Guess who's coming to a Hempstead commencement

Daily Point

Republican lightning rod to speak at Hempstead charter graduation

With commencement season coming into full swing, luminaries will be sharing their experiences, wisdom and corny icebreakers with soon-to-be graduates and their families.

It's unlikely any school will have a more surprising speaker than the one who will address the commencement of Hempstead’s Academy Charter School: former national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

The event will take place at 3 p.m. Monday at the David S. Mack Sports Complex at Hofstra University.

In a statement, Bolton said he looked forward to speaking, and said the class he’ll commemorate has “shown immense strength and courage in the face of adversity.” He promised to address why American ideals are more important than ever, argue that it still requires hard work and discipline to overcome obstacles, not just complaining, and demand that individual freedoms, and particularly the value of free speech on college campuses, is preserved.

In an interview with The Point, Academy Charter School founder Bishop Barrington Goldson said he got the idea to invite Bolton after he and other administrators heard Bolton address a crowd at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage.

“I was impressed with how Bolton served President Trump as national security adviser, and of how respectful he was of the office of president, even after he left the administration, even as he spoke very candidly about Trump as a person,” Goldson said.

“I also know this is a community branded as Democrat, Hempstead and the Black community, and that’s not entirely so,” Goldson said, adding that he personally is a “Democrat, with Republican values.”

Goldson said 110 students will graduate Monday, adding that at least 10 will attend Ivy League colleges on full scholarships, and that students are also headed to Villanova, St. John's, and a bevy of other top schools.

And given Bolton’s track record as a thorn in most any side he can find, it’s not clear that Republicans would be any more or less inclined to hear Bolton than Democrats are.

Bolton, 73, served as an assistant attorney general under Ronald Reagan, and in both Bush presidencies, including as ambassador to the United Nations for George W. Bush.

In that role he was a staunch neoconservative and a prime supporter of the war in Iraq, distinctions that led him to a lucrative media career and consistent scorn from a pre-presidential Trump.

But Bolton’s public hatred of the Iran nuclear arms deal, and a dearth of top Republicans willing to join the Trump administration, landed Bolton the NSA role from April 2018 until he was forced out in September 2019.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to hear from someone who is a scholar and a public servant,” Goldson said. “This is a chance to hear from a cabinet member, and that’s a very special thing.”

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

A relative cooling

Could it be that the East End real estate market is finally slowing down?

It might appear that way from a quick glance at the revenue taken in by the region’s Community Preservation Fund. The program, fueled by a 2% tax on East End real estate sales and used for land preservation and water quality projects, collected $72.31 million in the first four months of 2022, a 3.8% drop from the $75.17 million garnered during the same period last year.

But if real estate is a matter of location, the East End market is a matter of perspective. Assemb. Fred Thiele, the co-architect of the CPF, says the numbers are low only when compared with the pandemic-spurred records of last year where one month brought in $24 million.

“It’s certainly dropped from those,” Thiele told The Point. “But last month it was $16 million, the month before $16 million. So if you compare it to the height of the pandemic, it’s definitely less. But if you compare it to the year before the pandemic, it would still be double the amount of real estate activity we were seeing.”

Thiele, of Sag Harbor, said recent inventory has been at historic lows, especially at the “affordable” end, but is finally starting to increase again. And he said rising mortgage rates aren’t having much of an impact except at that lower end of the market, which he defined as $1 million or less.

But he does see the potential for some storm clouds.

“Our market is so tied to Wall Street, I think there’s some concern about the losses on Wall Street,” Thiele said. “I think there’s some concern about the talk of recession. Those are things I think could have an impact on the market going forward.”

For the time being, the CPF is still raking in the dough. But, Thiele warns, “These numbers can’t last forever.”

That, too, is a matter of perspective. Asked whether he’d bet on his proposition, Thiele chuckled and said, “I’m not going to put a lot on that.”

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie

Pencil Point

Drawing a blank

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

Final Point

Fog of battle still blurs these lines

On Tuesday, the state Court of Appeals made this much official: Assembly districts as crafted by the State Legislature will stand for 2022 but are subject to being made over for the 2024 elections.

That led Gary Greenberg, an upstate Democrat who took part in the 11th-hour redistricting court challenge, to cry foul on social media that while the congressional and State Senate maps are corrected for November, Assembly candidates will run for seats already deemed unconstitutional.

Still unsettled is the method of revision State Supreme Court Justice Laurence Love, sitting in Manhattan, will choose. The high court is sending that task back to Love, who ruled for the challenge.

Sources tell The Point that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) is now making a legal play to get the matter sent back to the Independent Redistricting Commission. That could ultimately allow Heastie to retain control of the map for the chamber he now leads by a lopsided 106-43.

The state Constitution calls for the IRC to approve a bipartisan plan and send it to lawmakers in Albany for approval or rejection. If rejected, the IRC and the Senate and Assembly are supposed to get another crack at creating an “independent” plan. After a second rejection, the legislature can approve its own plan.

None of this happened this year because the IRC deadlocked along partisan lines, and legislators wrote and approved the lines anyway. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed them — but the courts then found the maps and the process that produced them unconstitutional. A special court master remade the Senate and House lines.

The new system proved a hot mess; this follow-up promises more of the same. Due to partisan politics, it’s widely seen as more likely that the IRC, which is still formally constituted, could reach agreement. After all, Republican leaders never challenged Albany’s Assembly lines as they did the others. A dozen lower-house Republicans voted for Heastie’s lines, which protected GOP incumbents and did not put multiple incumbents in the same district.

But experts see problems with sending anything back to a dormant IRC. Deadlines and timelines for redistricting, set by the Constitution, have long passed. The law doesn’t anticipate off-cycle revisions.

Litigants who pushed for the Assembly lines to be corrected in the first place have called on Love to assign the job to Jonathan Cervas. He’s the redistricting expert from Pittsburgh who rewrote the other maps on orders from a court in Steuben County.

The rewrite could be dramatic, perhaps leading to an increase of GOP seats in the Assembly. Speculation centers on whether that would bring Heastie’s majority below the two-thirds needed to override a governor’s veto.

Going back to the drawing board could prove as uncharted as the first visit.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison