Mystery candidate for Huntington supervisor getting a closer look

Daily Point

Huntington election forces WFP to rethink strategy

As New York State Attorney General Letitia James takes a look at complaints about irregularities in the Town of Huntington supervisor election, the Working Families Party on Long Island is facing a reckoning over the ballot line bedlam that may have changed the outcome of the election.

The state and local WFP is holding a virtual meeting Wednesday night to "... discuss how we can ensure the protection of the WFP ballot line in the future," according to an online invitation. Central to it all is the legitimacy of the WFP candidate for supervisor, Maria Delgado.

The issue for the perennial third party, often aligned with Democrats, is whether a primary challenge of the candidates endorsed by the state WFP impacted the Huntington election.

Incumbent Republican Town Supervisor Edmund J. Smyth edged Democratic challenger Cooper Macco by 602 votes in the Nov. 4 general election, according to unofficial results. WFP candidate Delgado got 1,195 votes, although she recently told Newsday's news division she had "no idea" she was a candidate. Delgado beat Macco 109-26 in the June primary for the WFP line.

The state Working Families Party endorsed Macco, highway superintendent candidate Vincent E. Colavita and Huntington Town Council candidates Jen Hebert and Stephen Anastasia, all Democrats. All four were challenged in the June primary for the WFP line, and all four lost to upstarts not affiliated with the Working Families Party, sources told The Point. Those challenges were initiated by local Republicans to siphon votes from Democrats, sources said. Hebert won a seat on the town board while Colavita and Anastasia were defeated.

Two news releases posted on the national WFP website hail "a string of major victories" and said the party "flexes power in 2025 primary cycle." But an online invitation from the LI WFP for Wednesday night's meeting is more measured: "Huntington Q & A and Next Steps."

While the national WFP website touts big wins in high-profile races, like backing Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor, those wins may have come at the cost of local victories, at least in Huntington. A WFP source told The Point that the state committee was aware of the attempt to raid the party line ahead of the June primary.

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

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Final Point

MTA, Amtrak clash over Penn Access project

The battles between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Amtrak took a new turn last month, when the MTA came out swinging in public against the national passenger rail system, blaming Amtrak for delays and difficulties on the Penn Access project — the effort to connect Metro-North Railroad to Penn Station, which will also establish several new stations in the Bronx.

The relationship is clearly on the rocks.

"This project has been troubled from the start, and that’s predominantly due to the fact that we're working on Amtrak territory, subject to Amtrak's cooperation and oversight," Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA's president of construction and development, told the authority's capital program committee.

But now, Amtrak is swinging back.

While the MTA puts the onus on Amtrak, saying it had not provided the promised staff or outages to allow the work to get done in the early years of the project, and has additional work rules and other requirements continuing to make staying on schedule tough, Amtrak says there are other issues at play.

In a lengthy interview with The Point, Laura Mason, Amtrak’s executive vice president of capital delivery, said she hadn’t known the MTA’s blistering attack was coming. Amtrak, Mason said, has taken responsibility for early difficulties in a lack of staffing and necessary outages. But putting the onus entirely on the national passenger rail system, she said, is inappropriate.

Instead, she argued, the contractor — Halmar International/RailWorks JV — hasn’t been able to meet its own commitments and has at times compromised the project’s safety. She pointed to damaged cables and wiring that was installed incorrectly, equipment that mistakenly crossed over the tracks without authorization, leading a freight train to put on its emergency brakes, and workers who had gotten into fistfights and been discovered with beer on site.

"I share that with you so you have the color and context," Mason said. "It pains me though to share it with you, because I don’t think making this a big public battle is going to make us safer."

MTA officials, however, noted that HRJV, as the contractor is known, is the same joint venture that completed the Long Island Rail Road’s Third Track effort — a project they said had a similar scope — on time and below budget. The only difference, they said, is Amtrak.

"The contractor hasn’t been perfect, no question about it, but you have to take a step back and ask, ‘What are the things that are really driving the delay?' " one MTA official told The Point.

To Long Islanders, the war of words may sound like we went back in time about a decade, when the MTA was pointing fingers at Amtrak over delays on East Side Access, the effort to connect the LIRR to Grand Central Terminal, which took 15 years and cost $11 billion.

MTA and Amtrak officials both told The Point that they tried to learn lessons from the East Side Access debacle by establishing specific agreements and schedules.

But, said the MTA official: "Amtrak has failed to honor either the spirit or the letter of the agreement we made."

Mason, however, said initially negotiated plans were then renegotiated, that contractors were pushed into faster schedules and that there were misunderstandings between Amtrak, the MTA and the contractor and subcontractors.

Now, said MTA chairman and chief executive Janno Lieber, the authority is trying to prevent any further East Side Access-style delays.

"This is the same issue. This is deadly serious ..." Lieber said. "Let’s not have East Side Access again. Let’s start the service on time."

MTA officials have said that while the project is now expected to be completed by 2030 — three years late — they have a plan to start preliminary service on time, in 2027, using temporary platforms and stations. Amtrak has yet to agree to that plan. And Mason said she expects completion by "the early 2030s."

And when asked how Amtrak and the MTA will move forward after the latest public battle, Mason paused.

"You know, that is a really excellent question," she said. "How would you move forward if your partner had gone public and thrown you under the bus like this?"

But, she added: "It is concerning ... but we will keep trying to be focused on how we get this job done, how we get it built and get service moving."

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

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