What's in a name?

Daily Point

Soft landing

Tracey Edwards, a Democrat who lost a bid for Huntington Town supervisor in 2017, is landing a pretty nice gig in state government. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who briefly considered Edwards as the replacement for Mitch Pally on the MTA board in March, has nominated her to the Public Service Commission.

She currently is executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Suffolk County.

Edwards, who retired as a regional president for Verizon before she entered politics, brings telecommunications expertise to the board, which regulates that industry as well as other utilities. She fills the long-vacant seat of Garry Brown who left in 2015.

Commissioners earn between $100,000 and $120,000 plus benefits in the full-time job, which has a term of six years. State law set a maximum of five members of the commission, of which only three can be members of the same political party.

Edwards’ appointment returns a Long Islander to a board that has seen a few of them.

Patricia Acampora, a former GOP assemblywoman and Suffolk GOP leader, was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki. In 2009, Gov. David A. Patterson appointed James Larocca, a former chair of LIPA, who once sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Edwards, who served on the town’s planning board for eight years, was elected to the town council in 2014. She is the second African American on the PSC.

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1971 appointed the first woman and first African American commissioner, Carmel Carrington Marr, a natural gas consultant, who served for 15 years.

Edwards needed a place to land and the low-profile PSC spot doesn’t bring with it the headaches of dealing with the MTA. Right now, it might even look pretty good to Chad Lupinacci, the besieged Huntington supervisor who is building up quite the expertise in energy issues as the town struggles with the tax challenge to the Northport power plant.

- Rita Ciolli @RitaCiolli

Talking Point

Wait, when?

Early voting hours for November’s elections have been set by Suffolk County officials and at first glance they’re a bit of a mishmash.

The hours for each weekend day (Oct. 26-27, Nov. 2-3) are the same — 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

But the five weekdays in between have three different starting times and three different closing times. On Monday, Oct. 28, polls will be open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Tuesday, Oct. 29 and Friday, Nov. 1, the hours are 12 noon to 8 p.m. And on Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 30-31, polls open at 8 a.m. and close at 4 p.m.

“That’s almost all driven by state law, which requires a certain amount of days to open early, and a certain amount of days to stay open late,” Suffolk Republican elections commissioner Nick LaLota told The Point. “It doesn’t lend itself to any amount of standardization.”

What about following the standard election day schedule of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day, to minimize voter confusion?

“If we had the resources to do so we would not be in violation of the law, but the challenge now is who is going to staff these polling places for that amount of time,” LaLota said.

The new law allows voters to cast ballots at any one of the designated early voting spots, in contrast to Election Day when they must go to their usual polling station.

Suffolk is supposed to get $1 million from the state for early voting, LaLota said, but faces $3 million in upfront capital costs, primarily to purchase around 1,600 electronic poll roster books. Those will be used to check in voters via iPads, which will be linked to one another and a master county hub via Wi-fi to make sure people are not voting twice.

But Suffolk doesn’t have the iPads yet, LaLota said, and doesn’t know whether it would be able to hire the hundreds of inspectors needed or have time to train them.

“This is a bit rushed,” he said. “It has the potential of being not good.”

Asked whether the upcoming election could serve as a trial run that would lead to the early voting legislation being tweaked, LaLota chuckled and said, “The cynical part of me says the state lawmakers want this odd year to be the guinea pig so they can test this out and perfect it for when they’re on the ballot next year.”

- Michael Dobie @mwdobie

Pencil Point

Bone spurs

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Final Point

That's Madam President to you

With multiple women among the Democratic presidential frontrunners, there’s a better-than-usual chance that the next leader of the free world will answer to “Madam President.”

This got The Point wondering about the origins of the term (and its variant, Madame President).

A search on Google’s Ngram Viewer feature, which charts the appearance of words in various books over time, shows some one-off uses of the phrase in the 19th century. But computational linguist Kyle Mahowald notes that Ngram shows the term picking up soon after use in the minutes of the 1884 convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a group founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Stanton appears to have been the association’s “Madame President” referenced.  

In 1887 the Women's Christian Temperance Union resolved to use the term for its leader, as quoted in a circular from the time.

“Madam” has clear benefits. Bustle, a publication focusing on women, made that point in a 2016 article during Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, noting the superiority of “Madam” over “Miss” or “Mrs.,” which would “be an emphasis on her marital status that just doesn't come along with ‘Mr. President.’

The honorific appears in the organizational standard Robert’s Rules for addressing a woman chair or president, according to Daniel De Simone of Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics.

But the term has so far never been applicable at the highest level of American politics.

“There also might be an opportunity for whoever becomes the first woman president to establish precedent herself,” says De Simone.

It could be up to her to decide whether to “Call Me Madam.”

- Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano