Voters in Nassau, Rockland and Westchester will head to the polls this November to pick their counties’ CEOs. While the fiscal challenges facing those communities will dominate the campaigns in each, it’s already clear that the dicey politics of gun control is also shaping the electoral landscape.
Democrats have incumbent GOP County Executives Rob Astorino of Westchester and Ed Mangano of Nassau in their sights. Rockland’s Republican incumbent, C. Scott Vanderhoef, is stepping down. The Cuomo administration, with its relentless focus on the suburb-friendly property tax cap, is keenly aware of its political needs in these swing counties. The suburbs abandoned Governor Mario M. Cuomo for George Pataki in 1994, costing the Democrat his re-election.
Gun violence is on the front pages everywhere because of the Newtown massacre. The issue was further inflamed in Rockland and Westchester when The Journal News, the regional Gannett daily, posted an interactive map of lower Hudson Valley gun permit holders on its website. Protests ensued.
Polling shows strong public support for Cuomo’s gun control measures, known as the SAFE Act, in the suburbs. Support is high among the moderates who determine electoral outcomes and most fiercely among likely Democratic primary voters.
Astorino and Mangano appear determined to keep the focus on
school safety and illegal guns, while steering as clear as they can of the
Albany gun control debate in which they either alienate their anti-gun control
base in the Republican and Conservative Parties or turn off general election moderates.
In Rockland, Vanderhoef is not running again and has kept
mum. But, strangely, Democrats on the
Rockland County Legislature provided the votes to pass a strong anti-gun
control and anti-Cuomo resolution that was proposed by the GOP candidate for
County Executive, Legislator Ed Day.
Following the Newtown tragedy, Mangano immediately went on
the offense on school safety, organizing multiple “Active Shooter” forums for
Nassau schools to address potential school intruder scenarios. Mangano also hung tight to Nassau DA Kathleen Rice (who recently passed on challenging him) in announcing and implementing a
Gun Buyback Program for illegal weapons.
Nassau, of course, is home base for Skelos, the GOP Senate
Leader who governs with Independent Democrats, and who is taking flak from the
party’s base for letting Cuomo’s gun bill on the Senate floor. Many Senate Republicans opposed the measure,
but Nassau’s Republican senators, worried about their appeal to the swing
voters in their districts, backed it.
But the heat from the right is on—Long Island’s Sen. Phil Boyle is now
calling his support for the measure a “mistake.” Skelos’ power base is the Long Island
delegation and if they are weakened by a local gun debate, so is he.
Mangano has been able to demonstrate a concern about school
safety, a huge concern for the women with children who strongly back gun
control, without wading into the intense conservative opposition to the state’s
recently passed gun control legislation.
Mangano’s website lists no press statement on the SAFE Act.
Mangano’s Democratic opponent will be either former Exec Tom Suozzi or Adam Haber. Neither has made
gun control a major point of distinction with Mangano to date but cracks in the
Senate delegation will keep the issue on Newsday’s front page and the county
executive will have to be clearer about his views without angering his
partisans or the county’s pro-gun control moderate voters.
Astorino has followed a similar strategy in Westchester,
though the Democratic-controlled Board of Legislators there successfully (and
unanimously) passed a bipartisan resolution backing a federal assault weapons
ban. Astorino held a very high profile
school safety summit with former NYC Police Commish Bill Bratton and released
his own safety plan. With Astorino now
drawing a primary opponent to his right, however, he will feel political
pressure from the Republican base to vocally oppose the state’s gun control
law. His failure to do so may make his
primary tighter than he’d like, and weaken his prospects for the GOP’s
gubernatorial nomination to take on Cuomo in 2014.
Astorino has drawn generally favorable press and adeptly
hewed to the anti-tax message that allowed him to upset Democrat Andy Spano
four years ago. While he has played to
the GOP base by vigorously questioning the county’s settlement of a housing
discrimination case with HUD, social issues are not his game.
Democrats—whether
they nominate Legislature Chair Ken Jenkins, Mayor Noam Bramson or Legislator
Bill Ryan—are determined to make Astorino squirm. Gun control is popular in Cuomo’s Westchester
backyard and the Governor himself will no doubt drive that message home. At the same time, Astorino can’t hug gun
control unless he wants to become the Steve Saland of 2013, where a broadly
popular GOP moderate is undone by a third party challenge from the right
(Saland backed marriage equality).
Defeating Astorino would be a political twofer for Cuomo, reclaiming
Westchester’s top post for a Democratic Party he successfully rebranded with
the tax cap and sidelining a well-financed, high-profile potential re-election
challenger. Because debate on social
issues like guns and choice are very effective in peeling Democratic women away
from Republicans who run as moderates, expect an intense effort to paint
Astorino as out of the mainstream on gun control.
Rockland is the most peculiar case. Vanderhoef, who opted not to run for a sixth
term, is focused on salvaging his fiscal legacy before he leaves office. He is struggling mightily to convince county
legislators to make the spending cuts that can bolster the county’s worst in
the state bond rating and reduce its $100 million deficit. Gun control is not on his agenda.
But it is powering the campaigns of his four (or five)
potential successors. Two of them are
influential county legislators, Ilan Schoenberger (D) and Ed Day (R). Both are members of local gun rights
organizations and they oppose Cuomo’s SAFE Act.
The other candidates are Suffern Mayor Dagan Lacorte (D) (disclosure: I
have done political consulting for and contributed to Lacorte’s campaign) and
former County Legislator and Spring Valley Justice David Fried. Lacorte strongly backs gun control, is a
member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and does not own a firearm. Fried, a gun owner, has taken a more nuanced
position on gun control, not directly supporting any specific proposed state or
federal legislation.
Guns provided an early point of contrast in the campaign,
when a local website solicited the candidates’ views post-Newtown. But the battle really amped up when Day
introduced a resolution in the County Legislature blasting Cuomo’s SAFE
Act. He was backed up (though some say
simultaneously sidelined) by fellow GOP Legislator Frank Sparaco, who proposed
a number of amendments to the resolution. Sparaco is rumored to be looking at the exec
race too.
The Republican minority lacked the votes to pass the
bill. To their aid came Schoenberger,
who pioneered the county’s program to hand out trigger locks for gun safety but
had taken a clear position against the SAFE Act. Sparaco himself credited Schoenberger’s parliamentary
skill for garnering votes from 6 of the Legislature's Democrats to pass the
resolution. 5 Democrats were opposed.
It is an unpopular position for Schoenberger with Democratic
primary voters, and the Governor’s office has made its intense displeasure with
his vote known. A political alliance with
Sparaco, who holds sway over the Independence Party endorsement, has upsides,
however. Progressive Lacorte is unlikely
to let the issue go away in the primary—but an upsurge in turnout by gun
owners, a significant Rockland constituency, could help Day in November. And there are many pro-gun Democrats, who
will now gravitate towards Schoenberger in the primary.
The great progressive achievement of Cuomo’s first year in
office, marriage equality, impacted State Senate races in 2012, but did not
reorient New York’s tribal and geographic politics. Gun control, another pillar of the Democratic
social agenda, may.
The suburban gun politics of 2013.
They are watching in Albany. And
in New Hampshire.
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