GOP 'candidate without clothes' misses the bus

Daily Point

Babylon council hopeful leaves town to get off the ballot

While much of Long Island’s political and law enforcement circles are talking about Tuesday's arrest on sexual misconduct charges of James Burke, the former Suffolk powerful police chief once supported by Suffolk’s top Democrats, the Republicans were dealing with a different case of alleged lewd behavior.

Much to the GOP’s chagrin, Kevin V. Sabella Sr. in his short tenure this year as a Republican running for the Babylon Town Council became known as the candidate without clothes. Now the party has decided to drop Sabella because he inappropriately dropped his pants.

In June, Sabella, 64, reportedly appeared nude several times in the doorway of his Lindenhurst home. He was filmed by a school van driver who complained to authorities about Sabella’s behavior in flashing her repeatedly but no charges were filed.

Sabella’s naked antics received wide exposure in several media outlets. “He’s naked and unafraid,” quipped The New York Post. Local TV stations and YouTube carried the video of Sabella taken by the van driver.

“I was shocked,” Babylon Town GOP chairman Joseph Barone recalled Tuesday about his embarrassment with Sabella. Barone said his party had carefully vetted Sabella, a finance and insurance adviser who had run previously for a Babylon Town Council position without luck.

Last week, papers were filed with the Board of Elections to remove Sabella’s name from this November’s ballot, citing his recent move out of state. That is one of only three ways to get off a ballot, the others being death and nomination for a judgeship. Barone said the move was initiated by Sabella and not at his urging.

However, the GOP won’t be replacing Sabella on the ballot with another Republican candidate, said Barone. He said there wasn’t enough time to properly vet a replacement.

As a result, there will only be three candidates instead of four vying this fall for two town council seats — incumbent Democrats DuWayne Gregory and Terence McSweeney, as well as the GOP’s other candidate, Jarod Morris, a Wyandanch school board trustee.

“Unfortunately this situation happened,” said Gregory about Sabella’s actions without clothes, “but this doesn’t change our strategy.” Babylon is known as a Democratic stronghold in Suffolk County, and Sabella’s removal doesn’t make things any easier for the GOP.

The Point tried unsuccessfully to reach Sabella for a comment. In Babylon, Sabella was a well-known figure — a Rotarian, past governor of the Loyal Order of Moose, and a member of the Knights of Columbus with his local church. In his unsuccessful try for a town council seat against Gregory in 2021, Sabella won 43.6% of the vote — the highest percentage for a Republican in two decades.

But whatever chance Sabella had this year fell apart in June when the driver of a van for special-needs adults complained publicly about Sabella flashing her stark naked “at least ten times” through his glass front door when she passed by. The embarrassment caused the GOP to begin the effort to get rid of Sabella. “After careful deliberation, we feel Mr. Sabella needs to take time to focus on his family and his personal life,” Barone said at that time.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Pencil Point

'Rescuing' Rudy

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Final Point

America’s codefendant gets no-fee defense

Arthur Aidala is a well-known celebrity lawyer whose name is the latest to surface in the bizarre doings of Rudy Giuliani — the former mayor and former legal adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, now indicted in Georgia on 13 counts in the notorious bid to nullify the 2020 election.

Giuliani tells everyone he’s broke, and Trump hasn’t helped financially anywhere near the level asked by his former adviser. For some time it has been reported that Trump blamed Giuliani’s failures for his own legal troubles including a second impeachment. And Giuliani’s failed efforts to reverse ballot results backfired so badly, he was suspended from practicing law in New York and Washington.

Aidala told the Daily News: “I’m working on a pro bono basis. He’s very thankful and appreciative… Trump should absolutely be paying his legal fees.”

On Long Island, the affable Aidala is far better known so far as the attorney for Lauren Pazienza, the 27-year-old woman from Port Jefferson who was charged with fatally shoving beloved voice coach Barbara Gustern on a Manhattan sidewalk last year. This summer, negotiations on a plea deal have been reported. Previously, Aidala represented disgraced film mogul and imprisoned sex criminal Harvey Weinstein.

While in office, Giuliani disdained previous New York City mayors who — for the city’s benefit — would send a ''tin cup brigade'' to Washington for aid. Now he’s rattling the cup — but for personal purposes. Over the weekend The Point received a paranoid-style appeal from the “Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund” declaring that “The Deep State is on a mission to take down every single one of President Donald J. Trump’s closest allies.”

Falsely, the mailing says Giuliani “was repeatedly censored for trying to expose the truth about the Biden Family’s corruption ahead of the 2020 presidential election.” Actually, Giuliani got a widely circulated, last-minute story published prominently in the New York Post, to which several of the paper’s professional staff writers reportedly refused to append their names.

The money appeal concludes: “That’s why Rudy urgently needs YOUR help as he battles for his freedom and justice.” Rather than reversing course or admitting wrongdoing, Giuliani is still trying to prop up his canards. This week he even took to the airwaves on WABC radio claiming “scientific evidence” he’d soon reveal has come to light to support his endless assertions of Democratic voter fraud. But in a further setback for his credibility, Giuliani admitted in a civil case late last month that he made false statements by asserting that two female Georgia election workers manipulated ballots.

Giuliani isn’t the only Trump codefendant in this situation. Jenna Ellis, also named in the Georgia indictment, has been trying to crowd-source money for her defense. Another of the accused, lawyer John Eastman, has been using a Christian-oriented crowdfunding site to raise defense funds.

Trump has never been known to compensate anyone promptly for services or goods rendered.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com