Campaigns battle over Northport Assembly candidate Craig Herskowitz's firing from state job

A low-profile campaign in Huntington for state Assembly suddenly became hot in the final days over why the Democratic candidate was dismissed from a state job five years ago.

David Weber Jr., the Republican in the contest for the 12th Assembly District, is pointing to court documents that contend the state in 2021 terminated his opponent, Democrat Craig Herskowitz, from his job as an assistant counsel for sexually harassing a female subordinate.

Not so, says Herskowitz, of Northport. He has an ongoing retaliation-termination lawsuit against the state in which he claims he was fired for giving a deposition in an investigation of sexual harassment claims against then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 in the face of likely impeachment hearings.

The 11th-hour twist came in a race that has been mostly about affordability, energy and taxes. The two men are vying to replace Assmb. Keith Brown (R-Northport), who isn’t running for reelection in a district that covers parts of Huntington, Babylon and Islip.

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"We are outraged this kind of person could be the Democratic candidate," Sue Broderick of the Huntington Women’s Republican Club told Newsday Friday.

Democrats called it a desperate smear attack.

"David Weber is losing this race. That is why he is lying and smearing someone like Craig Herskowitz," Bryan Sokolowski, spokesman for the Suffolk County Democratic Committee, told Newsday. Sokolowski said Herskowitz "was a whistleblower" in the case.

According to court decisions in the lawsuit, Herskowitz said he was fired from his job as assistant counsel in the Cuomo administration for cooperating with the attorney general’s office investigation of multiple sexual harassment claims against the former governor. He said he was interviewed in April 2021 and fired in August 2021, not long after Cuomo resigned.

The state said he was fired for making inappropriate comments to a young female executive assistant in the office, repeatedly asking for her phone number and violating a "zero tolerance" policy against harassment.

In January 2023, a state Supreme Court judge dismissed Herskowitz' lawsuit. But in December 2023 an appellate court, a higher venue, reinstated the retaliation claim, saying it should be allowed to move forward. It’s not advanced since.

In January 2024, Herskowitz told the publication City & State New York he was hoping to settle the case but mostly to clear his name. On Friday, Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, called Herskowitz’ retaliation claims "ridiculous."

The 12th Assembly District has been reliably Republican seat; before Brown, it was represented by Andrew Raia, now the Huntington town clerk. But its political enrollment is divided fairly equally, with 32,208 Democrats, 30,709 Republicans and 30,863 independents, according to the state Board of Elections. Some Suffolk Democrats have the district on their list for potentially flipping on Election Day.

According to campaign finance records, Herskowitz had $70,000 in his campaign account as of Oct. 23, while Weber had $109,000.