No 'Blue Tsunami,' But Some Seats Were Flipped, Changing The Political Dynamics In Brookhaven Town

BROOKHAVEN TOWN, NY — In unofficial results monitoring close races, Suffolk’s GOP held onto its congressional seats and the Suffolk County clerk and comptroller posts, but while it appears there was no blue tsunami in Brookhaven Town as there was in other parts of the country, there was change in the political landscape with the loss of two seats at the state level – a senate district and an assembly district.

The two seats joined in a state Democratic victory with the reelection of incumbents Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Leticia James, and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Brookhaven Democratic Committee Chairwoman Diane Costello said in the congressional races, the party’s candidates lost by not that much.

In Congressional District 1, which stretches from Brentwood to the East End, incumbent U.S. Rep. Nick LaLotadefeated challenger Chris Gallant by 51 to 48 percent. In Congressional District 2, which stretches from Massapequa in Nassau County to Mastic Beach on the South Shore, U.S. Rep. Andrew Garbarino defeated former Suffolk County Executive Patrick Halpin by 49 to 47 percent.

Halpin has still not conceded the race.

“Well, Halpin’s [race] is still possible, but this is about the closest we have gotten since Tim Bishop lost, and that was, I guess, it was 2014,” Costello said.

"They haven't gotten as close before," she said of past congressional races. "We had great candidates. Perry Gershon was a great candidate. Nancy Goroff was a great candidate. Bridget Fleming was an excellent candidate, and John Avalon was a great candidate. They were all good candidates who ran well, but they weren't able to prevail."

"But we came the closest that we have come to date, and that does say a lot," she said, adding that the results tell voters, who may feel disaffected, or that it doesn't matter what they vote, that their choice is "possible" and they "should have voted."

"I also want to say that this year I saw a tremendous amount of people digging in and working for these candidates, and we didn't get much support from the federal, the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee]."

"We didn't get much support from them for our congressional candidates, but locally we had tremendous support, and also Kathy Hochul and the New York Dems, they opened offices across Suffolk, staffed them, and you know that was a tremendous benefit," she said. "It's one of the reasons we got so close."

"Kathy Hochul beat [Bruce] Blakeman on our own Long Island, so I can't say enough about the people who won and the volunteers who helped them win these seats," she said. "It'll be better, so I'll keep fighting.

In the Suffolk County comptroller's race, it "looks like" Republican Dan Losquadro has defeated his Democratic opponent, in Jonathan Estreich, though there still are some uncounted votes in absentee and mail-in ballots, Costello said.

"It looks like he has prevailed, but I don't think it's been conceded yet," she said. " It's very close."

Losquadro defeated Estreich 51 to 49 percent.

Garcia declared victory in the race, saying that he "doesn't care" what the Democrats are claiming that all of the votes have yet to be counted.

“There is not enough,” he said. “There's a 6,000-vote county-wide spread. There's not enough uncounted ballots to mathematically change the outcome.”

Garcia was unmoved by the fact that the Democratic Party was not conceding in the 2nd Congressional District race with Garbarino and Halpin.

“I don't care what the Democrats do – the math is the numbers,” he said. “You know, the Democrats are the same ones who tried to overturn the 2000 election. They tried to stop the way people vote, here in the state of New York, by changing the way people vote by changing our local elections to even years.”

“You know that the Democrats have no credibility when it comes to fair and efficient elections,” he said.

Costello declined to comment other than to say, "I think when all the votes are counted, that's when we'll know."

"That's probably an uphill climb, but it is possible," she said, adding that former Suffolk County Legis. Sarah Anker was down by 1,000 votes and needed 90 percent of the absentee ballots, but she ended up with around 92 percent and won in 2021.

When asked to explain the uphill battle for Democrats like Estreich and Patrick Halpin, who ran against Garbarino, and have not yet conceded, Costello said, “Yes, okay, absolutely.”

"But the votes have not yet been counted, so that's my statement,” she said.

Halpin, the former Suffolk executive, won in Suffolk, but what held him back was where the congressional district stretches to over the border in Massapequa in Nassau County.

"That's a tough, tough area for Democrats to win, but it's very close," she said. "And he also has absentees that are outstanding."

“So you know the right thing to do is to wait until all of the votes have been counted,” she said. “If it comes down to that there's, let's say, a candidate is losing by 100 votes — this is hypothetical — and there are 50 absentees left to count... Well, there's no path that way. But as long as they're still out there, I think we need patience until all of them are counted."

Incumbent Suffolk Clerk Vincent Puleo also defeated two write-in candidates in his race with a margin of 88 to 12 percent.

Costello noted there was only one contested Senate district in Brookhaven, and that was Senate District 1, which was flipped with the election of Chris Murray, unseating incumbent Republican Sen. Anthony Palumbo.

Costello is very happy with Murray’s 52 to 48 percent lead.

“We haven't elected a Democrat in Senate District 1 since 1913, which shows you how much of his victory says about people being sort of fed up with the status quo and wanting something different,” she said. “You know, Tony Palumbo's been elected as assemblyman and state senator for a very long time, and I would not criticize him. I would just say that Democrats wanted and elected a different voice, and we did.”

The election of Joshua Slaughter, former Chief of Staff to Suffolk Legis. Kate Browning, in Assembly District 3, was a big win.

Slaughter won by 51 percent.

"In three, there was Josh, and we were able to flip that for the first time in a really long time, and I’m very, very excited about that,” Costello said.

“I mean, those are by a handful of votes,” he said, referencing AD 3 and SD1, noting that it was “a bad year” but the party is a “big ship.”

“It’s an aircraft carrier,” he said. “We were in very stormy seas, and we took a little bit of water in, and by a handful of votes, less than all we had to do was switch 450 minds. That's all we needed to do, and it just came up, just outside our grasp. The other race, a senatorial race, that was really lost, unfortunately, on the East End. Yeah, that's where that was lost.”

There was more support for Palumbo in Brookhaven Town, as well as other candidates on the line, Garcia noted

“The town of Brookhaven provided the two members of Congress with huge significant pluralities, both for Nick LaLota and Andrew Garbarino,” he said. “The town of Brookhaven also

provided the endless squadron of plurality it needed. He needed to win county-wide in a very difficult midterm election.”

If anyone visited the GOP’s headquarters in Medford at any given time over the season, particularly any weekend, there were hundreds of volunteers. On election day, the party deployed about 400 volunteers and canvassers and made tens of thousands of phone calls

“So you know, Brookhaven is the heart of the Suffolk County Republican Committee, and you know we pumped fast and hard,” he said.

In Assembly District 2, which stretches from Brookhaven to Southold on the North Shore, the party had "a difficult time finding somebody to run against" incumbent Assemb. Jody Giglio, "and we did not run a strong candidate," Costello said. "And there was a woman named Kimberly Wilder who made her own party called Voter Options, and she ran, but basically that was, I would say, an unopposed district, she added.

Giglio won by 58 percent.

In Assembly District 4, which is the northwestern part of Brookhaven, incumbentAssemb. Rebecca Kassay, a Democrat, was reelected. Kassay won 57 to 41 percent.

In Assembly District 7, the GOP held onto the seat now held by incumbent Assemb. Jarret Gandolfo, who ran for the Senate. DawnMarie Lentz-Kuhn defeatedTrish Kopp. by 54 percent.

Kopp "had a tough time" in the race, according to Costello.

"Most of the assembly district was in Islip, and that's a very difficult place for Democrats to prevail," she added.

“So really, in the ones that we had candidates, we were able to do really well," she said. "And you know, I think with Trish, we had just 16 [Election Districts] in Brookhaven, so that could have helped her more."

In Senate District 3, incumbent Sen. Dean Murray, a Republican, was reelected. Antonio Vargas-Ayala, stepped out of the race for personal reasons, Costello said.

Murray’s race was a close one, with him winning by 52 percent to his opponent’s 44.

Murray told Patch that he is happy that he won, and "we'll have two more years to serve the people of the third Senate District."

"But it's obvious that all of us, all of the races, were caught up in the national fervor, and the national wave of anti-Trump sentiment that became pretty clear, and I knew that when campaigning, knocking on doors," he said. "I talked to some people who said, 'You know, you seem like a nice guy, you seem like you're doing a good job, but I'm not voting for any Republican this year.’"

When he asked why, he was told it was "very simple: Donald Trump.”

"We want to send a message, and you know, and that's very unfortunate,” he said. “But with that said, I think that, you know, as we say, ‘The people spoke.’ They went to the polls. They cast their ballots, and this is what we have now.”

“We obviously lost some Republican seats,” he said, referencing the 1st Senate District and 3rd Assembly District. “We were already in the minority. We are now in the super minority. And frankly, I think what that means is, last night was a big win for the progressive, very progressive side of the left-leaning side of the Democrat Party, because they will now be able to override any vetoes or any pushback from the governor, even though she's part of their party.”

“She's a little more moderate, not as far left-leaning as a lot of these [Democratic Socialist of America] members and progressive members that are coming in,” he added. “So there may be some discontent there, and with the supermajority, they'll now be able to override any of her efforts to push back against that far left agenda.”

It was a closer margin in Murray’s race than past years, despite his opponent seemingly not campaigning.

“It was completely caught up in the fervor of the anti-Trump sentiment,” he said. “I don't think this had anything to do with me. I don't think it was a reflection necessarily on me or on him. I think it was it was very clear that it was anti-Trump sentiment, and it was the battle lines were drawn.”

“It was, you're either going to vote Republican, or you're going to vote Democrat, and it was obvious it was very much a Democratic wave,” he added.

Garcia chalked up the two-seat loss to a historic midterm election.

“Every number, everybody's numbers are going to come down,” he said.

“There's a historic trend on midterm elections where the party in power of the White House has a drop off of total number of percentages and suffers in midterm elections,” he said. “This is nothing new. What's new and what's not surprising is that in Brookhaven and in Suffolk, once again, like we did in 2018, we held back a blue tsunami by being a big brick red wall.”

Garcia said it is the party's job in Brookhaven and in the county to always create, and make sure that they are, "a big red brick wall from any potential tsunamis."

"We knew that the midterms were going to be difficult," he said. "We prepared for them. We started this process, and vetting candidates, collecting signatures, and meeting voters 11 months ago, back in January, in the freezing cold, blizzard weather."

"We continued through the hot summer and humidity, and we did it, and we closed strong," he said. "I think the fact that we have a large pool of hardworking, dedicated, and embedded in their neighborhoods-type of volunteers and committee members – that’s the difference."

The party’s elected officials and candidates get “real, live intel on issues that are important to the community because of our committee members, and I think that we just ran with it.”

“There's no substitute,” he said. “You know, working harder makes us luckier, and that's our motto. We want to hit hard, hit fast, and hit often, and that's what we do on every cycle. Now, of course, we saw the tsunami nationally, and we saw it come through the state of New York and stopped at the Suffolk County and Brookhaven border.”

The party knows it has to continue to listen to voters, learn from their vote, learn from the voters, and continue each cycle to earn their vote, he said.

“And the best thing about us, about our operation, is that I believe that because we are, we you know our principles, our philosophical fundamental principles of lower property taxes, secure borders, safer neighborhoods, policies that lead to cleaner water and more open space, and the suburban protection of the suburban quality-of-life,” he said. “That helps our candidates to move forward in the campaign, and where they don't just point out a problem or finger-point.”

“What we actually do is we provide solutions to the solutions agenda that we have actual results for,” he said.

Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, a Democrat known to work across the political divide, said that while the election results are not yet official, he will continue to do what he has all along.

"My thoughts are I have to continue doing what I'm doing," he said. "I have a very good relationship with pretty much all of our electeds, as they come and they go. I've been doing this 22 years, so I've been through multiple cycles of new people starting, and it's all of us having respect for each other and understanding each other's jobs."

Some members of the community welcomed the election results, but wanted to see more change.

Christina Henderson, an organizer for Indivisible who has arranged'No Kings' protests challenging the current presidential administration, said it was amazing to witness the historic voter turnout and blue wave that swept the country.

"I still believe most people are not racist, homophobic, or misogynistic, but I think they were ok with voting for leaders who were, as long as they falsely promised to lower prices," she said. "I think the country is waking up to the fact that these conmen are actually stealing from the working class to enrich themselves and their billionaire friends, while simultaneously covering up a child sex trafficking ring with the Epstein files."

But as far as local races went, Henderson was not impressed.

"While even Texas voted for pro-democracy candidates, I have to say I am extremely disheartened about many of our local races," she said, adding that the fact that U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota, "a Trump puppet" was reelected "has been very difficult to grapple with."

"While the rest of the country was voting for hope, affordability, accountability, checks and balances on the Trump regime, and an end to the Iran war, half of my neighbors voted for candidates who have made Long Island more hateful and unaffordable," she said. "However, I will continue to speak out and fight for the values and principles that I know the other half of our county shares with me."

"Hate will never make America, or Long Island, great," she added.