What was behind Hempstead Town's 'watershed moment'?

Daily Point

Can Hempstead Dems build a winning coalition?

The biggest local shock amid Tuesday's national landscape of political shock waves was in the nation's largest township, as Democrats infiltrated the longtime GOP fortress of the Town of Hempstead for only the second time in 100 years.

Democrat Joe Scianablo won the town supervisor's race, surprising even the candidate, with 51.57% of the vote, beating incumbent and Republican stalwart John Ferretti. And while results weren't final, the numbers looked good for Democrat Joylette Williams to take the Hempstead Town clerk position over incumbent Kate Murray, who has been part of the town's GOP fabric for nearly three decades.

That shift for the town was one not seen since Laura Gillen was elected supervisor nine years ago, the first Democrat to do so in a century. And Gillen, who just won a second term in Congress, only held the seat for two years before the Republican Party roared back.

So how did the GOP lose its citadel?

In part, the answers likely lie in some of the town's state and local races, where turnout was strong and the disparities within the vote were significant. That's especially obvious along "the corridor," a stretch of the town that includes communities such as Uniondale, Freeport, Roosevelt and Hempstead Village. Incumbent Democrat Noah Burroughs' win in the 18th Assembly District, which covers a swath of the corridor, was with a stunning 89.4% of the vote over Republican Charlene Jackson, a wider margin than he secured in his first race two years ago, when he won with 82%.

Nassau County Legis. Debra Mulé, whose district includes Freeport, Baldwin and Oceanside, took 71.9% of the vote this year. Last year, when Scianablo lost to Ferretti, she won with 66.1%. In 2023, it was even tighter. Then there's the closest race to date, in Nassau's 9th Legislative District, where Democrat Juleigh Chin currently has a lead of one vote — yes, one vote — over GOP incumbent Scott Strauss. Absentee ballots are expected to break Chin's way, ultimately giving her the win. Last year, Strauss beat Chin by nearly 1,800 votes, with a far lower turnout. 

Also helpful to Scianablo's victory, observers said: the boost in Democratic turnout in the 9th State Senate District, where Democrat Lisa Vider unseated GOP incumbent Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick.

Scianablo told The Point in an interview that his team's outreach to frustrated residents in communities across the town, including key spots like Roosevelt, Uniondale, Inwood, Elmont and Valley Stream that were "craving a seat at the table, and for their voices to be heard" helped to get his message across.

"We were in every single neighborhood," Scianablo said, noting that he had hundreds of volunteers, including Republican support. "We've been listening and hearing and showing up and we're not going to stop that."

All of this, of course, came against the backdrop of a broad national reckoning, as voters used the midterm races as a referendum against President Donald Trump. Hempstead residents may have come to the polls to weigh in on Trump, but then voted down the Democratic line for the local races, too, area political watchers said. Some noted that Gillen's victory this year, with a 56.1%-43.5% spread, was considerably larger than her win two years ago, when she beat Republican Anthony D'Esposito by 3-plus points, 51.8%-48.2%.

"There was a historic turnout nationally," Scianablo said. "We were no different. What we broke through was the Republican machine here."

Political watchers told The Point that the even-year voting move, which brought local elections like the town supervisor and county legislative races onto the same ballot years as federal and statewide races, likely boosted Democratic turnout, too. That result was the intent of Democratic state and county chair Jay Jacobs.

But in Hempstead, the story runs deeper, underscoring long-held feelings that the Republican-led town had treated some communities better than others, especially in terms of addressing basic needs ranging from park upkeep to flooding. That's especially true in the corridor, where Black and brown residents have said their voices haven't been heard.

"In all of those areas that came out significantly, the Town of Hempstead [incumbents] never really talked to those folks," said Assemb. Michaelle Solages, Hempstead Town's Democratic leader. "They focused on their base. They were talking to their own communities, and not the wider Town of Hempstead, which was to our advantage, because we talked about those issues important to people."

The upheaval at the top doesn't represent universal change in the town, since individual board seats were not up for reelection this year. As a result, Scianablo will have to work with a GOP-led town board to get anything done. That was tough for Gillen to do nearly a decade ago.

"We're starting off on a different footing and setting," Scianablo said. "We've already started this relationship-building months and months ago. I'm just looking forward to working across the aisle to getting things done for the people, including the people who didn't vote for me."

Solages said the results in the Town of Hempstead illustrate that the even-year change helps, adding that she's already seeing interest in the party about future races, including the Nassau County executive seat, which will be up in 2028.

"This was a test run," she said. "It proves there's a little force. This year shows you that even-year elections work, especially because it allows more people to participate in different types of elections."

But sources noted that Democrats still have work to do before making further inroads.

"You needed a watershed moment. You have it," one Nassau Democratic observer said. "Now the question is can the Democrats start to build a winning coalition over time?"

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

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Final Point

Election results oddities: Here are the funkiest morsels

Regular folks don't think much about elections after Election Day beyond potholes and their pocketbooks. But The Point digs through spreadsheets like a Yaphank groundhog looking for veggies, so here are some anomalous oddities and downright kooky Election Day observations:

• Gerrymandering is thriving on Long Island. In State Senate and Assembly races in Nassau and Suffolk counties, incumbents won 61% of their races with margins of +14 or more. Blue wave, you say? Almost half of those wide-margin incumbent winners were Republicans, who also won 5 of 7 of the open State Senate and Assembly races. In Nassau County Legislature districts, 74% of incumbents were reelected by +18 or more.
• One race, though, is paper-thin. In Nassau's LD9, Democrat Juleigh Chin and Republican Scott Strauss are locked in a battle for the ages. Chin has a 1-vote lead as of Thursday over Strauss, the incumbent. Can you imagine being that guy who stayed home Tuesday because he thought his vote wouldn't matter?
• Long Island's Tom DiNapoli handily won reelection as state comptroller, but the 72-year-old DiNapoli, who at age 18 was elected to the Mineola school district board of education once upon a time, got almost 160,000 more votes statewide than Gov. Kathy Hochul, and more than 41,000 across Long Island. That's the clout of being homegrown.
• Hempstead Town Supervisor John Ferretti got knocked out of office but adding insult to injury was the fact that he pulled fewer votes than another Republican townwide candidate, Town Clerk Kate Murray, who got 4,500 more. Murray, however, is trailing Democrat Joylette Williams by 1,750 votes.
• Democrat Antonio Vargas-Ayala only lost to Republican State Sen. Dean Murray in SD3 by 8 percentage points, which is notable considering Vargas-Ayala was a ghost candidate who didn't campaign, file finance reports with the state Board of Elections, or meet with Newsday's editorial board during the endorsement screenings. What would have happened if the Democratic candidate had shown up for the campaign?
• In what may be a Long Island electoral history record, the Suffolk County clerk's race had 43,343 total write-in votes. At least two candidates actively ran write-in campaigns for the county clerk’s race. They were Abigail Field, who drew considerable social media support from Suffolk progressives and some East End Democrats, and Chris Padgett, the 1st vice chair of the Suffolk County Libertarian Party. For context, there were only 12,367 write-in votes for governor in all of New York State. Vincent Puleo, who ran on the Conservative and Republican lines, easily won reelection with 89% of the vote, but the fact that more than 43,000 voted by writing in a name other than Puleo was jaw-dropping to many, including one longtime political observer who said, "Holy crap! That's gotta be a record."
• And finally, former Jets kicker Jay Feely lost to former Jets team doctor Amish Shah in a congressional race in Arizona, which means we were guaranteed a Jets loss. Yeah, that checks out.

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

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