A decade of The Point

Daily Point

10th Anniversary Edition

Ten years ago today, The Point landed in inboxes across the region with this message: "Good afternoon. The Newsday Editorial Board invites you to take a seat at our table.”

The name was inspired by Long Island's geography with its Montauk Point anchor. While the newsletter’s look has changed, its mission to bring you inside what the editorial board hears on calls, in meetings and out covering the political scene — "the point" — remains the same. In celebration, take a trip down memory lane with us ...

Since Sept. 30, 2015, more than 2,200 editions of The Point have been sent.

Topics covered our first week (with hindsight from 2025 in italics):

• The little-known Nassau district attorney candidate Madeline Singas showing a surprisingly strong lead in a poll over Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray in the 2015 DA race that pitted a career politician vs. the career prosecutor. (Singas won.)
• Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's visit to the editorial board, and he had a lot to say about then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. 
• Then NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton's visit with the editorial board, where he defended New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as a cop supporter. "I would argue that in the last 25 years, there's never been a better time to be a city police officer,” he said. We dubbed it Bratton’s "get over it tour," because he said, “Sure, it was a low point. Let's get over it” in reference to the police officers who turned their backs on de Blasio at the funerals of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
• The first batch of the beloved Quick Points, which included: “7 more years: The only thing that's like clockwork on the East Side Access project is its completion date. It's always seven years away. Sure enough, with the end of 2015 looming, the MTA has announced that the project probably won't be finished by December 2022.” (It opened on Jan. 23, 2023)
• The first Reference Point: Al D'Amato endorsing Sen. Chuck Schumer a whole 14 months before Schumer was up for reelection, as if he didn’t lose to him 17 years prior back in 1998.
• A tip that Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center would end up owning and operating the former John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility in Yaphank. (That happened — but the project never materialized. Brookhaven Memorial merged with NYU Langone in 2022 and then in 2024 Suffolk purchased it back.)
• Long Island's two Republican House members — Lee Zeldin and Peter King — having a disagreement on where the House was headed after John Boehner's resignation as speaker that week.

First edition: Click here to read a copy of the full first edition. Here is what that newsletter looked like then —

And we’ll leave you this: The most opened subject line of Point history was from January 2025: Blakeman goes from telling Hochul 'stay out of LI' to 'we're going to need help.’ 

Final Point

County comptroller musical chairs?

As the Newsday editorial board began interviewing candidates for local office last week, we asked Republican Suffolk Legis. Steven Flotteron about a potential successor to Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey, who is term-limited.

Flotteron, of Brightwaters, currently serves as deputy presiding officer of the county legislature.

But Flotteron said he has other plans.

“I have my hand up for county comptroller,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. If not, I love what I’m doing.”

Current County Comptroller John M. Kennedy Jr., who was first elected in 2014, can serve a maximum of 12 years, making this his last term. As a result, the seat will be an open one on the November 2026 ballot.

Flotteron is currently running to hold on to his legislative seat for another two years, though that term could be cut short if he were to run for and win the comptroller’s seat.

Flotteron’s move comes as Kennedy himself has expressed interest in continuing his own political career — potentially in running for county executive if current County Executive Edward P. Romaine doesn’t run again. That race won’t come until 2027.

That, too, came up in endorsement interviews, when the editorial board met with Republican Legis. Leslie Kennedy, the comptroller’s wife, and asked her whether she’d want her husband to run for county executive.

The county lawmaker noted that she and the comptroller have been married nearly 50 years and have been friends “since we were kids.”

“If he wants to be county executive, I’m all for it,” Leslie Kennedy said. “But we both love Ed Romaine. We both feel he’s a good human … If after Ed is done, they pick John, that would be a wonderful thing.”

Added Kennedy: “I just want somebody who’s going to take care of our county.”

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

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