SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Politics In Suffolk County

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The Suffolk election ballot this year will be somewhat simpler with political parties on it narrowed to four.

That’s a result of Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2019 taking aim at the Working Families Party. As the political journal Politico said that year, Cuomo was upset about the “major role” the WFP was playing in Democratic Party politics so he sought to “wreak vengeance on the WFP.” It reported: “Seven people—elected officials and other individuals prominent in state politics—told Politico that the governor or his top staff have told them…he wants to destroy the party.”

So in 2020 the State Legislature—with Democrat Cuomo pushing hard—increased what was needed for a party to automatically get on the New York State ballot to 130,000 votes or two percent in contests for governor or president in the prior election.

The scheme didn’t work out for Cuomo. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden running for president received 386,613 votes on the WFP line in New York, thus the WFP was entitled to automatically continue on the ballot. 

Parties that didn’t make it and lost their automatic ballot standing were the Green Party, Libertarian Party and Independence Party.

The Independence Party had been a political force in Suffolk County. For a time, Frank MacKay of Rocky Point had been its Suffolk and New York State chair. A prominent Suffolk official who was an Independence Party member was Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor. Since last year the party no longer exists in Suffolk or New York State. 

As for the Conservative Party, the 296,335 votes Donald Trump received in the state on its line in the presidential race in 2020 allowed it to retain automatic ballot status. 

It like the Independence Party has had a substantial base in Suffolk. One of its founders in 1962 was Kieran O’Doherty of Hampton Bays. Conservative Party endorsement, usually of Republican nominees, has many times made a winning difference here.

A leading Conservative Party official in Suffolk was William Carney of Hauppauge, a county legislator who got the backing of the GOP in 1978 to run for the House of Representatives. (That was a result of a deal in which the state Conservative Party cross-endorsed Republican Perry Duryea, Jr. of Montauk for governor.) Carney became the first Conservative Party member elected to the House, remaining in it until 1987, although switching his enrollment from Conservative to GOP in 1985. 

On this year’s ballot in Suffolk, the top county contest will be for county executive and it sets Democrat Dave Calone of Setauket, a former state and federal prosecutor, against Republican Ed Romaine of Center Moriches, the Brookhaven Town supervisor and a former county legislator, running on the GOP and Conservative tickets. 

In town and Suffolk Legislature races, most Republican candidates also have Conservative Party backing. But this is not a consistent pattern.

Nearly all Republicans running for the 18 seats on the Suffolk Legislature are also on the Conservative line. The exception: GOPer Catherine Corella of Deer Park in the 17^th District running solely on the Republican line against Thomas Donnelly, also of Deer Park, who’ll be on the Democratic and Conservative lines. That’s Town of Babylon territory and in a race for a seat on the Babylon Town Board, Democrat DuWayne Gregory of Copiague, former presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature, will be on the Conservative line, too.

 In Southold Town, Suffolk Legislator Al Krupski of Cutchogue, a Democrat, is running for town supervisor on the Democratic and Conservative tickets.

In the Town of Southampton, the Democratic candidate for town supervisor, Maria Moore, mayor of Westhampton Beach, has Conservative support as does a Democrat running for the Southampton Town Board, Bill Pell, a member of the Southampton Town Trustees. A Democratic-Conservative combination has happened before in Southampton Town. The current town supervisor, Jay Schneiderman, has run as a Democrat with Conservative backing. 

In 1971, Theodore O. Hulse, a mayor of Westhampton Beach like Moore, won the Southampton Town supervisor position running on the Conservative Party line alone. (This ended 40 years of Republican control of that office and happened a year after a series of front-page articles about corruption involving officials in Southampton in the daily Long Island Press written by me and Leonard Victor, an investigative reporting team at the newspaper.) 

Hulse would later run for supervisor on the Democratic line, too, beginning the Democratic-Conservative alliance in Southampton Town politics that existed in periods for several decades.

As for the WFP which Cuomo disliked so much, this year a good number of Democrats running in Suffolk—including Calone—are cross-endorsed on its line, too.

For town positions in Smithtown, former Suffolk Legislator William Holst, a Nesconset Democrat running for town clerk, will also be on the WFP line. Also in Smithtown, Amy Fortunato of Smithtown, Democratic candidate for receiver of taxes, will be on the WFP line, too, as will the Democratic candidates for the town board: Maria Scheuring, of Smithtown, and Sarah Tully of St. James.

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Oppenheimer Movie Is Out Go See It!

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The film Oppenheimer, a movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, is out and it’s a great film, extraordinary, as most movie reviews are accurately saying, and so, so important.

It takes place largely in Los Alamos, New Mexico where the main work of the Manhattan Project was done. Why then was this World War II crash program called the Manhattan Project? Its initial headquarters in 1942 was in Manhattan at the North Atlantic Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. General Leslie Groves, its director, was in the Corps.

As noted in this space last week, Suffolk County had a significant connection. From Suffolk a letter signed by Albert Einstein was sent to President Roosevelt in 1939, a year after the splitting of the atom—fission—was done in Germany. The letter warned about how this could result in “extremely powerful bombs.” And from this, the Manhattan Project to build an atom bomb came about—to fight fire with fire. 

I related a report by British journalist Alistair Cooke on BBC about how two refugees from the Nazis, like Einstein, journeyed to Suffolk County to search for Einstein and found him at his summer home on Nassau Point on the North Fork. The report by Cooke also involved a second visit, by Leo Szilard, one of the scientists who first searched, this time accompanied by Edward Teller. A ”bold and simple letter” had been drafted, noted Cooke. Einstein signed it. “The president got the letter.” That led to the Manhattan Project.

In a book I wrote, Cover Up; What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, published in 1980, I present a facsimile of much of the Einstein letter and discuss it and the Manhattan Project. Through the years since, nuclear technology has been a focus: I have written more than a thousand articles and additional books and have been the presenter of many TV programs on the subject.

In 1999 I went to Los Alamos for an event in which the Nuclear Free Future Awards for that year were presented. I had been invited to be a member of a panel of judges for the award given to people involved in education about and also challenging nuclear technology. 

The setting of the awards ceremony was right out of the Manhattan Project, literally. 

Claus Biegert, head of the Nuclear Free Future Awards program, arranged for it to be held in Fuller Lodge, a main building among the original structures used by the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. Awards were given to people including Stewart Udall, interior secretary in the Kennedy administration. President Kennedy led in ending atmospheric nuclear weapons tests because of their radioactive fall-out. Among those present was Peter Oppenheimer, son of J. Robert Oppenheimer and an opponent of nuclear weapons, who warmly welcomed Biegert to Fuller Lodge. There are several scenes in Oppenheimer filmed in the Fuller Lodge.

I stayed at a motel in Los Alamos a few blocks aways—a motel the halls of which were lined with photographs of nuclear bombs exploding with their mushroom clouds. 

The morning after the ceremony, I had breakfast at the motel at a table with Arlo Guthrie, involved in the awards program and long a musical advocate of peace. And here we were in a building glorifying nuclear bombs. But glorification of nuclear weapons has been and is still going on especially in places like Los Alamos that are involved in their production, thus having a vested interest

Einstein would later call signing the letter the “one great mistake in my life.” Szilard and 70 other Manhattan Project scientists put together a petition for President Truman in 1945 declaring: “The development of atomic power will provide the nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available…”

But Teller through his life believed nuclear war was feasible and winnable. He developed an even more powerful nuclear weapon than the atomic bomb—what he called the “super,” the hydrogen bomb. His conflict with Oppenheimer over this is repeated through the Oppenheimer film. I had a run-in with Teller in requesting the use in Cover Up of passages from one of his books that claimed “we can survive” nuclear war. I was told no. I quoted from it anyway. 

I urge folks go and see the brilliant Oppenheimer film. 

Can the nuclear weapons genie be put back in the bottle? Chemical weapons were outlawed—put back in the bottle—through a set of international treaties after World War I during which their terrible consequences were demonstrated. The vehicle today for eliminating nuclear weapons is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, passed at the United Nations by a vote of 122 nations in 2017. It is now backed by two-thirds of the world’s nations and is international law. It bans the use, development, testing and production of nuclear weapons and also prohibits threats to use them. However, the nine the countries which now possess nuclear weapons—which include the U.S., Russia and China—are not supporting the treaty.

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Einstein, Manhattan Project And A Letter From Suffolk County

        SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

 By Karl Grossman

With the film Oppenheimer opening in theatres and being widely heralded, there is great attention on how atomic weapons originated through the Manhattan Project, the World War II crash program to develop an atom bomb of which J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director.

Causing the formation of the Manhattan Project was a letter from Suffolk County. It was signed by Albert Einstein who spent summers in New Suffolk on the North Fork.

It was 1939 and the splitting of the atom—fission—had been done the year before in Germany. The Einstein letter said: “This phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed.”

The aim of the Manhattan Project was to fight fire with fire—to use fission to create an atom bomb before Hitler and the Nazis did. 

Einstein in the end regretted the letter. “If I had known that the Germans would not succeed in constructing the atom bomb, I never would have moved a finger,” he wrote in his 1950 book Out of My Later Years.

I first saw the two-page letter as a boy on a family trip to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, next to what was FDR’s home, in upstate Hyde Park. It was there in a glass display cabinet. My feeling: what a hugely important letter in history!

Written on its upper right: “Albert Einstein, Old Grove Road, Nassau Point, Peconic, Long Island, August 2^nd, 1939.” Below and to the left was to whom it was addressed: “F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, White House, Washington, D.C.”

 The story of how several scientists, like Einstein refugees from the Nazis, found Einstein in Suffolk County is amazing. It has been told by the late British journalist Alistair Cooke.  Cooke gave this account over BBC radio as part of his “Letter from America” series. (Incidentally, Cooke had a home in Cutchogue.)

“Well, it began, on a drenching hot day in midsummer 1939 with two men, two refugees getting up in the morning and getting out a map and deciding to drive to the end of Long Island,” Cooke related. He said these “these two refugees, both Hungarians who had been run out of their labs in Germany, heard through the underground of their old friends who’d fled to various countries of Europe, two things. One was that there had been a secret meeting of German physicists, in Berlin, and that Germany had, quite suddenly and secretly, forbidden all exports of a certain kind of ore from the occupied country of Czechoslovakia.” 

The ”ore” was uranium.

“These two refugees wondered, if the American State Department had any notion what the coincidence of these two items could signify.” But they were concerned that “if they had gone in person to the State Department or the White House they would quite likely have been waved away, or locked up as nuts.”

One of the scientists “remembered the old man, another refugee, but better known.”

This was Einstein.

“He might carry a little weight,” Cooke went on. “That was it, get to the old man, tell him what was meant by the equation: one secret meeting plus one export ban. But where was the old man? Well, one of them had heard that he was down at the end of Long Island, summering in a cottage rented from a local doctor. Doctor… doctor… wait a minute, Moore that was it? But now the place.” 

One of the scientists “remembered all this, but couldn’t recall the name of the nearest village,” said Cooke. “Now Long Island is 120 miles long and full of place names. And the English names might be forgettable enough to a couple of Hungarians, but how about the Indian names? Aquebogue and Noyac and Mattituck and Ronkonkoma…and the like.”

One scientist said it was spelled “with a ‘P.’ They saw a name 90 miles down the island on the map in red letters, ‘Patchogue, that’s it, that’s the one.’ So they drove off. And they got out, and they asked in stores and petrol stations, ‘Anybody know the whereabouts of Doctor Moore’s cottage?’ Nobody had ever heard of him. They got into the car again and sweated over the map.” Then still driving they neared a bay—Peconic Bay—and one scientist said: “Could it be Peconic?”  

“’That’s it,’ cried the other, ‘now I remember.’”

And they drove on. “Less than two miles from Peconic” they came to Cutchogue and “saw a boy…standing on a corner with a fishing rod in his hand. The old man [Einstein] was a great fisherman. ‘Sure, said the little boy,’ he lives in Doctor Moore’s cottage.’” The boy “climbed” into the scientists’ “car and he led them there. The old man [Einstein] came out in his slippers and they told him their news. And they had a hot hour explaining to him what it all [the splitting of the atom in Germany] meant or could mean.”

The full broadcast is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fks6t

More next week. 

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Suffolk County Environmental Executive Forum

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The environment has long been a leading concern in Suffolk County and thus having a Suffolk County Environmental Executive Forum early in the contest for Suffolk’s highest county government position, county executive, was a natural.

Held last week at Stony Brook University, sponsored by the New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, Julie Tighe, president of the fund and also the league itself, opened the forum by saying “this election season is critical to the environment.”

The environment is not only on the “top of the minds” of people, but “permeating into their daily existence,” Tighe said. She addressed how in recent weeks “we’ve seen apocalyptic orange skies” and there have been “multiple torrential rainstorms” including, she noted, four inches of rain in Suffolk the day before the forum last Monday evening. Further, globally there was a series of days that had “the hottest temperatures the Earth has ever seen.”

The extreme weather events—drought in Canada resulting in massive wildfires and orange skies in the U.S., severe rainstorms especially in Vermont and upstate New York, and the globe’s hottest weather in 120,000 years—are being attributed to climate change caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels.

Tighe urged people to make the environment a “top priority” in the coming election.

On the ballot in November as candidates for Suffolk County executive will be Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine, the Republican nominee who before becoming supervisor of Long Island’s largest town was a long-time Suffolk legislator, and David Calone, the Democratic nominee, an attorney, an ex-prosecutor including for the U.S. Department of Justice, and also formerly chairman of the Suffolk County Planning Commission and a trustee of the Long Island Power Authority.

Each spoke for the several minutes allotted for opening and closing statements and were separately questioned for more than a half-hour apiece by Tighe. Before becoming leader of the league, she was chief of staff of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for 11 years. There were about 200 people in attendance at the forum. 

Calone, of East Setauket, was the first to appear on the stage. In his opening remarks, he said: “I am the candidate with the broadest environmental experience of any candidate we have ever seen run before for Suffolk County executive.” And he referred to actions he has taken on environmental and energy matters in various positions he has held.

Calone said “we have significant issues facing our county” and cited two. One was how Romaine, he charged, “failed to deal with the landfill in Brookhaven Town” which has been “poisoning the community and putting our entire economy at risk.” The second was the rejection by the Republican majority on the Suffolk Legislature on having a referendum on the November election ballot on a measure increasing the sales tax in the county 1/8^th percent to raise money to replace cesspools on which most of Suffolk depends with sewers and what are termed Innovative/Alternative Septic Treatment System.

However, when it came his turn, Romaine, of Center Moriches, said prior to his taking office as Brookhaven supervisor there was a push by the then Democratic town administration to increase the size of the landfill. Instead, said Romaine, he called for closing the landfill, and that has been happening while he seeks reducing waste with a “circular system” concentrating “on recycling.” As for a referendum increasing the sales tax for money for sewers and new high-tech septic systems, he said the plan developed is “far from perfect” and “I don’t believe legislators were involved in drafting this legislation,” but “I am not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” He said: “I hope it goes through and if it doesn’t, you have an ironclad commitment from me that another plan will be forthcoming as soon as possible and that plan will include consultation with all 18 county legislators and not be drafted in secret.”

About climate change, Calone and Romaine had similar positions—both advocating the elimination of fossil fuels especially through the use of solar and wind power and electric vehicles. Romaine said “we can substitute green, non-polluting power” for energy to replace the burning of fossil fuels.

Romaine pointed to repeated endorsements he has received from environmental groups that he has received as a candidate for the legislature and town supervisor “because of the work I’ve done for the environment.” He spoke of endorsements by the Sierra Club, Long Island Environmental Voters Forum and the league. He said that as a legislator “I preserved more land in my district”—which, he noted, included Shelter Island, Riverhead and Southold towns and eastern Brookhaven—“than the other 17 county legislators together.” 

To hear all of what was said in the hour-and-a-half forum, a video of it is on YouTube at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0agp2ALNfY&t=3s This can also be linked to by inputting on Google or YouTube the words Suffolk County Environmental Executive Forum. 

The incumbent Suffolk County executive, Democrat Steve Bellone of West Babylon, after three four-year terms is term-limited and will leave office at the end of this year. 

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Journalism In A Changing Media Environment

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act was not acted upon by the New York State Legislature in its past session, but a co-sponsor of the measure, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor, is looking for action in the legislature’s next session which starts with the new year.

“I think it’s an important bill,” said Thiele last week. “Community newspapers are such a critical part of democracy. They are checks on the system.” 

But through the nation and in New York State, community newspapers have in recent times been unable to survive because of economic problems and “a changing media environment,” said Thiele. 

Indeed, said the long-time assemblyman, “a lot of places in the state are now media deserts”—communities with no community newspapers.

The act would be implemented by providing state tax credits to media companies that hire more local journalists, and a personal income tax credit of up to $250 annually to those who support local media companies as subscribers.

The measure is non-partisan. Its two other co-sponsors from Suffolk County besides Thiele are Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio of Riverhead and Senator Anthony Palumbo of New Suffolk, both Republicans. Thiele is a Democrat. 

“We the undersigned lead newsrooms, unions and other organizations working to strengthen local news in the state of New York. We do not, as a rule, write letters to elected officials, but we believe that the dramatic loss of community journalism is grievously harming communities—and that the legislation being considered in New York State is a First Amendment-friendly way of addressing this crisis,” wrote an array of publishers and editors, representatives of press unions and others earlier this year in a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul and leaders of the state legislature.

“The scale of the problem is hard to overstate,” declared this coalition, Rebuild Local News. “The number of weekly newspapers in New York plunged from 439 in 2004 to 249 in 2019.”

“Nationally we’ve seen about a 57% decline in the number of reporters in less than two decades. On average, two newspapers are closing each week,” it said.

It noted: “Studies have shown that communities with less local news have more waste, corruption and polarization—and less civic engagement.”

“We are all working hard to quickly adapt our business models, better engage readers, and draw in support from the philanthropic sector. But these steps will not be nearly big enough or fast enough. And the vacuums that are being created by the shrinking of local news are being rapidly filled by social media, national partisan news, counterfeit local websites (funded by political activists of both parties) and conspiracy theories. The communities harmed are rural and urban, large and small, red and blue. Time is of the essence.”

“This nonpartisan legislation also has firewalls to prevent elected officials from rewarding or punishing particular news outlets,” it continued. “No government body decides to give a grant to this newsroom or that. It’s a tax provision. You qualify or you don’t. That provides great insulation.”

“We’ll end on a note that may seem unusual in a letter like this. Part of why we need a strong local press is to hold elected officials accountable. Passing this will not make us do less of that. In fact, it will help us do more,” it said. “But the benefits go beyond that. Community news helps residents make choices for their families, gives communities the information they need to tackle their problems, and enables neighbors to better understand each other. It strengthens communities.”

I’ve mentioned in this space how I was inspired to go into journalism by a college internship at the Cleveland Press which had emblazoned above its entrance its motto: “Give light and the people will find their own way.” Regularly I saw those words become reality especially because of the newspaper’s investigative reporting. The Cleveland Press no longer exists.

I later spent years at the daily Long Island Press. It no longer exists.

Thiele says the tax credit plan in the bill is similar to “the incentives provided to so many industries to improve their health.” And, in this case so needed, as he says, to “insure the state of democracy on the local level.”

Issues involving housing and crime dominated the past session of the state legislature which ended last month. Thiele relates that when tax issues—including tax credit matters—are involved, typically the legislative process is slow.

Helping the local press be sustainable is vital for local democracy. 

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.