Old CD1 foes retire from public service

Daily Point

Bishop and Grucci moving on, leaving Suffolk posts behind

Two longtime Long Island political adversaries who represented Long Islanders in Congress have stepped down from public life in the past two months.

Former congressmen Felix Grucci and Tim Bishop, on opposite ends of the political spectrum, have united — sort of — in retirement from public service. Grucci announced this week he was stepping down from the Brookhaven Town Industrial Development Agency. In November, Bishop attended his last board meeting as a member of the Suffolk County Water Authority.

Grucci stepped down from the IDA to care for his wife, Madeline, he said in a Newsday story Tuesday. “It has a lot to do with life’s challenges,” he said.

In 2002, Bishop shocked Grucci with an underdog win in the 1st Congressional District election by 2,744 votes. At the time, Grucci took exception to campaign ads claiming his family business, Grucci Fireworks, was the source of nearby contamination, telling The New York Times that his family faced “torment.”

And Bishop took umbrage to Grucci’s campaign saying he was ignoring rapes at the college where he was provost, then called Southampton College. That line of attack is largely credited with Bishop, a Democrat, being able to unseat Grucci, a Republican incumbent in a largely Republican district. Their 2002 election is still cited as an example of negative campaigning gone wrong.

And while the two were certainly not friends and neither resisted attacks during the campaign, their cordiality after the election represented a civility in politics rarely seen today. “Our interactions when we were debating or during a meet the candidates night were perfectly civil,” Bishop told The Point. “We disagreed, but we were civil and professional. ... We went at one another, but by today’s standards, it’s relatively tame.”

Bishop told The Point that after the election, he spoke with Grucci twice — once at a community event in the William Floyd area and another time when he was the commencement speaker at Dowling College when Grucci’s daughter graduated. Bishop and Grucci chatted amicably at both events, Bishop recalled.

“We certainly interacted cordially then,” Bishop said. “Felix and I spent a few moments talking to one another.”

As for life after elected office, Grucci served on the board of Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center — now known as NYU Langone Hospital-Suffolk — and then the Brookhaven IDA. Serving on those unpaid boards is “not easy,” Bishop said, adding that Grucci “is to be commended for maintaining a commitment to his community and his commitment to public service.”

Bishop now is a distinguished visiting professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and a lobbyist.

The SCWA appointed William Davidson, a former director of the Huntington Community Development Agency, to fill Bishop’s seat. The Brookhaven IDA has yet to announce a replacement for Grucci’s seat.

Longtime GOP political consultant Michael Dawidziak told The Point that Bishop and Grucci represent an era of politics largely gone today.

“In the spirit of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, their relationship is evocative of a time when civility and mutual respect were common among members of different parties,” he said. “It was a time when you could fight hard and then go out and have a drink together.”

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Time for school

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Reference Point

Some vital health statistics 80 years later

"Everyone seems to be ailing these days," right?

That line would sound current in the past few weeks, where 2026 kicked off with a record surge in flu cases and an overhaul of vaccine requirements. But it's plucked from 80 years ago from the Jan. 7 editorial page, headlined “Some Vital Statistics.”

Back then, the Newsday board ran a regular feature posing public policy questions to Long Islanders. That week the question was, “Are sickness and colds more prevalent this year than last?” and a New Hyde Park auto painter, two Hempstead housewives, a Garden City fireman and a Westbury Navy officer gave takes that are poignant decades later.

The year was 1946, notably the first year the influenza inoculation was approved for civilian use. A year earlier it was approved for distribution in the military amid the finale of World War II, which framed the responses.

“Last winter while serving in the United States Army ... I was there during the monsoon season when there was more chance of infection that we ever even begin to think of here. Of course the Army used the latest drugs and the most up-to-date methods of preventative medicines to keep the GI healthy,” the Garden City fireman said. “The percentage of all diseases among American soldiers was very low.” He went on to credit the inoculations to have “helped immeasurably to build up our resistance” and to have kept him healthy this winter as well.

The feature’s other veteran who responded disagreed, seeing the postwar return as a factor for the miserable season. “There are literally millions of veterans returning ... getting away from the form of socialized medicine as practiced in the armed forces,” said the Westbury Navy officer. “It is the worst time of the year for them to return and the difference in climate makes them fall victims to influenza and the common cold, very readily.”

Fast-forward eight decades, and New York State Health Department data shows about 24.2% of eligible New Yorkers received their flu shot so far this season, 24.6% in Nassau County and 20.4% in Suffolk County.

A heavy cold season after the war had other implications as well. “With the handkerchief and paper shortage things are becoming critical,” said one Hempstead housewife. This was a lingering consequence of rationing and supply chain disruptions from World War II.

Another Hempstead housewife also pointed out economic impacts of the nonstop sickness. “My oldest son ... infected my other child, my husband and myself, causing bills and loss of working time for my husband.”

Comparable data collection does not date that far back, so there was no definitive answer to the original question posed about 1946. Today we know the answer: Since data collection started two decades ago, this December, the Department of Heath recorded the highest number of flu hospitalizations in one week and the most cases since at least 2004.

If you and everyone around you is sick, perhaps the remedy suggested in 1946 by a New Hyde Park auto painter has some appeal:

“I haven’t had a cold all this year ... because I drink whiskey,” he said. “I am not a drunk, or even anything near that classification, I much prefer the taste of a good shot of whiskey to the best damned cough syrup that was ever boiled up, brewed or distilled.”

— Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

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