What Lesson Will Nassau County Draw from Glen Cove Election 2015?

By Frank Scaturro

We are often mistaken to think the grass is greener on the other side, but in Nassau County, our anachronistic system of government by party-boss-run political machine sets us apart from most of America in the 21st century. The Tammany Hall Democratic machine disappeared from New York City years ago, but in Nassau, one remains in all but name under the 32-year reign of county GOP Chairman Joe Mondello. His patronage-laden pay-to-play empire is vast enough to have made multi-millionaires of the most senior bosses, who treat the county like their own personal fiefdom and care little for discussion of such esoteric matters as good government.

We have the chronic fiscal mismanagement and corruption to show for it, despite our county’s wealth and exorbitant taxes. After all, Mondello been quite effective at what he does care about—perpetuating his own power—which means he, not the voters, chooses the party’s nominees. That means no primaries allowed. Mix that with a culture of sycophancy that leaves elected officials afraid to pursue bold change, and some may reasonably ask whether Nassau County is reform-proof.

Those who would answer no can point to Glen Cove, where the cause of democracy in Nassau County survives, even though it is imperiled. There in 2013, the Republicans won a city council majority, ending a generation of Democratic dominance. Because it was not expected to win, the GOP ticket included independent-minded Republicans who were largely off the bosses’ radar. In 2014, when I was a Republican candidate for Congress running in a primary against Mondello’s pick, Councilman Efraim Spagnoletti was ostracized for endorsing me. He and another Republican councilman, Tony Gallo, then drew the machine’s ire for showing their independence on—what else?—patronage. They refused to vote as they were told on a city council vacancy and on an appointment by Mayor Reggie Spinello.

Instead of rolling over, Gallo and Spagnoletti decided to fight. Dissatisfied with Spinello’s stewardship of the city, including cronyism and a lack of fiscal restraint that contributed to the city’s $60 million+ long-term debt, Gallo challenged him in a primary for mayor. Spagnoletti and five other non-machine Republicans ran for city council. Spinello or his surrogates filed four lawsuits seeking—unsuccessfully—to prevent the Gallo slate from running primaries on the Republican, Conservative, and Independence lines, and from creating a city-wide ballot line called Glen Cove United.

But they had other tricks up their sleeve. In New York, double-dealing across party establishments is an old story as there are enough spoils of government to go around. The Nassau Conservative Party’s executive committee is compromised by municipal jobs or contracts many of its members have at the mercy of Mondello machine, so they rubber-stamped machine picks without even screening Gallo’s team. The Independence Party leadership, which is out to maximize its leadership’s clout, endorsed every Republican and Democratic incumbent put up by the respective parties’ establishments for re-election, which excluded Spagnoletti, the establishment-ostracized incumbent. Thanks to an obscure provision of New York election law empowering third-party leaders to force challengers to wage write-in campaigns rather than have their names printed on the ballot, the Gallo slate could only win the Conservative and Independence primaries by convincing enough of those voters to write their names in.

The icing on the cake, however, may have been the double-dealing that led to the Democratic Party’s cross-endorsement of Spinello, which in Nassau is almost unheard of for non-judicial candidates. Not that this would have been discussed in Glen Cove Republican Club meetings; Gallo was told not to attend them. Then, as if corrupting the process were not enough, Spinello sent primary voters a mailing the final weekend before the election fabricating a narrative that Gallo had tried to “pad the payroll with unbudgeted patronage jobs” and calling for an end to “fiscal mismanagement and crony politics.” So the machine’s amoral operatives insidiously identified its own candidate’s greatest failings and attempted to preempt an attack by first dropping that very charge on the challenger who had taken a stand against the very offense he was accused of.

Under the weight of this multi-front offensive, Gallo lost the Republican primary for mayor, but two of the non-machine council candidates won: Spagnoletti and Roderick Watson. Previously unreported is that this marks the first time since Dan Frisa’s congressional primary victory in 1994 that Mondello’s machine has been beaten in a Republican primary. If elected, Watson, a lifelong Republican who specializes in medical social work for veterans, will be the first African-American Republican elected to political (i.e. non-judicial) office in Nassau County in the 21st century. But if you think this nominally Republican machine displays any greater respect for GOP voters after the primary than beforehand, think again: They are backing the two candidates who lost the Republican primary, and who barely won the Conservative primary (and who, by the way, are not enrolled as Republicans or Conservatives). The transparent intent here is not for them to win, but for Spagnoletti and Watson to lose enough votes to put their Democratic council opponents over the top. This should not surprise anyone familiar with the GOP machine leaders who backed Democrat Andrew Cuomo for governor in 2014. Sadly, the reform-minded GOP primary winners fell only three votes short of the margin they needed for a Conservative primary victory—a margin they almost certainly would have overcome if they had not relied on write-in votes. The same is true of Gallo, who lost the Conservative primary for mayor by a single vote.

That the voters deserve a competitive race for mayor is underscored by theNew York State Comptroller’s September report identifying Glen Cove as the most fiscally stressed city in New York. Gallo, whose name will appear with the non-machine backed council candidates at the bottom of Tuesday’s ballot on the Glen Cove United line, has called for a 10% reduction in spending over the next two years. Spinello flatly rejects this, as one would expect of a candidate invested enough in the status quo to placate so many party leaders at once.

Having stared into the belly of the beast that is Nassau’s corrupt political system, I can attest there are plenty of elected officials who would like to do the right thing, but who dare not defy the party bosses who presume to have more power than the voters to elect or to oust them. For the bosses, Glen Cove’s 2015 election is about sending the subliminal message to candidates who dared to say no to them: if you don’t submit to our will and give us what we want, you are finished in elective office. What may be dismissed by some as “inside baseball” in fact explains why it seems nothing ever changes in overtaxed and mismanaged Nassau County. Even as voters across the country are in revolt against candidates perceived to be establishment insiders, Boss Mondello hopes to keep Nassau County as reform-proof as possible. He will continue to succeed if all the non-machine-backed candidates in Glen Cove lose on Tuesday. Consider alternatively the message it will send to public officials if the voters express the contempt merited by Glen Cove’s Soviet-like ballot and choose Gallo for mayor on the only ballot line listing an alternative to the status quo—which, ironically, is the bottom line.

Frank Scaturro, a partner at FisherBroyles LLP and former Republican and Conservative candidate for the House of Representatives in New York’s 4th Congressional District, was one of the attorneys representing Tony Gallo in his effort to stay on the ballot.