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OPINION
There is an incredible amount of misinformation being circulated by some very unsocial media with personal attacks and statements based on ignorance of the facts.
There is no leadership in the Work Family Party (WPF) in Huntington. There is no chairman. There are party regulars who carry petitions at the request of others, most notably people in the Democrat Party.
An endorsement by the New York State party leadership is not the same as an endorsement when they had a Huntington Chairman and isn’t it interesting that the endorsed candidates by the State mirrored the Democrat’s slate. From the WPF members I spoke to, no one had polled them to see what they thought.
For years people asked party regulars to carry petitions to get the line on the ballot before Primary Day.
The petitions that were carried only placed the names on the primary ballot. It is up to the Working Family Party’s registered members to vote in the primary to decide who they want to represent them.
Some have vilified the people who collected signatures. They also portrayed the WFP as a group who is easily duped. They suggested because they did not know Maria Delgado, nobody did. They even went so far to insinuate that she did not understand her name was on the ballot. In a recent News 12 spot, they knocked on her door and an unknown man answered (unknown to them he should have said, he is probably known to the people in the house). All he said was “She ran, she lost, and we are proud of her”, and closed the door.
The people of the WFP spoke with their votes rejecting the Democrats who wanted a second line, and they rejected by a large margin Cooper Macco, who received 26 votes out of the 132 cast (total party enrollment is 639).
26 votes? Did the Macco Campaign even take the primary seriously?
According to Newsday, “The minor party’s state leaders, with headquarters in downtown Brooklyn, stated their preference for Macco in the spring and gave him authorization to run in their primary”. This is not the Huntington residents. Local party membership rejected Brooklyn’s direction in the primary, if they even knew it existed.
Interestingly, people assumed if Macco had the extra line he would have won. 1,195 votes were cast for Delgado, but there are only 639 members in the party. So, if 100% of the WPF members showed up (highly unlikely), then 556 people did not want whoever was their party’s designee (Macco or Smyth). To suggest Macco would have won is fortune telling. I prefer to say we simply don’t know and perhaps in hindsight the campaign should have challenged the primary petitions or run a strong campaign for the WFP votes in both the primary and in the general election.
Jen Hebert lost in the WFP primary so did not have that line either. Hebert won handily on the Democrat line in the general election. In the town-wide race the finish was: Sorrentino, Hebert, Smyth, Bennardo, then Macco.
Hebert received 1,603 votes more townwide than Macco without the extra line.
If she could do it, why didn't Macco?
J. Kelly
