Islip Town Board candidate DawnMarie Kuhn's unusual revenue streams

Daily Point

Candidate's campaign and boss fund her company

If you make payments to your own company — and your boss does too — in addition to being on the public payroll, is that triple-dipping? Or just politics as usual on Long Island?

DawnMarie Kuhn, a candidate for Islip Town Board with MAGA credentials and chief of staff to Suffolk Legis. Anthony Piccirillo (R-Holtsville), paid her own consulting company with money from her campaign and has been paid tens of thousands from Piccirillo’s campaign, according to filings with the New York State Board of Elections.

Kuhn’s campaign paid her company, Right View Strategies, $3,292.42 from May 13 to July 1. Piccirillo’s campaign has paid Right View $61,212.45 since August 2017. She made $97,342 as Piccirillo’s chief of staff in 2024, according to online documents, a position she’s held since 2020.

Piccirillo said Kuhn is “very good at what she does,” and stressed that his campaign paid Kuhn’s company for excellent campaign services. “She’s brilliant,” Piccirillo told The Point. “She’s a data scientist. She’s probably overqualified to be my chief of staff,” adding it’s “gonna be tough” to replace her if she wins in November.

One Long Island political consultant said Kuhn's use of campaign money to pay her own company for campaign services raised eyebrows. Another simply said it was “untoward.” A third political insider brushed it off as politics as usual.

Kuhn is vice chair of the Islip Town Republican Committee, and Right View Strategies has worked for electoral candidates across the Island. Some of those clients have since helped Kuhn’s Islip campaign. Assemb. Jodi Giglio (R-Baiting Hollow) paid Right View $12,528.46 since 2020. Giglio gave Kuhn’s campaign $1,000 in April.

Other high-paying clients of Kuhn’s include: Suffolk Legis. Trish Bergin ($20,398); Assemb. Keith Brown ($19,755.02); and Assemb. Doug Smith ($7,387.23). Islip Town Board members Jim O’Connor ($10,759.75), John Lorenzo ($4,379.80) and Michael McElwee ($3,294.52) are also clients.

The Brookhaven Town GOP has paid Right View Strategies $19,899.26, including a $1,500 payment as recently as July 2. Yet the Islip Town GOP has paid Right View Strategies a total of $4,425 with no payments since 2020. That may fit a recent pattern in Islip GOP politics, insiders say, as MAGA Republicans and Conservatives seek to push the more moderate local party further right.

The Point previously reported that longtime Islip GOP chair William Garbarino had been succeeded by Assemb. Doug Smith, of Holbrook, in a move to oust the party’s veteran leadership. After Smith’s election as party chair, the committee posted on social media that the new leadership “reflects a strategic shift towards making the party younger, modernizing operations ...”

In August, Kuhn was reelected recording secretary of the New York State Young Republicans, a group seeking to expand MAGA.

For Kuhn, campaign fundraising is second nature, so it’s not surprising she has raised $51,600 so far, not too shabby for a first-time candidate for a town council seat. Contributors include Suffolk Regional OTB president and CEO Phil Boyle (who served 26 years in the State Legislature); Supervisor Angie Carpenter; Garbarino; the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association PAC; Suffolk County Correction Officers; and the Suffolk County Deputy Sheriff’s PBA. Piccirillo gave $25 individually and Smith gave $50.

Kuhn’s opponent in Islip's 2nd Council District, Democrat David Chan, has raised $5,900. In April, Kuhn filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to have Chan removed from the ballot because he is a registered Republican. Kuhn’s lawyer for that case was longtime Suffolk GOP insider Steven Losquadro, who was recently hired by Hempstead Town to defend itself against a similar lawsuit.

Piccirillo touted Kuhn’s education and expertise as a political consultant. Kuhn’s online bio states she has three master’s degrees and is going for a fourth, in political analytics from Columbia University. She has won several industry awards in political consulting and judged national contests in her field. She was named one of the top 50 women in business by Long Island Business News in 2024. She previously served as Islip Town Councilman Jim O’Connor’s chief of staff. 

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Anything goes

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Data Point

LI homeowners get FEMA flood zone exemptions

When Superstorm Sandy hit Long Island in October 2012, some residents in Nassau County already were in the thralls of a dispute with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. About 25,000 properties were reportedly incorrectly placed in the high flood-risk zone in its 2009 floodplain map, exponentially increasing flood insurance premiums for these properties and mandating others to take flood insurance if they had mortgages.

Many of these homes and businesses, owners claimed, were far from the water and elevated enough to not flood, not even during Sandy. With pressure from elected officials and property owners, FEMA agreed to drop thousands of properties from the high-risk flood zone. The rest were left to submit letters of map amendments, or LOMAs, to the disaster management agency with proof that their properties were elevated and not at risk of flooding.

Since Sandy in 2012, around 575 Long Island property owners have applied for a LOMA. Out of them, 468 were approved, removing these properties from the high-risk flood zone.

Old data

LOMAs were introduced in the 1970s to account for the possibility that individual properties might be built on higher elevation than the flood zone baseline, which FEMA refers to as the base flood elevation level. Several properties on Long Island’s South Shore, including on a “barrier island,” were removed from the high-risk flood zone through this process.

However, the flood maps for Nassau and Suffolk have not been updated since 2009, and the agency does not re-evaluate the base flood elevation levels every five years as required by Congress.

Rising sea levels and changing weather patterns mean shifting base flood elevation levels and higher frequency and intensity of storms on Long Island. Since 1953, a total of 38 disasters have been declared on Long Island, including 13 hurricanes, 10 severe storms and four flooding events.

There are no scheduled updates for Nassau and Suffolk county maps on the horizon, a spokesperson for the agency told The Point. While it is not mandatory to have flood insurance if not in the flood zone, FEMA recommends it for all property owners.

— Karthika Namboothiri karthika.namboothiri@newsday.com

Subscribe to The Point here and browse past editions of The Point here.