3rd-party candidate stirs up Hempstead Town race

Daily Point

Former Lawrence Mayor Martin Oliner expands his appeal in third-party bid

Control of the Town of Hempstead, a longtime Republican bastion, may come down to how voters feel about a proposed housing and retail development in Lawrence.

Former Lawrence Village Mayor Martin Oliner is running for Hempstead supervisor on his own third-party line called "Citizens not Developers" after gathering enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. He started his campaign in opposition to the transit-oriented development near the village's train station that's been volleyed in courts for a while.

Now, just seven weeks before Election Day, Oliner told The Point he was about to start aggressively campaigning, including more advertisements and mailings. He has expanded his platform to include water quality, utility rates and quality of life issues for other Hempstead communities. Hempstead is the largest township, by population, in the nation.

It's a significant turn considering that Oliner could pull Republican voters in the reliably GOP Five Towns from Hempstead Town Supervisor John Ferretti, who is running for reelection against Democrat Joe Scianablo. Ferretti beat Scianablo in 2025 by about 11,000 votes, or 53.3%-46.7%.

The seat is back on the ballot this year because of the new even-year voting law, with higher turnout expected due to the House races and the gubernatorial contest.

The Five Towns area, which also includes Cedarhurst, Inwood, Woodmere and Hewlett, traditionally votes overwhelmingly for Republican candidates. By that logic, Oliner will improve Scianablo's chances by likely drawing votes from Ferretti. It's a three-way race that could result in the next supervisor being elected without a majority.

"We are 15,000 votes potentially and historically 94.5% vote Republican," Oliner said of the Five Towns.

His potential impact on the election is there, as evidenced by Oliner telling The Point that political operatives from both Republican and Democratic sides have courted him.

"Full disclosure ... everybody even tangentially involved has reached out from both sides," he said. "They've been to my home. Some want me in; some want me out."

Oliner's hot-button issue is what he calls in a newspaper advertisement a "transient rental massive 440-unit 5 story complex" near the Lawrence Long Island Rail Road station. Oliner blames Ferretti and others in Hempstead for not stopping the proposal which has drawn about 2,000 residents to sign a petition in opposition.

Even if his campaign is a "long shot," he can still make an impact.

"As an independent, how likely are you going to win? But you can determine the race."

Most election districts in the Five Towns backed Bruce Blakeman by 75% or more in his reelection to Nassau County executive last year, with some pulling over 90%. That same level of support for Ferretti this year may be dented since Oliner — even as a self-funded, third-party candidate — is a well-known fixture in the Five Towns.

"For me, when I was mayor, I never ran as a Republican or Democrat," Oliner said. "There was no need to inject that kind of politics into our community. I was very friendly with everyone. These guys don't even try." He knocks negative campaigning and high gas prices while remaining a strong support of President Donald Trump and Blakeman, a Republican who is challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in November.

"I'm a big supporter of the president. I'm a big supporter of Bruce. But on the other hand, at the end of the day, politics is a very local thing. This is an independent campaign by an independent with totally independent views not tied to either party."

Messages to Ferretti, Scianablo and the Nassau County Republican Party were not returned Monday.

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

Pencil Point

The AIs and nayes

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Quick Points

Only a pumpkin spice latte can cure our AI ills

• Pumpkin spice lattes are back, but even more ubiquitous is talk about artificial intelligence. As the world tries to figure out whether AI is an existential threat or just the latest iteration of Y2K, Brookhaven National Laboratory announced a partnership with the Long Island Power Authority and Stony Brook University to use AI to manage energy grids. The $14.2 million project will simulate 1 billion scenarios facing the grid in a day. So just how does AI's control of the energy grid cut utility bills?
• President Donald Trump said Monday that he and he alone is all that is needed to protect the world from AI. In a social media post, Trump wrote, "The only control or ‘guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" So much for constitutional checks and balances.
• Some clever folks are using mixed fonts to create an optical illusion that hides text from AI internet scrapes. That sounds better than what happened in Nassau earlier this month, when the police department said the first name of a suspect in an elder scam was "Fnu" but later had to clarify that was just an acronym for "first name unknown." Guess AI couldn't help solving that mystery.
• Politics is rife with metaphors, but recent comments by world leaders have gotten extreme. Russian President Vladimir Putin called Western countries "sharks" that "might get punched in the teeth," and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iran was a "snake" that will "stop wiggling when the sun goes down." Let's hope Long Island electeds don't take a page from Orwell or le Carré.

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

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