Ocasio-Cortez campaign manager Virginia Ramos Rios says voters in 2018 seemed happy to have an option in the primary, but even still a new challenger “would have to make a pretty compelling case.”

—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

Onward and upward

Nassau County CSEA President Jerry Laricchiuta received a promotion this week: members of the municipal union Islandwide voted overwhelmingly to elect him to the regional presidency.

Laricchiuta’s new role, which he won with 73% of the vote, owes at least a little something to his recent success negotiating a contract for workers at Nassau University Medical Center that includes 8% raises over four years and a no-layoff clause.

“I am very proud of our contracts, and particularly that contract with the hospital,” said Laricchiuta, who has run the Nassau shop since 2005. “It was a tough deal to get.”

The perceived victory Laricchiuta notched with the NUMC contract is one of the biggest reasons the Nassau Interim Finance Authority decided to assert control over the contracts and finances of the hospital, whose $188 million in bonded debt is backstopped by the county.

Laricchiuta, who showed up at an NUMC meeting with protesters last month, is concerned that the new head of the hospital will try to remake it into a more economically viable facility that will cost his members their jobs and his union its members.

Laricchiuta says his new role will be “more about the politics and oversight, and less about negotiating contracts and fighting grievances, but I’ll still be ready to step in on the local level when necessary.”

Stepping into Laricchiuta’s old role will be Ron Gurrieri, 64, a police medic before he became a union officer. Gurrieri says his big focus will be Nassau County’s CSEA contract, which expired just more than two years ago. 

“I just want to get back to the negotiating table, we have dates set to start talking in March, and get a contract for the county employees,” Gurrieri said.  

Until recently, that wouldn’t have seemed likely. Now, though, things may have changed with the county’s detective union inking a new deal through negotiations that includes the labor attorney NIFA demanded be at the table, Gary Dellaverson. The Police Benevolent Association, generally the county’s most powerful union, did not like that deal or Dellaverson’s involvement in it and wanted the county’s unions to refuse to ink contracts with Dellaverson at the table. 

But the detectives union moved forward anyway, and now the CSEA, after a shuffle of leadership, may do the same.

—Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

Full support

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Reference Point

The high cost of care

As Democratic candidates continue to argue about Medicare for All, and as President Donald Trump blasts the proposal’s supporters as socialists, it’s worth noting that this is a battle that’s been brewing for decades.

Back in 1960, Newsday’s editorial board took note of rapidly increasing costs at hospital services insurer Blue Cross — what the board described as a nearly 100% increase in three years — and tied it to a growing demand for federal medical insurance.

“The point is that if private, voluntary agencies can’t do the job without constantly raising the charges, this pressure for ‘socialized medicine’ may well become irresistible,” the board wrote on Feb. 9, 1960.

The board pitched a couple of now-familiar solutions — stopping people from using hospitals for minor ailments, increasing hospitals’ efficiency — and even proposed a legislative investigation of Blue Cross as a way to force changes and stabilize rates so the insurance would be affordable to low-income groups.

Sixty years later, the song remains much the same.

—Michael Dobie @mwdobie

The Point will return on Tuesday. We wish our readers a happy and reflective President's Day.