SUFFOLK CLOSEUP Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Legacy Of Eugenics

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 The Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private research facility in Suffolk County, was pivotal to the spread of eugenics through the United States and world as detailed in a forthcoming book by Mark A. Torres, “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance.”

Ultimately discredited as a pseudoscience, eugenics “aimed to develop a master race of human beings,” notes Torres. 

The Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory operated from 1910 to 1939—and pushed eugenics throughout the U.S. and the world. 

On its website, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in a section labeled its “History” has an essay on a “historical perspective on genetics” headlined: “Good genes, bad science.”  It begins relating how in the early 1900s “the bogus concept of hereditary criminality and a made-up disease known as feeblemindedness became part of some scientists’ so-called studies of genetics. Ideas such as these were the core of the American eugenics movement….in which science got mixed up with racial dogma.”

“Many of Hitler’s beliefs were directly inspired by the eugenics books he read while he was in prison,” writes Torres. (Hitler was jailed for the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, an attempted coup in Munich led by members of his Nazi Party. Convicted of treason, he was sentenced to five years in jail and served nine months.) Hitler “admired,” Torres says, “the policies of the American eugenics program, including the efforts that led to the passage of strict immigration laws in the United States.” 

In 1933, Hitler “seized power,” and “eugenics presented Hitler with a…globally accepted science to support his sinister plans. In July 1933, Germany enacted the ‘Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny,’ the first eugenic sterilization law in the country.” A publication put out by the Eugenics Record Office, Eugenical News, featured the law “proudly,” says Torres.

Soon “German eugenicists began to formulate definitions of Jewishness. Hitler insisted that Jews of all degrees to be identified, including those with at least one drop of Jewish blood.” The “methodology was fully inspired by the family pedigree system created at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory more than two decades before,” writes Torres. 

With the massive sending of Jews and others to death camps, Hitler “directed…doctors at different concentration camps to conduct a wide range of eugenics-based research.”

The book includes a chapter on the impact of eugenic advocates on U.S. immigration law, titled “’Scientific Racism’ and the Anti-Immigration Movement.” Torres writes about how Harry Laughlin, superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception to closure, sent a report to the U.S. Congress in 1922 labeling certain immigrants “human waste.” Writes Torres: “Page after page, the report was rife with racial and ethnic slurs and detailed statistics regarding feeblemindedness, insanity, crime, various forms of illness and deformity and ‘all types of social inadequacy.’”

Laughlin testified before Congress in 1922 asserting: “These degeneracies and hereditary handicaps are inherent in the blood.” 

Before Congress again, in 1924, “elaborate charts” were displayed by Laughlin “promoting the link between the so-called inferior races and immoral conduct.” 

“As a direct result of Laughlin’s tireless efforts, which were driven by his eugenic ideals coupled with lawmakers’ growing racial animus against immigrants, the House and Senate passed the Immigration Act of 1924,” writes Torres. “The law imposed even stricter quotas on immigrants from all non-Nordic nations. For example, the quota on immigration from Italy was dramatically reduced from forty-two thousand per year to just four thousand.”

The Eugenics Record Office was also busy “in local communities on Long Island and throughout New York State. In August 1921, a group of neighboring families on Babylon Road in Commack were subjected to eugenic studies.” It got involved in psychiatric hospitals in Suffolk: Kings Park Psychiatric Center, Central Islip State and Pilgrim State in Brentwood.  

Laws were passed in the U.S. to mandate sterilization based on the claims of eugenics.  Torres focuses on a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court 8-to-1 decision upholding a “request by the State of Virginia to forcefully sterilize nineteen-year-old Carrie Buck based on a eugenics diagnosis.” She was determined to be “feebleminded.” The ruling, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “has never been reversed,” writes Torres, himself an attorney. “It is an enduring legacy left by the Eugenics Record Office and a direct byproduct of the ERO’s work. In the wake of the decision, the number of sterilizations across the country began to grow exponentially.” 

The decision, says Torres, “was so impactful that, in November 1946, the Nazi doctors who were on trial in Nuremberg cited it in defense of the atrocities they had committed during the Second World War.” Among the doctors convicted and executed for crimes against humanity for the Nazi “euthanasia program” was Karl Brandt who was also “the personal physician of Adolph Hitler.”

Torres’ book will be out on June 21 and is being published by The History Press.

In an interview, Torres emphasized how eugenics “was not a fringe movement. It was the rage of the age. It was widely embraced.”

Regarding education, his book cites a 1916 ERO report stating that 254 colleges taught courses on eugenics. He writes: “At Boston University, eugenics was taught to students at the School of Theology.” NYU, Columbia and Barnard “each offered a eugenics-based course….Other New York colleges that taught eugenics” listed include Adelphi, Cornell, Colgate, Farmingdale, Fordham, Syracuse University and Vassar. 

Also, “eugenics was a regularly offered course in the biology department at San Francisco State University from 1916 to 1951.”

The year 1951 was decades after the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was shut down. In recent years, what eugenics is about has continued as an issue. 

In 2007, Dr. James Watson, chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a Nobel Prize winner, was “relieved” of his post after saying in an interview with the London Times that there was an intelligence gap between Blacks and whites and this accounted for many of the problems in Africa. In 2019, the laboratory stripped Watson of titles he still held including chancellor emeritus after he appeared on a PBS documentary “American Masters: Decoding Watson,” and asked if he changed his views, he said: “No. Not at all….there’s a difference on the average between Blacks and whites on I.Q tests. I would say the difference is…genetic.”

Last month, Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, resigned after complaints about comments she made including, online, that “Trump’s racist rants are straight-up eugenics.” An article in the magazine in October scored Trump’s statements about immigrants, its headline saying they were in the “Language of Eugenics.” Helmuth from 2016 to 2018 was president of the National Association of Science Writers.

And this month, New York magazine featured an article headed: “A Rift in the Family, My in-laws gave me a book by a eugenicist. Our relationship is over.” 

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.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP "LI And The Legacy Of Eugenics:Station Of Intolerance"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 Before the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Suffolk County became “the global center of the eugenics movement,” eugenics had roots in England, relates Mark A. Torres in his forthcoming book, “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance.”

He notes how in 1851 in England, Herbert Spencer penned a book “Social Statics” that “first publicized the phrase survival of the fittest.” And “less than a decade later, Charles Darwin popularized the phrase survival of the fittest in his seminal work “The Origin of the Species.” Yet another Englishman, Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, then authored a book “Hereditary Genus” in which he “suggested that the breeding of the best people would evolve mankind into a super species…”

“The founding fathers of eugenics in England,” writes Torres, “had formulated the theoretical concepts of human hereditary research. It was only a matter of time before it caught on in the United States, and of the many individuals and groups who helped establish eugenics from theory to practice, none was more influential than an American biologist Charles Davenport who was directly responsible for the establishment and operation of the Eugenics Records Office, which for more than three decades would serve as the eugenics capital of the world.”

From the Eugenics Records Office, part of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Suffolk County, “Davenport also led the movement that would ultimately springboard eugenics into a global phenomenon.”

“In 1902, the Carnegie Institute of Washington was founded, and Davenport immediately began to lobby the group to invest in the establishment of a center for genetics at Cold Spring Harbor,” Torres continues. And “the forces were beginning to align for the formation of the American eugenics movement, and Charles Davenport would be at the center of it all.”

Davenport “developed a plan to collect hereditary information from a multitude of families in order to prove that evolution worked in human beings the way it worked in animals and plants.”

In the end, eugenics was thoroughly discredited, as Torres relates in the last chapter of his book, titled “A Reckoning.”

“The rise of eugenics was not a random phenomenon,” the chapter begins. “Eugenics presented as a cutting-edge science driven by utopian ideals for the betterment of humanity. It was buoyed by a continuous flow of financial support from wealthy and progressive-minded donors and fully embraced by the leading thinkers of the time before settling into the very fabric of the United States and societies throughout the world. Ultimately, eugenics was discredited as a science and exposed as nothing more than a social philosophy used as a slogan for intolerance, racism, bigotry and classism. It was essentially a means for the wealthy to assert their dominance over the poor, which has been an unfortunate and recurring theme throughout all of human history.”

“It took many years for the scientific and corporate communities to accept responsibility for their part in eugenics,” says Torres.

Indeed, it was only in 2020 that the president of the Carnegie Institution for Science “issued a formal apology for the group’s support for eugenics.” The statement: “There is no excuse, then or now, for our institution’s previous willingness to empower researchers who sought to pervert scientific inquiry to justify their own racist and ableist prejudices. Our support of eugenics made us complicit in driving decades of brutal and unconscionable actions by the governments in the United States and around the world.”

Only last year did the American Society of Human Genetics issue a statement declaring that it “seeks to reckon with, and sincerely apologizes for, its involvement in and silence of the misuse of human genetics to justify and contribute to injustice in all forms,” he continues.

Torres closes his book by stating: “In the nearly three decades of its operation, the Eugenics Record Office served as the ultimate vessel to fortify and amplify the pseudoscience called eugenics and transformed it into a global phenomenon. Everything that emanated from this facility served to dominate the poor, the weak and the sick, who were deemed the defectives of society and subject them to mass levels of institutionalization, sterilization, immigration restrictions and even euthanasia. Later, in the hands of the Nazi regime, eugenics was openly used as a scientific excuse to torture and murder a multitude of innocent human beings.”

“The Eugenics Record Office and those who directly operated, controlled and funded it are fully deserving of the blame for the entire eugenics movement and the dire atrocities committed under the banner of this false science,” he says. “While we must continue to honor the seemingly countless victims, we must also provide public discourse and educational programs on the subject, for if we fail to do so, we may be in danger of repeating this dark history.”

Between the start and end of his book, Torres documents the atrocities committed in the name of eugenics—and how an institution in Suffolk County was the base for it.

He names the names—prominent names—of those in government and business who  pushed eugenics. “All movements require the support and participation of people with strong public influence” and “there were few greater endorsements than that of president of the United States of America. In fact,” he notes, “every president” of the U.S. from Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover “was a member of a eugenics organization, publicly endorsed eugenic laws, or signed eugenic legislation without voicing opposition.” As for Roosevelt, whose ”summer White House” at Sagamore Hill was a “mere six miles from the ERO facility in Cold Spring Harbor,” Roosevelt wrote a letter to Davenport asserting: “Someday we will realize that the prime duty of the good citizen of the right type [is] to leave his blood behind him in the world; that that we have no business to perpetuate citizens of the wrong type.” 

He tells of John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor who with his brother founded the Kellogg company that developed corn flakes becoming a “staunch ally of Charles Davenport and a full-fledged eugenicist….In 1914, he organized the First Race Betterment Foundation Conference in Battle Creek, Michigan, with the stated purpose of establishing the foundations for the creation of a super race.”

Torres writes of how eugenics was embraced by academia in the U.S. “During much of the early to mid-twentieth century, eugenics was taught….at the most prestigious academic institutions in the country, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and Yale.”

And the book includes how “Native American reservations on Long Island were targeted” by Davenport and his followers including what is now the Shinnecock Indian Nation and the Unkechaug Reservation in Mastic. He tells of how Dr. John Strong, the author of numerous books on Native Americans and long a professor of history at Southampton College, said “the eugenically biased data derived from these studies was used by the [U.S.] Bureau of Indian Affairs…to the detriment of the Native American population.”

More next week on this must-read book—which will be out on January 21.

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.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: There's History At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

In the northwest corner of Suffolk County is the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Its outrageous history is detailed in a forthcoming book, “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance.”

The book, by Mark A. Torres, an attorney as well as an author, will be released by The History Press on January 21st. Torres also wrote the 2021 book “Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood,” an examination of the plight of migrant farmworkers here, also published by The History Press. It’s the best work I’ve ever read on this subject.

Torres is general counsel of Teamsters Local 810, a union that covers Long Island, and as an attorney has long specialized in labor and employment law in federal and state courts. He is also a professor at Hofstra University and teaches a course titled Migrant Labor in New York.

As an author, he excels at in-depth research. Earlier this year the Association of Public Historians of New York awarded Torres its Joseph F. Meany Award (named for former New York State Historian Joseph F. Meany, Jr.) for his book on migrant farmworker camps on Long Island.

Most Long Island residents know little about the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory although it is off Route 25A on 110 acres in the Town of Huntington and currently employs more than a thousand people. 

And what a history it has!

As to eugenics, I’ve known just a small amount—a basic understanding that it involves a theory that some human beings are inferior to others. 

I’ve received an advance copy of Torres’ book. It begins with an “Author’s Note” in which Torres explains: “True to my roots as an author of Long Island history, I have always strived to present topics from the oft-neglected local perspective. Thus, this book is not intended to merely serve as a broad retelling of the history of eugenics. Instead, it focuses on investigating the local origins, characters and stratagems employed by the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor which, for nearly three decades, served as the global headquarters of the eugenics movement.”

He relates how his investigative “journey led me to study the archival records at numerous facilities, including the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Archives…the Rockefeller Archive in Sleepy Hollow, New York; the American Philosophical Institute in Philadelphia; Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri; and the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Springs, Maryland…”

“The information I amassed from these meticulously preserved archives provided sharp insight into the origins, inspiration and machinations of the American eugenics movement, while never losing focus on the fact that it all emanated from a small hamlet on Long Island.”

“Through it all, I came to understand how eugenics became such an accepted and normalized part of society in the United States and throughout the world during the twentieth century,” writes Torres.

He goes on how the book includes “the downfall of the Eugenics Record Office” (part of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory between 1910 and 1939) “and the ultimate discrediting of eugenics as a scientific field. The final section also explores the enduring and cruel legacy of eugenics.”

Not too incidentally, in an interview Torres told me officials at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory were “more than accommodating” in allowing him to view its historical records.

“The quest to perfect our species was not a new one,” Torres goes on. “However, the problem with such aspirations: Who decides the standards of perfection? And, more importantly, what is to be done with those who fall below the arbitrarily created standards.”

Then the book starts with the 1946 trial in Nuremberg, Germany: United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al. 

Brandt and other doctors were put on trial in the aftermath of World War II for crimes against humanity, he relates, in connection with the Nazi “euthanasia program.”

“Brandt and six others were convicted, sentenced to death and executed. Astonishingly, the information that Brandt and his cohorts so desperately relied on for their defense was not derived from Nazi propaganda,” says Torres. “Instead, their sources came directly from a report published in 1914 by the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.”

“What connection,” asks Torres, “did an administrative office four thousand miles away in a small town on Long Island have with the Nazi regime that plotted and carried out the systematic torture and murder of millions of human beings based on race and disability?”

“The connection was eugenics: the pseudoscience that dominated much of the twentieth century and was premised on the racist, classist and misguided belief that mental, physical and behavioral traits of human beings were all inheritable and must be eliminated to save the human race.”

“Although it was promoted as cutting-edge science, eugenics was a social philosophy that aimed to develop a master race of human beings with the purest blood and the most desirable hereditary traits,” the book continues.

A “component” of eugenics was “’negative eugenics’ which aimed to discourage or outright prevent the reproduction of people who were declared genetically unfit. Negative genetics was driven by the premise that society would dramatically improve if the millions of Americans who were deemed mentally, physically or morally undesirable were ‘eliminated from the human stock’ by means of segregation, sterilization and even euthanasia. This included the ‘feebleminded,’ paupers, criminals, epileptics, the insane, the deformed, the congenitally weak, the blind and the deaf. While human heredity would not begin to be understood by scientists until the 1960s, the social prejudice and practice of eugenics dominated scientific objectivity for more than half a century.”

“The legacy of eugenics is undeniably cruel and enduring,” writes Torres. “In the United States alone, more than sixty thousand forced sterilizations were carried out in more than half the states….A multitude of people throughout the country were classified as undesirable and confined to psychiatric centers during their childbearing years. A bevy of marriage restriction and eugenic sterilization laws were enacted for the purpose of preventing the procreation of the unfit. Eugenically driven immigration laws barring the entry of immigrants from many countries into the United States endured for years. Globally, eugenics thrived in countries like Argentina, Canada, China, Japan and Norway, and Nazi Germany used it to commit unimaginable atrocities. In some ways, the ideals of eugenics persist today.”

“Despite its global appeal,” Torres goes on, “eugenics was truly made in America, and the epicenter of the movement was not found in some laboratory or government facility. Instead, the science was developed at the Eugenics Record Office…in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.”

More next week on the book out next month about the Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and how from Suffolk County eugenics “spread throughout the world.”

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.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Congestion Pricing

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The congestion pricing plan is back but will the plan stick—will it actually be reality?

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last week voted 12-to-1 to approve a $9 toll fee during peak hours for drivers of cars entering Manhattan below 60^th Street starting January 5^th,. The toll would be about 50% higher for drivers without E-ZPass. And higher for trucks. The $9 is down from the $15 that New York Governor Kathy Hochul initially proposed. 

Then, in June, just weeks before the first-in-the-nation plan was to take effect, Hochul announced what she termed a “pause.” The impact of the plan on Democratic chances in the November election—including on Long Island—were reported as a main reason for the hold.

Still, there are possible roadblocks ahead: several lawsuits, and also Donald Trump after he becomes president on January 20^th.

The lawsuits include one in which Jack Lester, with an office in East Hampton, is the attorney. He is representing 49 plaintiffs including seven members of the New York City Council, State Assemblyman Michael Novakhov of Brooklyn, and a group New Yorkers Against Congestion Pricing Tax. 

As to Trump, he declared in May on his Truth Social website: “’Congestion Pricing’ is a disaster for NYC. I stopped it for years at the Federal level, but Crooked Joe railroaded it through. A massive business killer and tax on New Yorkers, and anyone going into Manhattan. I will TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in Office!!! Manhattan is looking for business, not looking to kill business!”

Central in the Lester lawsuit is the Green Amendment to the New York State Constitution. It was made law by New York voters—by a 70% plurality—in a statewide referendum in the 2021 election.

The lawsuit, brought last week in U.S. District Court in the Southern District, names as defendants: two administrators of the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation; the MTA; Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority; New York State Department of Transportation; New York City Department of Transportation; and Traffic Mobility Review Board.

It says the Green Amendment “asserts the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs to clean air and a healthy environment.” It charges: “Defendants are breaching the Green Amendment by virtue of the unexamined deleterious impacts that Plaintiffs will experience due to the Defendant’s failure to evaluate and mitigate the significant adverse environmental consequences of Congestion Pricing upon Plaintiff residents of environmental justice communities.”

A definition online of environmental justice is “the fair treatment of all people, regardless of their race, color, national origin, income, or other factors, in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The “Green Amendment,” says the lawsuit, “mandates the Plaintiffs residing in environmental justice communities, including the South Bronx [and] East Harlem…already burdened by pre-existing air pollution, congestion, asthma and other chronic diseases, be protected from the significant negative environmental impacts that will be caused by traffic diversions caused by the implementation of Congestion Pricing.”

In an interview, Lester also pointed to “the big case coming out of New Jersey” in which Governor Phil Murphy and others are charging that the congestion pricing plan violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This requires, said Lester, that “only the federal government can regulate interstate commerce” and thus by the plan “putting a toll on New Jersey commuters without their receiving a benefit,” it would be illegal. 

Meanwhile, there is political action. Last week, a group of Long Island town supervisors held a press conference attacking the plan. Among the supervisors was Dan Panico of Brookhaven Town saying the plan involved a “regressive tax” and did not address the “root cause” of the MTA’s problems. 

The plan as originally proposed by Hochul was designed to raise a billion dollars a year for mass transit including money for the MTA and Long Island Rail Road.

The single negative vote on the MTA board last week came from David Mack of Kings Point in Nassau County. He said the MTA could find other ways of raising revenue including by imposing tolls on now free crossings, and that congestion could be reduced by better enforcement of traffic laws including double-parking and trucks unloading cargo in Manhattan.

Although the basic toll under the revised plan has been reduced to $9, there would be a gradual increase until in 2030 it reaches the original charge advanced by Hochul of $15.

As to how Trump as president could eliminate the congestion pricing plan, Newsday in an analysis last week by its transportation correspondent, Alfonso A. Castillo, reported: “Even if Trump wanted to nix congestion pricing, it’s not clear how—or if—he could, once President Joe Biden’s Department of Transportation issues final approval. Instead, opponents of the plan have urged Trump to withhold federal transportation funding to pressure New York to drop the plan.”

He quoted Congressman Anthony D’Esposito of Island Park in Nassau County, a plan opponent who was defeated in the November election, as saying the Trump administration is “going to explore all options which include the power of the purse….I think that President Trump has the opportunity to really take a look at all the federal funding that’s going to the MTA. And those funds could very well change if congestion pricing is implemented.”

Castillo noted, “Although much of the federal money is driven by formulas, there are also grants for major infrastructure projects that are awarded at the discretion of transportation officials.”

But, he reported, “Larry Penner, a transportation advocate who previously worked for the Federal Transit Administration, questioned whether Trump would have any incentive to go that route, given that Republican members of Congress from New York benefit from federal transportation funding. Also, because of how unpopular congestion pricing is in many parts of New York—including on Long Island—Penner said it may make more political sense to leave congestion pricing in place and allow Republicans to use it against Democrats in future elections, including for the governor’s job in 2026.” 

He quoted Penner as saying: “They can say two years from now, ‘See, I told you so.’”  

Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, declared last week: “New Yorkers deserve less traffic, cleaner air, and better transit, and congestion pricing will deliver all of that. Congestion pricing will reduce traffic, lessen air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and invest billions of dollars in mass transit that will benefit commuters across the region. After almost a six month pause to the program, we are thankful this policy will finally begin so that we can see immediate improvements. We thank Governor Hochul for realizing the importance of and initializing this program….The decision to move forward with congestion pricing makes New York a national leader in the fight against climate change and we are fortunate to have such bold climate leadership in the Executive Chamber.”

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.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Election 2024

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 The political campaign signs along Suffolk County roads declared: “Suffolk is Trump Country.” And, indeed in last week’s election, Suffolk was Trump country—as was much of the United States. His vote here for president heading the Republican ticket was substantial: 402,924 compared to 323,473 for Democrat Kamala Harris, or 55% to 44%. That’s an increase from 2020 when he exceeded the vote for Democrat Joe Biden by 232 votes and 2016 when he won by 46,619 votes in Suffolk over Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

I’ve written about outcomes of elections on Long Island for decades, and for many years on television anchored Election Night coverage on various TV outlets, and a plurality in Suffolk for a GOP candidate for president isn’t new. During the Nixon years, Suffolk County provided the largest plurality for any county in the U.S. for Nixon for president. 

What has amazed me this time was the high level of intensity of views.

And this will likely continue.

Nancy Green in her “Moving Forward” column in the Shelter Island Reporter, this one headed “Will we ever talk to each other again?” and on its front page a week before the election, wrote: “Thanksgiving is coming on the heels of the presidential election. A lot of families are nervous about how to make civilized conversation when the results will cause one side jubilation and another side despair. Over the years, many American families have tacitly agreed not to ‘talk politics’” at holiday dinners. “These families have become a microcosm for the country.”

Consider a pre-election two-sentence letter-to-the editor from former Suffolk County Legislator Bill Jones, a Southampton Republican, in the Express News Group newspapers here: “I will be voting to save our democracy. I will be voting for Donald Trump.”

Then there is the other view.

George Conway, a founder of the Lincoln Project, wrote a post-election piece in The Atlantic magazine which appeared online and was headed: “American Did This to Itself.” The subhead: “And now we all must suffer through it.”

It began: “This time, the nation was on notice. Back in 2016, those of us who supported Donald Trump at least had the excuse of not knowing how sociopathy can present itself, and we at least had the conceit of believing that the presidency was not just a man, but an institution greater than the man, with legal and traditional mechanisms to make sure he’d never go off the rails. By 2020, after the chaos, the derangement, and the incompetence, we knew a lot better. And most other Americans did too, voting him out of office that fall. And when his criminal attempt to steal the election culminated in the violence of January 6, their judgment was vindicated. So, there was no excuse this year. We knew all we needed to know, even without the mendacious raging about Ohioans eating pets, the fantasizing about shooting journalists and arresting political opponents as ‘enemies of the people,’ even apart from the evidence presented in courts and the convictions in one that demonstrated his abject criminality.”

“Every American knew, or should have known,” he wrote, that Trump “is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold…”

“Maybe there are voters who have convinced themselves that the price of eggs is somehow something that Trump will actually be able to fix and restore back to what it was five years ago,” Conway said on MSNBC. “But they’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

The marriage of Conway and his wife, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, ended in divorce with their sharp differences over Trump a key reason.

Now a contributor on Fox News, she stated on it as the Trump win was declared: “I think Trump’s a metaphor for the country.” She praised his saying “don’t surrender, fight, fight, fight, we get back up.” She went on: “We all get second chances in this life. Rarely do we get a second chance as big as this one,” and Trump in returning to the presidency will “use that as a platform for good and undo some of these bad policies.”

The intensity of differences on Trump between the Conways is a metaphor for the nation.

Why did Trump win?

“Voters strongly rebuke Democrats by electing Trump. But will progressives listen?” was the headline of an analysis in USA Today by columnist Nicole Russell. Its subhead: “Americans not only rejected progressive ideas but also rejected a Democratic Party that views them…with disdain and full-throated contempt.” 

Barrons published a piece by Matt Peterson focusing on economic issues headlined: “Harris Tried to Sell an ‘Opportunity Economy.’ Here’s Why Voters Didn’t Buy It.” The article started with how Harris “promised voters an ‘opportunity economy.’ In the end, Americans opted to take their chances elsewhere.”

“Let’s be honest about this, okay?” began David Axelrod, a CNN political analyst. “Let’s be absolutely blunt about it. There were appeals to racism in his [Trump’s} campaign, and there is racial bias in this country, and there is sexism in this country, and anybody who thinks that did not in any way impact on the outcome of this race is wrong.” Axelrod was senior advisor to President Barack Obama. Also, MSNBC political analyst Basil Smikle cited “deep-rooted issues” of “sexism and racism” in the U.S. So, some voted against Harris becoming the first woman to be president of the country and also first woman of color to become president.

Meanwhile, a piece on Reuters by a group of four journalists was headed: “After Harris’ loss, angry Democrats blame her boss, Biden.” It said: “The sharpest criticism contained accusations that the party had lied to its supporters about President Joe Biden’s mental fitness until a disastrous TV debate with Trump in June raised alarm bells and ultimately led to the president exiting the race…A Democratic official blamed ‘malpractice by Biden’s inner circle. ‘No one would tell him ‘no,’ the official said….One Harris aide said the vice president’s campaign was doomed from the start by her loyalty to the unpopular president. Democrats could have won with someone who broke from him, offered different policies, and presented as a candidate of change.”

The dissections of the election will long go on.

Strong views also came from overseas. Le Monde, the largest French newspaper, ran an editorial headed “The end of an American world.” It said Trump’s election “marks the end of an American era, that of an open superpower committed to the world, eager to set itself up as a democratic model” which “had been challenged over the past two decades. Now Trump’s return is putting a nail in its coffin….The rest of the world will suffer.” 

In Suffolk County, although there was a big vote for Trump, there was also a crossing of party lines by voters—something I’ve noted through the decades.  

For example, in the contest to replace retiring State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr., a Sag Harbor Democrat, a large number of voters in the lst Assembly District left the GOP line on which Republican Nick LaLota of Amityville was running for re-election in the lst Congressional District and won, and then went to the Democratic line above it and marked their ballots for Democrat Tommy John Schiavoni of North Haven, a member of the Southampton Town Board and a retired social studies teacher in Center Moriches. The lst Assembly District includes the five East End towns of Suffolk County and the lst Congressional District takes those in, too, along with the northern portion of Brookhaven and the towns of Smithtown and Huntington.

On a personal note, several more boxes along the ballot in Southampton Town, our son, Adam Grossman, was voted in for a full four-year term as a town justice. Adam, a schoolmate of Schiavoni’s in Sag Harbor and an attorney, was appointed to the judgeship last year. He ran on the Democratic and Conservative lines and was not opposed. There was no division over Adam.