SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Jan 2023 Thoughts Turn To Bellone's Replacement

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone is finishing his 12th year of officeThis new year is the last year as county executive for Steve Bellone. The eighth Suffolk County executive (H. Lee Dennison was the first, taking office in 1960), Bellone, a Democrat from North Babylon, is term-limited after 12 years in office. 

He was a member of the Babylon Town Board and that town’s supervisor before his election in 2011 as county executive—the top job in Suffolk County government. He is a lawyer.

Dave Calone of Setauket, a lawyer, too, and a former federal and state prosecutor, announced this summer that he is seeking to be the Democratic candidate for county executive in 2023. Calone has also held several positions on Long Island among them being a trustee of the Long Island Power Authority and a board member of the Community Development Corp., an affordable housing nonprofit. In launching his campaign, he noted he already had $1 million in campaign contributions. 

Democrat Jay Schneiderman said in November that he is considering a run for the position. “I’ll be a good candidate,” declared Schneiderman, who is the only person to ever serve as a supervisor of two Suffolk towns—first East Hampton and then, after 12 years as a Suffolk County legislator, supervisor of the Town of Southampton. He resides in Southampton and has western Suffolk roots: he grew up in Hauppauge.

No Republican has announced her or his candidacy yet for county executive. But Suffolk Republican Chairman Jesse Garcia says his party has a “deep bench” of potential GOP nominees and he is optimistic that the Republican candidate will win. 

There has not been a Republican Suffolk County executive since Robert Gaffney, an attorney and former FBI agent, who served three terms from 1991 to 2003. Previously, Gaffney, who then lived in Miller Place, had been a state assemblyman.

But 2023 could be a good year for a GOP candidate for county executive considering Republican wins in Suffolk this past year and the year before. In 2021, a Republican majority took control of the Suffolk County Legislature. And last year, in what was described as a the “red wave” that moved across Long Island, Suffolk GOP wins included Nick LaLota, former chief of staff of the legislature and a trustee of the Village of Amityville, to the U.S. House of Representatives in the lst C.D. 

Republican sources, meanwhile, say that Brookhaven Town Supervisor Edward Romaine of Center Moriches might become the GOP candidate for county executive this year. 

Brookhaven Town’s 70th supervisor, Romaine was elected to that office in a special election in 2012. He left the Suffolk County Legislature to run for town supervisor following the tragic death of his son, Keith, a town councilman. Keith, of Moriches, died at 36 after being struck with pneumonia. Ed left the legislature committed to do what Keith would have pursued in Brookhaven Town.

Ed was a history teacher in the Hauppauge School District, where he taught for 10 years. In 1980, he entered public service as the Brookhaven’s first commissioner of Housing and Community Development and was later appointed its director of Economic Development. 

He was a member of the Suffolk Legislature from 1986 through 1989 when he was elected Suffolk County clerk, a position he held for 16 years. In 2005, he returned to the legislature and was re-elected three times—leaving to run for Brookhaven Town supervisor. In 2003 he ran for county executive but lost to then Democrat, since a Republican, Steve Levy.

Said Calone in a statement in July: “I’m running for county executive to make sure everyone benefits from the same kind of opportunities that I have enjoyed growing up in Suffolk County. I’m eager to get to work for the people of Suffolk, to enable everyone to have the chance to get a good paying job, to protect our clean air and water, to help families afford to live here, and to create safe, thriving communities.”

Calone co-founded the Suffolk County Forward program, an effort to provide support to county businesses and workers when COVID-19 struck, served as chairman of the county’s Superstorm Sandy Review Task Force, and created the Long Island Emerging Technologies Fund.

He tried to be the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016 in the lst C.D. but was defeated in a Democratic primary by Anna Throne-Holst, then the Southampton Town supervisor. She lost to Republican Lee Zeldin in the general election.

Schneiderman, after graduating from Hauppauge High School—where his history teacher was Ed Romaine—attended Ithaca College and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry. He then was awarded two Masters of Arts degrees, one in education from the State University of New York at Cortland, and one in administration from Long Island University-C.W. Post.

He was a teacher of science, mathematics—and also music. Schneiderman is an accomplished drummer. Meanwhile, he also managed his family’s motel in Montauk and subsequently formed his own property management company.

Schneiderman’s first position in government came in 1991 when he was appointed a member of the Town of East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals. He became its chairman in 1996. He served in that capacity until 1999 when he was elected to the first of two terms as the supervisor of the Town of East Hampton.

In 2003, he was elected a member of the Suffolk County Legislature, serving as its deputy presiding officer from 2014 to the end of his term in 2015. He was term-limited as a county legislator but having moved to Southampton was eligible to run for the supervisor’s job in that town. In 2018, he ran for Suffolk County comptroller but lost to the incumbent, GOPer John M. Kennedy, Jr. of Nesconset. First elected Southampton Town supervisor in 2015, Schneiderman is term-limited from running for Southampton supervisor this year.

Of running for county executive, he says: “I have the right resume for the job.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.