Crystal gazing in the 3rd Congressional District

Daily Point

Lafazan touts another analysis showing he's ahead

An updated analysis from FiveThirtyEight, a website that focuses on poll analysis around politics, economics, and sports, predicts Nassau County lawmaker Democrat Josh Lafazan would win the CD3 primary — and is “slightly favored” to win the seat over Republican George Santos.

FiveThirtyEight indicated that it first chose its expected primary winners “based on an analysis of incumbency, polls, fundraising, previous experience and endorsements.” Then, the FiveThirtyEight model simulates the general election 40,000 times and provides a sample of 100 outcomes.

In CD3, FiveThirtyEight predicted that Lafazan would win the primary, which also includes Robert Zimmerman, Jon Kaiman, Melanie D’Arrigo and Reema Rasool. In the sampling for a predicted general election, Lafazan won over Santos in 57 of 100 instances, mostly in close contests, often by less than 5 percentage points.

FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of the other congressional races on Long Island suggests Republican Nick LaLota is “favored” to win CD1 over Democrat Bridget Fleming, with 80 out of 100 wins. It showed Republican Andrew Garbarino is “very likely” to win CD2 over Democrat Jackie Gordon, winning 98 out of the 100 sample contests. And Democrat Laura Gillen is “favored” to win CD4 over Republican Anthony D’Esposito, with Gillen winning 78 out of 100 times. In each case, FiveThirtyEight first chose the expected primary winners based on existing polls, fundraising and other factors, and then ran the general election predictions.

The Lafazan campaign quickly took notice of the FiveThirtyEight analysis, noting the results in a news release about its own recent poll. The release also gave a preview of its upcoming third-quarter fundraising report, due July 15, which the campaign said will show it has raised $500,000, or $1.5 million cumulatively. Lafazan campaign officials told The Point that FiveThirtyEight’s analysis gives “third party credibility” and that they plan to use it in future fundraising and publicity efforts.

But CD3 candidate Robert Zimmerman pushed back on the FiveThirtyEight findings. In a statement provided to The Point, spokesman Jason Kaplan highlighted Zimmerman’s support among labor groups, elected officials and “progressive activists.”

“Five Thirty-Eight’s ‘analysis’ is based on an internal poll bought and paid for by Josh Lafazan, designed to show him as the front-runner and ultimately mislead voters,” Kaplan said in the statement.

As for Kaiman, the former North Hempstead Town supervisor said he was focused on Lafazan’s original poll, covered in The Point last week.

“We prefer to talk about Lafazan’s recent poll, reported in this column, that shows I am significantly more popular and better liked by the voters than he is,” Kaiman told The Point in an interview Wednesday. “We are happy to let the voters decide the outcome of this race.”

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Reference Point

LIRR finds there is no Rocky road

Editorial boards are often thought of as curmudgeonly critics. But they also like to dole out praise, sparingly perhaps, when warranted.

Newsday’s editorial board was in such a mood on July 7, 1960, when it offered congratulations in a piece titled “Good Try, Men.”

Yes, the praise was for a valiant effort that failed.

In this case, Newsday’s board tipped its hat “to both sides and the assorted government executives who sat down in Garden City to try to work out a settlement of the threatened Long Island Rail Road strike.”

The intervention apparently was the work of H. Lee Dennison, the Suffolk County executive at the time, whose “last-minute attempt at mediation” might not have worked but, as the board noted, “at least it was an honest attempt to head off a severe blow against Long Island.”

Here’s the postscript: LIRR workers did indeed go out on strike soon after that, for more than three weeks. And Long Island weathered the anticipated “severe blow” rather well, according to news accounts back then. Commuters made do with a combination of buses, cars (both as solo drivers and members of carpools), and city transit to get where they needed to go, and trucks already had mostly displaced trains in handling freight.

The strike ended after another intercession, this one from Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who built on the work of federal mediators to get the LIRR’s workers back on the job.

Curiously, another LIRR dispute unfurled exactly two years later, when Suffolk refused to pay for the upkeep of LIRR stations in the county (Nassau and New York City did fund such maintenance within their borders). In a July 7, 1962 piece called “Stubbornness in Suffolk,” the editorial board chastised Dennison and his fellow members of the county board of supervisors for preferring a three-cent fare increase to pay for the upkeep.

“This may be dandy for Dennison and the supervisors, who don’t commute,” the editorial board wrote, “but it falls with a thud on the ears of those who do.”

Two weeks later, the board of supervisors agreed to avert the crisis and pay $185,000 for six months of maintenance for Suffolk’s 54 stations, responding to a request by — who else — Gov. Rockefeller, who clearly understood the political value of keeping the trains running.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie and Amanda Fiscina @adfiscina

Pencil Point

A wish

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

Data Point

Shark? Nada

Since 1900, there have been 1,806 documented unprovoked shark attacks in the United States and its territories, according to data from the Shark Research Institute’s Global Shark Attack File 

It comes as no surprise that Florida leads the rankings with 932 documented attacks, making up 51.6% of the total. Hawaii comes in a distant second with 251 attacks, followed by California with 200.

New York has only had nine attacks since 1900, assuming last Thursday’s incident at Jones Beach was a shark attack. Of these, only five occurred on Long Island, accounting for 0.3% of the total.

And while Sharknado 2 may have killed 22 New Yorkers on TV, in reality there hasn’t been a New York shark fatality since 1878.

In other words, it is extremely unlikely that Long Islanders visiting the beaches this summer will be attacked by sharks, one less catastrophic problem on this summer’s growing list.

— Kai Teoh @jkteoh