SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Presidential Campaigning In Suffolk County It's About Money And Plastic Cups

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Suffolk County is a prominent spot on the U.S. presidential campaign trail.

Former President Donald Trump was here on August 2^nd for a fundraising dinner in Bridgehampton at the estate of billionaire Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of the financial servicing firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Guests were asked to pay $25,000 to attend, $50,000 for a photo with Trump, and as much as $500,000 to be listed as a host, said Bloomberg News. The aim was to raise $10 million.

“It’s a hot race now and Donald Trump needs the fundraising and I’m trying to help any way I can,” said Lutnick in an interview on Bloomberg TV.

Also on August 2^nd, Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman as husband of Vice President Kamela Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, was on Fire Island for a fundraiser. He was accompanied by Chasten Glezman Buttigieg, husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The event was at the beach house in Fire Island Pines of Marius Meland, a founder of the Law360 Newswire, and Eng Kian Ooi, an executive at it. Tickets ran from $250 to $25,000.

Fire Island Pines is a famed principally gay community. They carried a “warning” to the 150 attendees, said Newsday, that “their rights were at stake.” Newsday reported that Emhoff said: “The right to love who you want to love, the right to marry who you want to marry…this affects all of you.” An attorney, Emhoff said recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions could have grave implications. “We need to have an army for freedom, an army for justice, led by my wife, Kamala Harris.”

President Joe Biden, on June 29^th, two days after his widely criticized performance in a debate with Trump, was at an event in East Hampton defending his functioning in it. “Voters had a different reaction,” he said, as compared to pundits, according to media pool reports. “I promise you, we’re gonna win this election.” His wife, Jill, also spoke, and the reports said she declared: “Joe isn’t just the right person for the job. He’s the only person for the job.” Then, on July 21^st, Biden announced he wasn’t running for president again and endorsed Harris.

As to Harris traveling plans, an August lst piece in Vanity Fair magazine by Nate Freeman said: “Sources have indicated that the vice president is probably not going to personally make it to the Hamptons this summer, for logistical reasons—she started a campaign just over 100 days before the election, an incredibly condensed time frame, and she is very much needed elsewhere. And it’s not like she can’t raise cash without hitting up the masters of the universe on the beach.”

The lengthy article by Freeman was headlined: “Kamala Harris is Crushing Donald Trump at the Monogram Shop in the Hamptons, by Nearly 5 to 1.” This referred to a part of the piece in which he reported that “the most clear indicator of where the wind is blowing on the South Fork might be a little store on Newtown Lane in East Hampton called the Monogram Shop. Since 2004, proprietor Val Smith has been selling plastic cups bearing the names of both the Republican and Democratic candidate for presidents. The cup that sells the most has synced up with the actual winner in each race, apart from 2016, when Hillary Clinton outsold Trump in a town where she’s vacationed for years.”

It continued that “until Biden dropped out of the race, the Trump cups were the clear favorite—on July 20, the store sold 323 Trumps and just 39 Bidens.” But after Biden withdrew, a new batch of 800 cups arrived and sold out two days later. The first day “Harris had outsold Trump 126 to two” and the next day “Harris took the lead again: 419-88.” 

Freeman quoted Smith saying “East Hampton is actually a pretty representational slice of the electorate.” And each cup was priced at $3 so, “It’s not like you’re just talking to a pollster.”

For decades presidential candidates made appearances in Suffolk County at the Long Island Arena, a huge Quonset hut type of a structure that stood along Veterans Memorial Highway in Commack, and the Colonie Hill catering complex in Hauppauge. In 2016 the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook had a photo and artifact exhibition titled “Long Island in the 1960s” with a section that related: “Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon recognized the region’s up-and-coming status, making presidential campaign stops at the Long Island Arena in 1960.” 

A major appearance of Trump when he first ran for president in 2016 was a fundraiser at the Emporium nightclub in Patchogue. The New Yorker magazine published an article about it headed “Donald Trump in Patchogue” which told of Trump speaking about a southern border wall and how to the attendees he “launched into a call and response, ‘Who’s going to build the wall? The crowd shouted back: ‘Mexico!’” His stance on immigration continues as a big Trump issue. 

Security was tight for Trump’s recent visit to Suffolk. After his airplane landed at Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, his motorcade journeyed to the Lutnick estate in Bridgehampton with many side streets taken. That provided heightened security after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last month. Scott Armusewicz who lives on one of the streets which the motorcade took, Cooper Lane in Southampton, said residents were told by Southampton Town Police that they couldn’t drive out from their homes or back to them for periods of time. 

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 at Old Westbury and the author of six books.