Outstanding Choice - 27 East

Letters

Southampton Press / Opinion / Letters / 2334839
Jan 17, 2025

Outstanding Choice

Southampton Town Board member Tommy John Schiavoni has been elected to the New York State Assembly. That creates a vacancy on the Town Board, which will be filled at a special election on March 18.

There is an especially well-qualified candidate running in this special election, John Leonard of Hampton Bays.

John is a lawyer who graduated in the top 2 percent of his class at New York Law School and was editor-in-chief of the school’s Law Review, which is a special distinction.

After working for large law firms representing Fortune 500 companies in New York and Los Angeles, John opened a solo practice in Los Angeles. In 2016, he returned to New York, where he has a very successful practice in Hampton Bays, doing commercial transactions and litigation, family law, real estate, and estate planning, among other things.

And it’s not just about private work for fees with John. From the beginning, he has worked pro bono as an unpaid defense attorney at the Southampton Drug Court, representing people whose drug use has brought them before the court for one reason or other. He also has worked with local charities such as The Retreat providing free legal services to victims of domestic violence and indigent persons.

Nor is it just about legal matters. John Leonard has pitched in with a number of community organizations, serving on the boards of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, the Sag Harbor Chamber of Commerce and the Hampton Bays Rotary.

In 2024, he co-founded the Hampton Bays Alliance and serves as its president. Among other activities, the alliance works to foster community support for renewal and housing in Hampton Bays.

In government, John served on the town’s Architectural Review Board and is now on its Zoning Board of Appeals, balancing the interests of property owners against community impacts.

This combination of legal acumen with a wide and deep range of community involvement, from running a law practice, to leading roles in local groups, to service on essential government bodies, makes John Leonard an outstanding choice for the Southampton Town Board.

I’ll be voting for him on March 18.

George Lynch

Quiogue

Lynch is communications chair of the Southampton Democratic Committee — Ed.