SusanCampriello: My Works

As seen in The Capitol.

While majority leader campaigns to keep edge, long-shot candidate battles him at home

Roy Simon says that beating Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) will be like David defeating Goliath.

When Simon introduced himself at a Democratic club meeting in Rockville Centre in September as the man challenging Skelos, audience members gasped and then chuckled.

Simon was not fazed by the reaction.

“We can beat Dean Skelos, we can win this thing, and we can surprise a lot of people,” he told the crowd gathered to hear Simon and candidates for Assembly and local judicial posts, as well as a representative from Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Although Simon lacks his opponent’s name recognition and campaign funds, he believes that he appeals to newly registered voters, who tend to be Democrats, and to voters who support Sen. Obama.

That in mind, he focuses his talking points on his confidence that Democrats will win the majority of the Senate seats on Nov. 4. If that happens, Simon notes, even if Skelos remains the Republican leader, he will receive less funding for member items and have less say in legislation than a junior senator in the majority party.

Simon likened the resulting new Republican minority party to a minor league baseball team, with the new Democratic majority party as the major league team.

“No matter how great he would be in the minor leagues, he’s not going to help anyone win in Shea Stadium or Yankee Stadium,” Simon said of Skelos, should he win re-election and the Democrats take the majority. “He’s going to be powerless and penniless.”

Though Simon comfortably promotes himself as a Democratic alternative to Skelos, who has been in the Senate for 24 years, he does have some ideas for raising money for education and preventing job loss. A small rise in state taxes for individuals who earn greater than $500,000 could fund public education, he said. Employees of state-run prisons, if those institutions close, could run education programs designed to help inmates succeed once they are released. He also supports developing and using solar energy and lessening the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Two hours before the candidate event, Simon was driven from Hofstra University, where he is a law and ethics professor, to a meeting with the Long Island Gas Retailers Association in Fairview, Long Island.

There, Simon and the Association members present discussed the future of energy technology and the gasoline price signage issue recently publicized by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D).

Simon cites his experience as a professor as preparation for campaigning for and serving in the State Senate. A good professor does perform his duties in order to get money or votes, he said, just like a good state senator should not pander only to constituents he believes will thank him with re-election contributions. And an official and his constituents must be able to effectively communicate just like a lawyer and his client, Simon said.

But running for office, he said, has been like being a student in a political science course.

Simon said the way he reads newspapers has changed since announcing his candidacy. Instead of grumbling over issues, he feels he must find their solutions.

Simon, who has lived with his wife and their four children in West Hempstead for nearly two decades, has attended campaign events with Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) and Nassau County officials. He is supported by Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi (D), the Working Families Party and the Nassau County Gay Democrats.

Staff of the Progressive Strategies Group, Simon’s campaign consultants, have charged that Skelos spends little time in his home district and has lost focus in helping his constituents.
Roy Simon likes to point out that if the Democrats take the majority, Dean Skelos will receive less funding for member items and have less say in legislation than a junior senator in the majority party.

Skelos’ staff counter that the majority leader is frequently in Nassau County to greet voters at train stations and to meet with various citizen and business groups.

Skelos is running on his accomplishments, such as obtaining aid for Long Island schools, passing the Long Island Workforce Housing Act and authoring Megan’s Law, said Skelos’ spokesperson Scott Reif.

Skelos himself did not respond to requests for comment about his race.

So far, the candidates have met only once, while participating in an endorsement interview. They will meet again for a debate on Oct. 17, which will be aired in the district at a later date.

Waiting until later in the year to campaign was a deliberate strategy for Simon, who did not start handing out literature or putting up lawn signs until late September. He believed this would enable him to make a bigger splash, and therefore become a more viable alternative, as voters naturally became more interested in the election closer to November.

The majority leader is underestimating the potential of his approach, Simon said.

“Dean Skelos is vulnerable,” Simon said. “Much more vulnerable than he thinks he is.”

As seen in The Capitol.

For building grit and connecting with communities, valuable experience, they say

When the vote on the 1997 State Budget was called in August of that year, Assembly Member James Bacalles (R-Steuben/Yates) was in Virginia, attending the Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree.

His staff sent him a budget briefing, and a few days later, he was in the car, driving to Albany and voted the next day. After the vote, he got right back on the road and returned to the Jamboree.

After all, he had food to serve the scouts and leaders there.

Bacalles, along with other legislators, spends time over the summer helping scouts with projects and program development. He often helps out in the dining room.

“People don’t realize this about the Boy Scouts: It’s a youth-run organization. Adults are just there to keep them from getting a little crazy,” he said.

Although Bacalles has traveled to the Midwest for scout events, he can frequently be spotted at Camp Gorton, in Dundee, and Camp Brulé, in Forksville, Pa., both run by the Five Rivers Boy Scout Council, which includes counties in New York and Pennsylvania.

Although most campers he encounters recognize Bacalles as a legislator, they are more likely to call him “G’s dad”-”G,” Bacalles’ elder son George, helps develop camp programs-then call him by his title or talk to him about pending legislation in Albany.

Bacalles joined the scouts when he was a child. His father, a restaurateur, encouraged him to become a scout as a way to learn about the outdoors.

As an adult, Bacalles has served as Council chair, executive vice president, and as an adviser to honor scouts in the Order of the Arrow.

Unlike the Legislature, the scouts meet year-round. Bacalles gets to the events in the colder months whenever his schedule allows.

These have led to different kinds of adventures.

One winter evening some years ago, Bacalles oversaw a group of scouts participating in an outdoor overnight competition. When the temperature dipped to 30 degrees, Bacalles decided that the boys had to move indoors. They scoured the camp for open buildings in which they could sleep to escape the cold.

By morning, the boys were scattered in various shelters, protected but angry that Bacalles had robbed them of earning points for sleeping outdoors. Moreover, Bacalles said, they were upset that he had not let them make for themselves the decision to stay outside or move indoors.

“I caught lots of hell for that one,” Bacalles said.

But he still defends his decision.

Bacalles tries to sell boys on the life experiences that come with scouting when he addresses young scouts he hopes to convince to stay scouts as they grow up.

“Scouting is more than having a good time,” he said, “but we tell them that it’s for having a good time.”

Bacalles watched his own two sons rise through the scouting ranks to become Eagle Scouts, testing their leadership and survival skills through month-long adventure camps and wilderness hikes.

Camps also help scouts form friendships, said Assembly Member Dierdre “Dede” Scozzafava (R-Lewis/Oswego/St. Lawrence/Jefferson), a former scout, scout leader and board member of the Thousand Islands Girl Scout Council. Though not as involved as she once was, she regularly visits Camp Trefoil, which is just east of Ft. Drum, home to a number of soldiers deployed around the world.

Attending camps helps young women with a parent overseas feel a sense of belonging, she said. At camps, young women can build confidence in themselves as they enter their teens and may begin to feel pressured into looking or acting a certain way.

Assembly Member Joseph Saladino (R-Nassau) said that the survival skills and self-confidence he learned as a scout have brought him success.

Saladino has remained involved with troop activities through the Kiwanis Club and as a liaison between Boy and Cub Scout troops in Massapequa because he believes in the importance of the lessons scouts learn.

Saladino has helped scouts hoping to attain Eagle status develop their service projects. One project, he recalls, began when a senior citizen approached Saladino about an issue with her medical bill. Saladino learned that her stoop needed repairs. An Eagle Scout hopeful soon arrived with tools.

Local scouts also organize campsites for Saladino’s Marine and Outdoor Recreation Expo, an event at which people can learn about Long Island’s water and land activities.

“It’s a great way to bring these different groups together,” he said.

Scouting helped teach Saladino to stay calm and overcome panic, and today he encourages scouts to take advantage of scout adventure trips and mountain climbs. Achieving big goals builds confidence, he said.

His own experiences have been instrumental to his political career. After all, for a man who, as a teenager, once had to build a shelter and figure out how to signal a helicopter when lost in a fog and who has since scaled Mount Washington, speaking on the floor of the Assembly, he said, can never seem daunting.

As seen in The Capitol.

June O’Neill, St. Lawrence County Democratic Committee chair, was named co-chair of the Democratic State Party in 2006, and became the sole chair in April, after Dave Pollack’s resignation.
Looking forward to the fall elections, she took some time to reflect on strategies for November, pushing her 62-county effort and her work as chair to increase enrollment, funding, visibility and candidate recruitment.
“The only way to eat an elephant,” she said, “is one bite at a time.”
What follows is an edited transcript.

The Capitol: Did the State Committee’s 62-county party idea come out of Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy?
June O’Neill: It partly came out of that, and it partly came out of the fact that I am from an upstate, rural area and know that we have to be strong everywhere in order to keep winning elections. I think it’s the unique role of the party to be concerned with races all the way up and down the ballot.

TC: St. Lawrence County is so much different from Erie County, from the Bronx. With Democrats hoping to gain the majority in the State Senate by winning seats in so many corners of the state, how will the party remain unified?
JO: We’re really one state. In another life, I was part of Mario Cuomo’s cabinet, and I was director of the Office of Rural Affairs. It was the first cabinet-level office of its kind in the country, and I know that it’s not that the problems are different necessarily between urban and rural areas. It’s that the solutions need to be different.

TC: Do you think those differences might lead to party infighting over legislation?
JO: I don’t know that it’s necessarily infighting on the legislation. The problem is that in a state as large and diverse as New York, one size does not fit all. The trick is that making sure that when we look at legislation, that we’re concerned about the fact that it’s going to have the intended effect everywhere. So, for example, in my county, whenever a law or regulation is passed that says, “in order to do this, you must go over there,” whether it’s the motor vehicle bureau or for unemployment insurance, it immediately becomes a problem for large areas of the state where there isn’t public transit. There are different challenges in different parts of the state, and I think, frankly, that as Democrats we do a better job of being mindful of those challenges.

TC: Are there any elections in New York that you think are particularly interesting, that perhaps others have not been paying as much attention to?
JO: At the Congressional level, we have the Tom Reynolds and the Jim Walsh seats that are open, and in both of those cases, the Democratic candidates ran two years ago and came within a whisker of defeating the then-incumbent, and did it without a lot of help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the State Committee or, frankly, anybody else. Those have now become top-tier races. And now we have the Fossella seat, which is of course in play, and the DCCC has already moved that in the Red-to-Blue column.

TC: Sen. Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination. Has the absence of a New Yorker in the White House made Washington ignore or more slowly respond to New York’s needs or issues?
JO: Hillary is still our junior senator, and of course we have Chuck Schumer as our senior senator. It’s very hard to ignore one, never mind both, of them when they are strongly advocating on our behalf. And they’ve done a terrific job in spite of the fact that we’ve had a deaf ear in the White House in the past eight years.

TC: Are there any issues with a specific impact on New York State that you think should be addressed by Congress or the next president?
JO: Well, I think they absolutely have to do something about energy. And I think the issue that Pat Moynihan brought to the floor, the fact that historically New York State has paid more in federal taxes than we’ve received back in aid.

TC: Who do you see as some of the up-and-coming leaders within the party?
JO: We have people from all over the state. For example, Long Island, which used to be solidly Republican, we’ve got the legislatures, we’ve got both county executives. This past November, we picked up a lot in Dutchess County—I believe we have the legislature there for the first time in 40 years. We elected a district attorney right in Rensselaer County, which is Joe Bruno’s home county, over his hand-picked candidate. In Monroe County, we’re now within one seat of taking the legislature.

TC: There has been a lot of debate about preserving the Electoral College. You were an elector in 2004 and will be again this year. Has the experience of being on the inside of that process changed your views of it?
JO: It really didn’t. It was very exciting. I think we established that I was the first person from St. Lawrence County to ever have been a member of the Electoral College. It was really an honor, coming from such a rural part of the state, and I understand that I’m only the second person from a rural county to ever chair the state party. … It’s just that in recent years because of the disputed results of the presidential elections the role has been highlighted. The same is with the superdelegate role.

TC: Your former co-chair, David Pollack, resigned from that position in early April. How did your duties, or the duties of the state chair, change?
JO: The duties have changed to the extent of event coverage. Dave graciously volunteered to be our new voter outreach coordinator. And he’s still a very good Democrat. We’re still working together on voter outreach, because that’s critical. This is going to be a tight presidential race nationwide. We obviously have to do our part. We’re also in a strong position to help other states by sending volunteers, perhaps into Pennsylvania, to do some voter registration. We’ve had lots of people in New York volunteer to do phone calls into other states. They did it in the primary, and they’ll do it in the general election, as well. New York has a critical role to play, and we need to make sure that our base, our new Democrats and the people who are just sick and tired of the mess that the Bush administration has gotten us into are going to get out to the polls and translate to help all of those down-ballot races which are so critical.

TC: Are there any differences in the way the office is being run now, with only one person at the top as opposed to two?
JO: Well, Dave’s title was co-chair, but according to the party rules, we were not co-chairs. So, in terms of administration and so forth, no, there isn’t any administrative change. It’s mostly a function of being able to be in two places at one time, and so forth. Dave is still, as I said, a volunteer helping us with new voter outreach and actively involved with the blogs and helping to get our Facebook up—I’m on Facebook.

TC: Are you a Facebook addict?
JO: I was an addict the minute that I signed up for it. There’s so much going on right now between the elections and the convention—they’re totally consuming us. I get my Facebook messages on my Blackberry.