LI Election 2025 numbers: Winners, losers, and the doozies

Daily Point

GOP fends off Dems in Suffolk, mostly

The power of incumbency was alive and well in Suffolk County on Election Day — except in LD 1.

Democrat Gregory P. Doroski beat Republican incumbent Catherine L. Stark, and the GOP lost its 12-6 supermajority in the Suffolk Legislature by one seat. Unofficial results Wednesday had Doroski leading with 11,219 total votes compared with 10,311 for Stark.

Every Republican incumbent in the legislature saw their vote totals drop compared with 2023, and every Democratic incumbent got more votes than in 2023. Even three Democrats who didn’t campaign — Jawaan M. Sween, Kevin B. O'Shaughnessy and Nancy Silverio — pulled in percentages in the mid-40s.

Were voters upset about the federal shutdown? Inflation? Presidential policies? Longtime political consultant Michael Dawidziak told The Point the reasons for closer margins this year had more to do with turnout than policy.

"Democrats were angry and anger can be a very motivating force to come out and vote," he said. "Republicans stayed home on Election Day. ... The Republicans’ message was, ‘We have to defend the status quo’ and that’s not a very good motivating message to get out the votes."

Dawidziak, however, said Suffolk Republicans avoided a Halloween massacre. "I think Republicans came out of this relatively unscathed," he said. “… It could have been far worse."

Republican Huntington Town Supervisor Edmund J. Smyth survived a close call against Democrat Cooper Macco, largely due to the Working Families Party line vote.

Smyth got 49.29% of the overall vote compared with 47.9% for Macco. The WFP candidate, who didn’t campaign, got 2.76% of the vote, enough to have tipped the scales in Macco’s favor had he won the June primary for the party line.

With just 21 votes separating Republican Riverhead Town Supervisor Timothy C. Hubbard and Jerome Halpin, who ran as a Democrat, that race is too close to call. Dawidziak said Hubbard may have fallen victim to a Riverhead tradition. "This is a town, which for some reason, chews up and spits out supervisors," he said.

The top two races in Suffolk — for district attorney and sheriff — featured cross-endorsed candidates running unopposed. The interesting stat in those races is how Conservatives supported Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr., who ran as a Democrat, in stronger numbers than DA Raymond A. Tierney on the Republican line. Toulon got 58,214 votes from Conservatives compared with 37,938 votes from Conservatives for Tierney.

Suffolk County Democratic Party chair Rich Schaffer, who easily won reelection as Babylon Town supervisor Tuesday, perhaps overstated Democrats’ performance in Suffolk while playing up the potential impact in the 2026 midterm elections.

In a statement, Schaffer told The Point that Democrats are “… carrying that momentum straight into the midterms."

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

There was one new win for Nassau Democrats

Nassau County’s election results looked almost like someone copy-pasted the same numbers over and over again.

Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman won with 55.92% of the vote. Republican Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly won with 55.58% of the vote. Republican Nassau County Comptroller Elaine Phillips won with 55.65% of the vote. North Hempstead Town Supervisor Jennifer DeSena, again running on the Republican line, won with 55.62% of the vote.

And on ... and on ... and on.

So, it’s worth taking a look at the one race where something did shift in the county, and that’s in Nassau’s LD 14.

The district was redrawn significantly during the latest redistricting efforts and became one of six that’s a majority-minority district.

The change established boundaries that included Lynbrook and much of Valley Stream and led Republican Legis. C. William Gaylor to not seek reelection.

That opened a door for new candidates, establishing a competitive race between Democrat Cynthia Nuñez, a Valley Stream resident, and Republican Sheharyar Ali, who said an apartment adjacent to a gas station in Elmont gave him residency in the district.

In the end, the district’s new lines and Nuñez, a new face with a fresh perspective, gave Democrats the single new seat they secured.

The other five newly drawn majority-minority districts — LDs 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 — will all be represented by Democrats, too, but they’re not new pickups.

Nuñez’s win, coincidentally, came by an even larger margin than the top Republican victors. She earned 56.06% of the vote, to Ali’s 43.82%, according to the Nassau County Board of Elections.

Democrats also were eyeing LD 9 — which also changed with redistricting, becoming an Asian influence district. But the tallies as of now show their candidate, Juleigh Chin, couldn’t overcome Republican incumbent Scott Strauss, losing by a margin of more than 1,800 votes.

In their unsuccessful attempt to gain a supermajority, Republicans also made a significant push to oust Democratic Legis. Arnold Drucker in LD 16. But Republican Jennifer Gallub Pravato — who faced her own residency questions — didn’t prevail, earning just 46.88% of the vote to Drucker’s 53.04%.

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

Long Island came up in Mamdani's victory speech

Long Island got a brief shoutout during Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech Tuesday night — but it was a bit of a head-scratcher.

"Our greatness will be anything but abstract ..." said Mamdani, now New York City’s mayor-elect. "It will be felt by each grandparent who can afford to stay in the home they have worked for, and whose grandchildren live nearby because the cost of child care didn’t send them to Long Island."

Mamdani, who is proposing universally free child care for New York City residents, seemed to be suggesting that right now, the high cost of child care in the city sends families to Long Island, because here, child care is ... cheaper?

But the data tells a different story.

The average cost of child care on Long Island in a day care center stands at about $24,000 per year, while a licensed provider in a home costs $20,000 a year on average, according to market rate data Newsday published from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. Depending on the age of the child and the setting, costs in 2024 ranged from $228 a week to $484 a week, according to state data.

In New York City, average annual costs ranged from $26,000 for day care centers to $18,200 for family-based care. Depending on the age of the child and the setting, costs in 2024 ranged from $188 a week to $500 a week.

People move from New York City to Long Island. They’ve done it before — they'll do it in the future. But cheaper child care isn’t the reason.

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

Pencil Point

Climate change?

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