(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Top Comments: The Race for NY-04 Which Went Blue Edition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-12 Tonight’s diary was inspired by a reply gizmo made to one of my comments last week. Some of the info in this diary will be stuff I have written about before so bear with me. In some ways NY was a small bright spot during this last congressional cycle that saw the Dems take back 4 districts from the GQP. One first flipped during a special election back in February (NY-3). Three others flipped last week. Two upstate, one of them, NY-19, where my mom is from and much of her family still lives. This is the district that contains Bethel where the original Woodstock Festival occurred. The other district that flipped was mine in Southwest Nassau on Long Island. This race was a repeat of last cycle’s race between former Town of Hempstead Supervisor, Laura Gillen, and my former Town Councilman, Anthony D’Esposito. Let’s look at each of the candidates and maybe we can pinpoint why, besides the registration advantage Dems have in this district, Laura Gillen may have prevailed. Laura Gillen is your typical centrist Dem which very easily fits the model of the majority of Nassau County Democrats. She very easily aligns with much of the positions of Tom Suozzi who represents much of the North Shore of the Island. Gillen leaned heavily into painting D’Eposito as someone who was a part of the extreme GQP who wanted to take away abortion rights. She ran numerous ads on this all over media from TV to YouTube and other streaming services. One of her other big ad buys was an ad where spoke straight-to-camera in front a “Welcome to Nassau County” sign in Elmont (Fun fact: Elmont is home to Belmont Park, home of the oldest and longest leg of the Triple Crown.) which borders Queens County and NYC where she went hard on “protecting Nassau County from migrants”. Obviously, this ad disgusted me. Considering how racist this area can be, it was probably a smart move for her. Long Islanders have a major love-hate relationship with NYC especially many of the Queens border sections which tend to have heavily minority populations. A third ad that was in heavy rotation featured her being described as a common sense candidate who would work across the aisle to get things done especially end the cap on the SALT deduction, a big issue here on Long Island. What was surprising is she was nominated to be a candidate for the Common Sense Party. I had never heard of this party (she did not get the Working Families Party nom but then no one did), so it may have been a new party specifically for this race. NY has something called fusion voting where candidates can be nominated by multiple parties. The anti-D’Eposito ads came in mainly two flavors, the aforementioned forced birther ads and D’Esposito’s corruption. Rather than focusing of nepotism both on in the Town government and in Congress, the ads focused more on his history as a cop and detective. D’Esposito had been written up numerous time for leaving his NYPD issued pistol in random places especially while he was moonlighting as a DJ. D’Esposito also forced the city to pay out multiple times, including a $250,000 judgement, because of D’Esposito’s lying on the witness stand in criminal cases. The nepotism portion was well known locally due to the insular nature of the Town of Hempstead, but it was the Times that broke the story of D’Esposito hiring both his mistress and his fiancé’s daughter for what were probably no-show jobs in his congressional office. I guess it is tough to give up the grift when it is so normal as a member of the local government. OTOH, D’Esposito spent his two years in the House cozying up to the GQP except for when it was clear he had to go independent. He voted numerous times to keep George Santos from being expelled until the end even while he was out proclaiming Santos needed to go because he was embarrassing Long Island. He wanted to end the cap on the SALT deduction but never really pushed to get bill on the floor either through the normal process or through a discharge petition to do right by his constituents. He also claimed to a not want a total abortion ban but never once voted to protect Roe V. Wade no matter what bills were up for a vote. I doubt he even attepmted to sponsor or write a bill. I did have one discussion with him when he came to my store to get some work done by us. As most here know, I do lobbying on disability rights. so I spoke to him for a few minutes to discuss how difficult is for people in my situation to be functional members of society when we cannot earn enough money or own assets without losing our Medicare/Medicaid especially wince most of are uninsurable even with the ACA. He told he had been working on a bill with other members of the Long Island delegation to lift the income cap. While I was appreciative of that and that it might help somewhat, I told him it does not solve the asset issue and that Medicare for all and a more robust Medicare would a more viable solution. Obviously, he did not believe that was the correct solution. Still, I gave him credit for at least hearing me out and attempting to find some solution. He also ran the typical campaign the Republicans always do. His positive spots touted locking up criminals as NYPD cop and that was basically it for the positive ads. The Republican groups ran numerous ads trying to connect Laura Gillen to “extremist Dems who wanted open borders.” None of those ads had any citations with which one could conform they were not lies. Another ad featured clearly doctored audio of Gillen claiming to want to cut gambling taxes while raising property taxes. The only cite for that was a Town board meeting minutes which I could not track down on the internet. I was never sure what the point of that ad was. As for my role in the race, I wrote over 100 Vote Forward letters to voters in NY-4 as well as did a couple of shifts canvassing which I wrote about previously. I was surprised at the number of houses in my town were included in the miniVan app. I do plan on getting more involved in the future. I may try phone banking using my iPad which streams calls directly into my hearing aids because using a phone normally can be difficult. I will definitely be writing more letters, so I hope Vote Forward continues to focus on NY-4. Gillen won in the end by about 8,500 votes or 2 points. She came a lot closer in the election day vote than I expected her to in the precinct I worked losing it 60-40 which considering how red the area is a good showing for a Dem. Now it is time for me to get busy pushing her to fight hard against the fascists she will joining the House. I do hope she holds publicly available town halls and promotes them because neither of my last two reps did. Diarist reserves all rights to his original writing only. Community material is not covered by this © Now a word from out sponsor and onto the Tops! Here at Top Comments we welcome longtime as well as brand new Daily Kos readers to join us at 10pm Eastern. We strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find! Top Comments for june 19, 2024 From Tamar: MTBR2201 shows how all the "objective" reasons people voted for trump are BS. Highlighted by VA Gal: This comment from Matt Z, who has been on point so much this week, states the obvious. TOP MOJO june 18, 2024 First comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo. 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