Security hired for Islip Dem vote tonight

Daily Point

For Islip Dems, it's showtime

Anticipating a raucous crowd at tonight’s Islip Town Democratic Committee organizational meeting, chair Leigh-Ann Barde told The Point she has hired security to stop last-minute appointees to the committee who are opposed to her leadership from attending. 

Barde is being challenged for town leader after her acrimonious split with Suffolk County Democratic chair Rich Schaffer last month. Schaffer beat Southold Town Democratic Party chair Kathryn Casey Quigley in the first challenge of his 26-year tenure despite Barde switching allegiance to Casey Quigley. As a town committee, Islip tilted for Casey Quigley.

The political payback for Barde switching sides is a challenge to her leadership. Elizabeth Mercado, a Suffolk County Water Authority appointee and former Brentwood school district board of education president, announced earlier this month she was running against Barde.

Schaffer then made appointments to the Islip committee to back Mercado. Barde said in a Facebook post she had “no choice but to promptly appoint” her own people to open committee positions to counter Schaffer’s influence.

Remember, last week the Brookhaven Town Democratic Committee held its organizational meeting, also replete with accusations of committee stacking. The result was Schaffer-backed Diane Costello winning the chair seat.

Barde said she hired security “out of an abundance of caution” because of the county committee’s “constant attempts to bully and undermine our committee.”

“We told them yesterday not to come; we hired security and let them know,” Barde told The Point. “They will probably make a formal objection. They’re welcome to have a legal team come and count the vote but we’re not letting them hijack the meeting the way they did in Brookhaven.”

A Suffolk Democratic source told The Point if Schaffer’s appointees are prevented from voting tonight, they will sue.

“Clearly, this is a matter that needs to be litigated if people are physically barred from participating,” said the source, who backs Schaffer. “No one was physically prevented from accessing the site” at the county convention last month.

Barde said without last-minute appointments to the committee, Mercado and her slate don’t have the votes to win. But one of the committee members recently appointed by Schaffer told The Point that Barde’s days as chair are over.

“I’m happy tonight is happening so Islip Democrats can have a chance” to become a stronger organization, the source said, adding that Schaffer appointees were made in election districts with more gubernatorial vote weight, known as "the gubes."

Another Democratic source said the venue for tonight’s meeting, Greenwood Hall in East Islip, can’t hold the number of people expected to attend. “The lack of organization in this meeting is reflective of how Leigh-Ann Barde has mismanaged the Islip Town Democrats,” the source said. “And instead of asking for help and doing this the right way, we have a completely disorganized s--- show.”

Huntington Town Democrats hold their organizational meeting Thursday night. Current chair Jill Kaufman, a Schaffer supporter, is being challenged by Liz Best. That vote isn’t expected to be nearly as contentious as Islip’s, sources told The Point. 

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

Pencil Point

The AI-head

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

Reference Point

The 1957 'hurricane' season

Sixty-nine years ago this week, the top of the Newsday editorial page was grim. To the left, the headline warned “Crisis on L.I.” in a bold typeface. And to the right, a cartoon captioned “Long Island: The Hurricane Season” depicted a storm pummeling the region.

Both blamed the same culprit — "nightmare" unemployment.

It was Oct. 22, 1957, and Long Island was coming off a period the editorial board called “astonishing, furious, exciting—and above all, constant” growth due to the defense industry that supplied aircraft for World War II and the Korean conflict. The industry paid good money and attracted many workers to Long Island — “a nice place to live” — before postwar unemployment hit, the board wrote. Evidently, peace had its downside.

“More than 14,000 workers have lost their jobs as a result of defense cutbacks,” the board noted. “Because our economy is based to so great a degree on our aircraft plants and allied industries, the skilled worker who is laid off by Republic, for example, has no other market for his services on Long Island. Other aircraft companies, like Grumman and Fairchild, are on the same spot.”

The board explained that overnight the aircraft worker found himself without a source of income and was left with two choices — to move elsewhere or look for a different kind of work. This came after thousands of Long Islanders had been living the American dream of a home in the suburbs with a yard and a new car.

“Suddenly for some, the dream is becoming an inescapable nightmare,” the board lamented, before analyzing what this all meant and what could be done. “The victims of the layoff[s] … are now caught up in the shopping center economy they helped to create. And when the workers have no money to spend, the shortage is felt all along the line—at the market, at the candy store, in real estate, in Christmas shopping."

Long Island was not alone, as this came amid the 1957-58 national recession caused by postwar federal spending cuts. The GDP dropped 3.7%, the worst dive since the Great Depression. The board went on to propose that the answer to this was not to scream for government help, but to bring more industries to Long Island and fully supported the state’s effort to conduct town-by-town location research to attract new industries.

The board blamed an overall lack of vision in Long Island’s hectic wartime growth, saying “the real villains are those who thought Long Island could get away with putting all its eggs in one basket.”

Today, unemployment on Long Island is low at 4%, but price inflation and high cost of living are widespread. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not start tracking unemployment by county until 1976, but nationally, it exceeded 7% in 1957. Long Island did ultimately diversify its industries, with healthcare now making up 20% of jobs in the region, followed by education and government/public sector employment.

In 1958, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the federal government resumed massive spending, Long Island’s hard-hit economy got a new anchor in the Space Race. How AI, data centers and other technological advances will impact the region’s industries in this era remains to be seen.

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

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