GOP majority holds in Nassau Legislature, but 9th District still a toss-up; Losquadro wins Suffolk comptroller race

Republicans in the Nassau County Legislature maintained their majority Tuesday while Democrats remained hopeful of picking up one seat in a race that was too close to call.

In Suffolk County, Daniel P. Losquadro was elected as county comptroller, narrowly defeating Democrat Jon Estreich for the fiscal watchdog position. And Suffolk County Clerk Vincent Puleo was reelected to a four-year term.

The final race to be decided for Nassau's legislature was in the 9th District, where Democratic challenger Juleigh Chin held a slim advantage over incumbent Republican Scott P. Strauss (R-Mineola).

Just after 12:15 a.m., Nassau GOP Chair Joe Cairo addressed a somber and emptying room at the Lannin venue in East Meadow and said while they expected to hold onto the legislature, the race for the 9th District would likely come down to paper ballots.

"We left it all out on the field. ... The true test is not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up," he said, while speaking to the overall results for the GOP.

Nassau Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs took the stage at Democratic headquarters in New Hyde Park at 11:40 p.m. to say Jared Behr had won his race in the 16th District as Democrats held onto a seat currently held by longtime lawmaker Arnold Drucker, who decided to not seek reelection in February.

Behr, 41, an attorney who lost a bid for Oyster Bay supervisor in 2023, defeated Republican Olivia Pfeifer, 22, a full-time student at Strayer University.

Jacobs said he was confident Chin would win her race for the 9th District. She would become Nassau County's first Asian American and Pacific Islander legislator. And it would be the second seat Democrats pick up in the legislature in as many years.

All the seats for Nassau's legislature were up again this year due to the New York State even-year election law, which shifted local elections that had been held on odd years.

Nassau Presiding Officer Howard Kopel (R-Lawrence), who won reelection, said he was optimistic about Republican performance in the county’s legislative races but said the 9th District race separated by about 100 votes may take a week to count.

At the Suffolk GOP headquarters in Patchogue, Losquadro declared victory as he won the seat currently held by Republican John Kennedy, who was term-limited after 12 years.

Losquadro said the party prevailed countywide, but not at the margin they had hoped for. He blamed tight races on moving elections to even years.

"We found ourselves in a difficult environment tonight," he said. "Yet another reason why the Democrats up in Albany wanted to move these every election to even here because they want global issues to be drowned out by national issues. Unfortunately, we were a victim of that here this year, where a lot of national issues took center stage."

He vowed to focus on governing now that the election was over.

When initial results showed some of Suffolk's Republican candidates like Losquadro trailing, GOP chairman Jesse Garcia urged supporters not to panic, noting the first votes might skew Democratic.

He said Suffolk would serve as a red wall against a blue wave.

Losquadro, 54, campaigned on reducing the county's debt load and working with the county executive to improve Suffolk's bond ratings, while Estreich, 47, said he pledged to fight corruption and scrutinize spending at both the county and town levels. Losquadro would serve a three-year term due to the even-year election change.

Two challengers mounted write-in campaigns to challenge Puleo for county clerk but fell short. Abigail Field, a Democrat, and Christian Padgett, a Libertarian, both said they were campaigning to give voters a choice after the Suffolk Democratic Committee did not get a candidate on the ballot.

The clerk and comptroller positions both became the subjects of a firestorm this summer for Democrats in Suffolk. Newsday reported that both Estreich and the county clerk candidate, Anthony Portesy, faced pressure to withdraw from their races from the top of the party led by chairman Rich Schaffer. The decision to exert that pressure was part of what some committee members had said was a long-standing practice by Schaffer to make deals with the Republican and Conservative parties.

While Estreich vowed to remain in the race, Portesy, an attorney who was the chair of the Brookhaven Town Democratic Committee, abandoned his campaign in August.

In Suffolk, legislators did not have to run again after voters approved a referendum last November to extend the length of terms from two to four years. The referendum was in response to the even-year election law and allowed the lawmakers to avoid running in consecutive years.

The Suffolk County Legislature unanimously approved legislation called the Term Limit Preservation Act to set the referendum. Schaffer had said immediately after the election that he thought the referendum will "be found unconstitutional." The committee considered litigation to challenge the result but decided against it, allowing the four-year term to take effect.

Suffolk legislators will run again in 2028 in accordance with the even-year election law.

Neither Nassau nor Suffolk has a county executive race at the top of the ticket this year. The Nassau county executive race was last year and Suffolk will be contested next year.

By Joe Werkmeister

joe.werkmeister@newsday.com

Joe Werkmeister joined Newsday in 2022 and covers Suffolk County government and politics. He is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University and previously worked as the editor of two North Fork community newspapers.

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