Letters

The tribe has spoken. Following the national trend, Southampton Town Democrats enjoyed some big wins in Tuesday’s election. Tom Neely earned a Town Council seat by defeating incumbent Rick Martel, and Democratic Party candidates won all five Trustees seats, ousting three incumbents. Indeed, big wins for local Democrats.

Voters stayed loyal to their brand — but is Southampton Town better off today? Time will tell.

I primarily voted for the incumbents in our local election, as I’ve never subscribed to the idea of change for the sake of change. Southampton Town will be losing a lot of experience when Rick Martel leaves the Town Board, and Ed Warner and Scott Horowitz leave the Town Trustees. I appreciate all that they have done for our town, and they will be missed. Their defeats had little to do with performance but appear to have been driven by some combination of Donald Trump retribution voting and Republican voter apathy.

Looking at Southampton Town election results history, Democratic voter turnout was flat, whereas Republican turnout was down quite a bit. Why is that? It could be due in part to the Republicans being unable to field a town supervisor candidate. This was the sixth election in a row where the Democratic Party candidate for town supervisor received the Conservative line. That’s an automatic win. Why would a Republican even bother to run for that seat? Maybe Republican voters reached the “why bother” stage themselves.

I was delighted to see that Cynthia McNamara prevail despite the barrage of negative advertising that was launched against her. The New York State and Suffolk County Democratic committees, with the help of PAC money, used a lot of resources to attack McNamara, yet she still stands. Good for you, Cyndi.

The future looks weird, to say the least. Because we never run out of bad ideas, our local elections will be held in even years starting in 2026. Candidates running for local offices will have to trudge their way through the blizzard of national politics, and voters will likely continue to vote along party lines. That’s a huge advantage for the Southampton Democratic Party.

In the end, this election showed that tribal politics are alive and well in Southampton. It also showed that the negative advertising didn’t work and was always beneath the person that Tom Neely is. More — and this is my pie-in-the-sky moment — it showed that Southampton Democrats do not need to share their line with Conservatives, nor do they have to accept the Conservative line to win elections.

Will anything change? It may if the Southampton Democratic Party Committee demands changes from their chairman. I hope that they do.

Craig Catalanotto

Speonk