This is the one everyone has been watching. It pits state Sen. Caesar Trunzo (R-Brentwood), a Senate veteran, against an accomplished Democratic challenger, Brookhaven Supervisor Brian X. Foley of Blue Point. Surprisingly, it's not an easy choice.
It's clear that Foley, 50, stuck in a cobra-and-mongoose struggle with a GOP majority on his town board, wants this seat badly. In fact, he says he's been preparing for this run for 15 years. And it's equally clear that, even though his administration made positive changes in the town in the two years before Republicans narrowly won back control of the town board, Foley is more suited to a legislative role than an executive one.
Trunzo, 82, has kept being re-elected because he delivers for his district. But his nearly four decades in Albany have given him a jaded perspective on what it's possible to accomplish there. More than once during a joint appearance by Trunzo and Foley before this board, Trunzo responded to an idea of Foley's by referring to it as a dream. Ouch!
So the choice is between an incumbent who sees getting things done in Albany as a lost cause - the sad thing is, too often he's probably right - and a challenger with a lot of ideas - some of them insufficiently detailed - but an inflated estimate of what a single senator can do.
In the end, it comes down to this: On balance, we think a GOP-controlled Senate will probably be better able to protect Long Island interests in this current fiscal crisis. So we endorse Trunzo.
What an ill-conceived rationale for supporting a man who has delivered nothing but member items to the 3rd Senate District. I don't blame Newsday for thinking that way. We have used member items as the measure of how one "delivers" for their respective district. It's an insane way of judging one's job performance, but that is how our 62 state senators will be judged until the system (and mindset) changes.
But the argument that a GOP senate would better protect Long Island's interests tells me that Newsday believes in maintaining the status quo. The Democrat and Chronicle only endorsed two candidates - both Democrats - and said that they refused to endorse anyone else because the incumbents failed to reform Albany and the challengers didn't prove they would be much better. That, to me, was a remarkable endorsement announcement and showed some guts. Newsday showed today that they didn't put too much thought into these endorsements. They just approved the incumbents for re-election and moved on.
