Suffolk Dem progressives on the prowl

Daily Point

Minnie the Cat making a comeback as a write-in for county clerk?

Progressives in Suffolk County are hoping to make Democrats and Republicans scamper like cats on a hot tin roof before the November election after what some say is another season of disappointing insider deals that lead to voter disenfranchisement.

After the Democratic candidate for county clerk withdrew in a political maneuver to accept the Conservative Party line for a judgeship earlier this month, the ballot was cleared for incumbent Conservative Clerk Vincent Puleo, who also runs with the Republican line. Not content with being benched by the inside baseball machinations of Suffolk politics, progressives have taken to Facebook to mount a write-in campaign for ... they'll let us know when they figure it out.

Progressives admit it's more than an uphill battle.

In the process, progressives are keeping up pressure on the simmering internal fight among Democrats for control of the county party. That pitched battle has Southold Town Democratic Party chair Kathryn Casey Quigley challenging Suffolk party chairman Rich Schaffer over continued deals with Republicans and Conservatives for judge cross-endorsements.

Kimberly Wilder, 58, who already mounted a successful campaign to get on the ballot for the 2nd Assembly District on her own line, Voter Options, is at it again, this time with a Facebook launch for a county clerk write-in.

The goal, Wilder told The Point, is to get marginalized voters of all persuasions to take a stand against insider deals that lead to unopposed candidates running with cross-endorsements.

"I am personally appalled as a voter in a democracy going into a voting booth and there's one candidate," Wilder said. "At least give us a choice between vanilla and chocolate."

Wilder, who says she created the Facebook page and is the administrator, said the group is having a straw poll online with 11 candidates. The informal selection process will end up somehow picking a candidate, but even Wilder said she wasn't clear how it would play out.

When asked who were among the 11 names in contention, Wilder wouldn't let the cat out of the bag. "I'm not allowed to tell you the names," she said, although she added she isn't one of them since she is already running for Assembly. She previously sought the Green Party line for governor years ago, playing her bamboo flute during the screening, she said, but the party took a pass.

Wilder has a history with write-in campaigns. She said she often writes in her husband's name or a message like "Give voters a choice" on the ballot if there are cross-endorsed and unopposed candidates.

But the most notable instance of tomcat-foolery happened decades ago, as Wilder explains on her website, when a handful of voters upset by efforts to raid the Green Party line nominated Minnie the Cat for an elected position in Suffolk. In an Oct. 4, 2001, Newsday article about judicial nominations, Minnie the Cat received an untold number of write-in votes, although the specific race Minnie was pawing for wasn't clear.

Minnie didn't win, but the point was made. In that website post, Wilder wrote, "... I think our noodling and monkeying exposed the major parties and taught them some lessons."

Getting enough voters to pick a write-in candidate will be harder than herding cats for Suffolk progressives, though. The group has 3,800 followers on Facebook and 190 followers on Instagram.

Realistically and brutally, whoever the progressives back as their write-in candidate will fail — if the yardstick is winning the election. But the bigger play for progressives is to claw their way to a seat at even just the corner of the table of Suffolk Democratic decision-making.

And if Suffolk progressives do somehow pull off the impossible and win the clerk's seat, they'll look like the cat that got the cream.

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Nothing to say

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

Reference Point

Noisy skies, then and now

Fifty-nine summers ago, Long Islanders had a familiar complaint: aircraft noise.

"As homeowners in many areas of Long Island are aware, the noise of jets landing and taking off at Kennedy Airport is becoming worse and worse," the editorial board wrote in 1967. "There are more jets, to begin with. And since this is the good old summertime, people keep their windows open. The result is well-nigh frenzy in many communities and especially in southwestern Nassau."

In "Action on Jet Noise," the editorial board outlined how with the same situation seen in other airline hub cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, both the U.S. Department of Transportation and Congress were concurrently working on ways to cut down on the noise.

The congressional bill would've given the Transportation Department the ability to set national permissible levels of aircraft noise and to withhold approval of any kind of plane "that makes too big a racket." Without the new powers, the department could only ask pilots to carry out "more noise abatement procedures."

"The legislation is bogged down, a pity," the board wrote, adding that if not resolved, the problem would be multiplied in coming years when the first 1,800-mph supersonic aircraft were anticipated to go into the service. These "remarkable" planes were expected to cross the United States in two hours and the Atlantic in less than three — speed that would come with sonic booms created when the sound barrier was broken. The editorial board applauded President Lyndon B. Johnson for putting five agencies to work researching aircraft silencers.

Decades later, those 1,800-mph commercial aircraft never widely materialized (the Concorde came closest), but aircraft noise is still a problem. Rep. Tom Suozzi, whose district is adjacent to two airports, is leading the Congressional Quiet Skies Caucus, a group of 31 members of Congress asking the Federal Aviation Administration to act on reducing airplane noise.

Locally and over to the East End of Long Island, helicopter noise is a continuing concern in 2026. The editorial board wrote this summer that the FAA "has avoided a comprehensive solution to these legitimate complaints, instead utilizing piecemeal haphazard fixes." A rule that wasn't being fully enforced, and expired this summer, required helicopters to travel over water at an altitude of at least 2,500 feet. Now the FAA is expecting helicopter operators to voluntarily choose offshore routes.

The editorial board summed it up on Aug. 19, 1967, the same way we could today — saying "something has to be done before Long Islanders, and others, go out of their minds because of the whine and scream of planes overhead."

— Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

Subscribe to The Point here and browse past editions of The Point here.