*chuckling*
06-16-2005, 03:03 PM
After Brutal Dogfight, Nassau Union Workers Oust Democratic Incumbent
Christopher Twarowski 06/16/2005 12:05 am
Sometimes, the little people do come out ahead. That was the sentiment on the evening of June 13 at Runyon's Roadside Tavern in East Meadow. Winners of the election to lead Nassau's largest union, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Local 830, and their supporters packed the barroom for a victory celebration.
The spoils went to challenger Jerry Laricchiuta, who is currently head of the Sheriff's Support Unit, over incumbent Jane D'Amico, after a nasty campaign that lasted more than a year. Many of those who packed the bar that night described the battle for the union presidency as a struggle between good and evil, with the little guy triumphing over the tyrant.
It was an historic victory: No challenger in recent memory has beat a returning president of Local 830. What's more, it was a decisive win: A record turnout of voters—nearly 50 percent of the union's 9,300 members—picked the Republican challenger by more than two to one.
"The message is loud and clear," smiled Laricchiuta, surrounded by several of his newly elected vice presidents in a back room of the restaurant. "The members wanted change."
One change everyone can celebrate is the end of what had become an especially bitter campaign, characterized by hard, sometimes dirty, fighting. Each side fired off more than a dozen protests to the CSEA statewide election committee.
"A very heated election for sure," D'Amico told the Press in the week before votes were tallied. "Spirited," she added with delicate understatement.
YOU'RE A LIAR. NO, YOU'RE A LIAR.
By the end of May, with the June 13 vote count imminent, accusations were flying thick and fast through the halls of Nassau government.
"From even before the election began, there was a lot of mudslinging from the other side," D'Amico said.
What the challenger and some union members were saying was that D'Amico didn't represent their interests as well as her own. They also believe that both the administration of Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi and the Democratic Party were bucking for D'Amico's re-election. They say such pro-D'Amico forces were playing hardball to ensure her continued leadership.
For example, last December Laricchiuta attended a union-sponsored holiday party with Ken Dash, a seasoned politico who is the acting treasurer of Nassau's Democratic Party, a member of the state committee and president of the union's administrative unit at the Nassau County Board of Elections. At the December party, Dash walked around glad-handing with the challenger, introducing him to Democratic movers and shakers, and posing for photos. To Laricchiuta, who is a Republican, it was a big deal that helped him tremendously: He subsequently posted photos of himself with Dash and others on his campaign website.
In March, according to Laricchiuta, Dash called and told him about an exchange that took place between himself and Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs. Dash told Laricchiuta he could no longer support his candidacy, asking that photos of the two of them be taken down from the website.
"He called me up and said to me, 'You've got to remove my picture. I'm not allowed to support you. I can barely even talk to you,'" says Laricchiuta. "He said because the party chairman called him up and threatened him... '[Jacobs] said that I got to watch out for my job,'" Laricchiuta quotes Dash as saying.
Dash, contacted by the Press, confirmed that he and Jacobs had talked, although he denied feeling threatened.
"I had to tell Jerry that I had to—I'm not supporting him," says Dash. "I had to tell Jerry to take my picture off the Internet, which I didn't even know was there. But those were my instructions, and I followed through."
Jacobs confirms that he and Dash had an exchange regarding Laricchiuta, but says it was a friendly conversation. Jacobs says that the Democratic Party takes no stance on union candidates, and he vehemently denies threatening Dash with his job.
"I don't make threats," says Jacobs. "All I remember saying to him is that I was surprised to hear that there were Democrats who were supporting a Republican county committeeperson and former executive leader. I never directed anyone to do anything."
Yet several officials who attended an April meeting of the union executive board said that Dash stood up in front of the 20 or so union leaders present and shouted that he had been threatened for his perceived support of Laricchiuta. Dash tells the Press he doesn't recall exactly what he said. His gripe, he now says, was with how the overall election was being run: with a certain with-us-or-against-us tone that has crept into union operations.
"It was triggered by Jane D'Amico's statements that we're all one union family, we should all do this, we should all do that," Dash says. "Her response to me said that if I'm having trouble with management, then I shouldn't be there. I said, 'Isn't this the forum, that we bring these concerns back to the union?' And Jane says, 'No.'"
According to D'Amico, Dash's outburst was a big surprise: "That was the first time I had heard about it and I told everyone at the board meeting, if they had any concrete information to provide to us, that they should do so." No one has come forward as yet, she says.
Jacobs tells the Press he has solid information that Laricchiuta's campaign has been funded aggressively by GOP supporters. He declined to give any of this information to the Press to confirm. Laricchiuta scoffs at the suggestion: "I never got a penny from anyone. As a matter of fact, me and my team didn't take one dime from anyone. We raised all our own funds."
Even if Jacobs had threatened Dash, that action would not be illegal because Jacobs is not employed by the entity the union negotiates with. But rank-and-file union members might question the efforts of a political party leader to influence who leads them. Jacobs and Suozzi were the co-hosts in April of the Nassau County Democratic Committee's annual spring dinner. Among the honorees: D'Amico.
THE LADY DOTH PROTEST
It's unlikely any of these campaign tactics will be tried in a court of law. But CSEA's statewide election committee has already found both sides in violation of the rules for fair campaigning. Election protests are filed with the committee, which considers the charges, the response and supporting documentation before rendering a decision. Continued repeat violations can even put a candidate's win in jeopardy. D'Amico, who has yet to concede, has indicated that she is considering challenging the result.
But Laricchiuta is not worried about losing his win. While both sides have already been found guilty, not all violations are equal. According to election committee documents obtained by the Press, as of presstime Laricchiuta had been cited on just two issues: He was directed to remove from his campaign website photos of other union officials and also guest-book posts that contained the name of any opposing candidate.
D'Amico was cited at least three times. She was directed to refrain from using union funds to create and distribute material containing references to future matters. She was also admonished for creating a new newsletter during the campaign and told to stop distributing the newsletter until after the election. Additionally, she was cited for campaigning on union time.
"[D'Amico] is doing every dirty trick that you could possibly think of," says Debbie Imperatore, president of the union's Police Civilians Unit and a Laricchiuta slate member. D'Amico and some of her vice presidential candidates came to Imperatore's unit to campaign at a St. Patrick's Day meeting.
"She tried to disrupt [our meeting]," Imperatore recalls. "She came into the meeting with five administrative aides, people that had no reason to be at my meeting. They barged into my meeting...she was trying to interrupt."
Not surprisingly, campaign fliers have generated major protest. Although there are strict regulations as to what can and cannot be said on a campaign flier, such materials can be distributed anonymously.
In this campaign, however, one flier in particular stood out for its nastiness. An anti-Laricchiuta leaflet was placed on car windshields in the parking lots of several county buildings. In at least one instance, it was placed on windshields by someone disguised in a mask/headdress, according to Mike Sloma, a Nassau police service aide, and others who witnessed it. The leaflet listed the candidates on Laricchiuta's slate, making scurrilous claims about each candidate's past: that Laricchiuta was investigated for corruption (without saying which entity was investigating); that one of his vice presidents was investigated for fraud and misuse of power (true, but he was cleared of all charges); that yet another of his candidates shouldn't be in charge of union funds because of that candidate's sister's financial misdealings.
Three vice presidents on Laricchiuta's slate, Robert McLaughlin, Ron Gurrieri and Diane Russ, say that current union treasurer Stan Bergman told them, in two separate conversations that took place at Nassau University Medical Center (where the flier was posted on the union bulletin board), that D'Amico was behind it. According to Laricchiuta, Bergman also told him that D'Amico was behind the flier, that she called to ask his opinion on the content prior to the fliers' release and that he advised her against using it.
However, Bergman in a conference call with a Press reporter—and D'Amico—gave a different version of events. He admitted that D'Amico called him and asked about the possible content of a flier just prior to the incendiary leaflet's posting, but insisted that Laricchiuta is misconstruing his explanation. He denied the other two conversations ever even took place, and added that he had so testified in an affidavit to the union election committee.
Both Bergman and D'Amico also deny knowing who is the author of the anti-Laricchiuta material. Of course, Laricchiuta and his team similarly deny any knowledge of the source of the most egregious anti-D'Amico fliers.
COLLUSION?
The protests and counter-protests are internal union matters, and will be dealt with by the election committee. But the allegations of support from the county administration are more serious. Collusion is defined as a conspiracy for a fraudulent purpose, and, according to Michael D'Innocenzo, a professor of history at Hofstra University and former political candidate, it happens between unions and municipalities more than one might think.
But collusion can be hard to spot and even harder to prove. The Taylor Law (the Public Employees' Fair Employment Act, a civil service law), as set forth in a New York State Public Employees Relations Board statute, addresses such coercion. It describes it as "improper practice" for either a public employer or its agents—or an employee organization or its agents—to deliberately "interfere with, restrain or coerce public employees in the exercise of their rights."
Imperatore, county workers and other union officials say D'Amico has an all-too-cozy relationship with David Green, the director of the county's Office of Labor Relations. Green is described by county workers as an ill-tempered enforcer with a reputation for retaliation and negotiating union issues in bad faith.
"David Green was Jane D'Amico's campaign manager," says Imperatore, who, soon after the incident in which D'Amico interrupted her unit meeting learned that Green had complained to Imperatore's supervisors about her behavior at the meeting. "There's absolutely, positively no question in my mind that there is union-management collusion. There is definitely collusion with David Green," Imperatore maintains.
Contacted by the Press, Green did not deny any of the specific allegations, chalking them up to the normal mudslinging of a union campaign.
"I'm not going to waste my breath discussing these things because they're just so foolish and frivolous," he says. "I'm just amused by how people can spend their off hours on the computer gossiping about me. I would hope they'd get a life."
According to D'Innocenzo, one possible indication of collusion occurs when a long-standing piece of proposed legislation is suddenly railroaded through at a strategic moment. Team Laricchiuta members question the timing of a long-sought-after title change for fire marshals as well as an upgrade for deputy sheriffs, both of which were approved during the campaign—after years of wrangling.
County 911 operators also believe that pay equity, for which they've spent nearly two decades fighting, came to the surface only recently because Suozzi wanted D'Amico to win. On May 11, the Nassau County Legislature voted unanimously to approve an agreement between the county and CSEA that would bring the salaries and benefits of the 911 operators, most of whom are women, more in line with their male counterparts in the fire department.
The deal, however, does not satisfy at least 100 operators who will be taking the county—and possibly the union—to court in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. Why? The new agreement doesn't even address one of the operators' biggest gripes: back pay from an improper pay upgrade in 2001.
"It's to make [D'Amico] look good, that's all it is," says Police Communications Operator (PCO) Helen Jean Ebbert, one of the operators spearheading their cause.
What's more, after the operators voted down a proposed agreement that had been negotiated by D'Amico and Suozzi—a deal that required concessions from the workers, even though an arbitrator had ruled that they were entitled to an award—a scare campaign of intimidation targeted those who voted against the proposal or just didn't vote, the women say.
Kathleen Monaghan, a PCO with more than 30 years experience, even wrote a letter alleging collusion to her supervisor, D'Amico and CSEA Regional President Nick LaMorte.
"I was continually harassed," wrote Monaghan. "I believe the union is in collusion with my employer in avoiding the arbitrator/arbitration process."
D'Amico categorically denies the charges and that the timing of the CB operators' raises had anything to do with favors from the Suozzi administration.
"Of course I negotiated it, but I think it was an excellent settlement, because there was really nothing that they suffered in that settlement and it was win-win for them," says D'Amico.
Suozzi has made no official statement about the election. Bruce Nyman, spokesperson for the county executive, says that the timing of recent agreements is just coincidental.
"The county executive doesn't get involved in CSEA politics," Nyman says. "I would think if someone's running for CSEA president they wouldn't necessarily want the endorsement of management, right?" No one is claiming that Suozzi made a public endorsement, but rather that the county administration lent a hand behind the scenes.
Still, "I don't know how collusion would have helped Jane," Nyman adds.
UNION NEWS
The election is over, but it may take some time for the scrapes and bruises inflicted during the campaign to fade. At the Runyon's celebration, the winners enjoyed their victory—perhaps a bit too gleefully.
"It's a big victory for me, my team, and for all the members of CSEA, because we're going to make a big difference," Laricchiuta said.
But victory is the easy part. Come July 2, Laricchiuta will be dealing with the same county administration that he has criticized so soundly for the past 18 months. He says that already, Nassau Deputy County Executive Anthony Cancellieri has extended an olive branch of warm congratulations from himself and Suozzi.
Laricchiuta says that as president, he aims to unclog what he calls a "backlog of grievances" that have piled up in the Office of Labor Relations under David Green. Laricchiuta also wants to revamp the union's various committees, perhaps even establish a community education committee for public outreach. He even plans to give the 911 operators more support in their efforts.
As for Jacobs and D'Amico's other supporters, Laricchiuta says he's willing to make peace, but that he's the union's chosen boss.
"From what I understand, the Democratic Party chairman was very interested in this race, and for whatever reasons, he did not want me to win," the president-elect said. "If that's true, I don't know what to say other than: Well, we won, and he's going to have to deal with me now."
Christopher Twarowski 06/16/2005 12:05 am
Sometimes, the little people do come out ahead. That was the sentiment on the evening of June 13 at Runyon's Roadside Tavern in East Meadow. Winners of the election to lead Nassau's largest union, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Local 830, and their supporters packed the barroom for a victory celebration.
The spoils went to challenger Jerry Laricchiuta, who is currently head of the Sheriff's Support Unit, over incumbent Jane D'Amico, after a nasty campaign that lasted more than a year. Many of those who packed the bar that night described the battle for the union presidency as a struggle between good and evil, with the little guy triumphing over the tyrant.
It was an historic victory: No challenger in recent memory has beat a returning president of Local 830. What's more, it was a decisive win: A record turnout of voters—nearly 50 percent of the union's 9,300 members—picked the Republican challenger by more than two to one.
"The message is loud and clear," smiled Laricchiuta, surrounded by several of his newly elected vice presidents in a back room of the restaurant. "The members wanted change."
One change everyone can celebrate is the end of what had become an especially bitter campaign, characterized by hard, sometimes dirty, fighting. Each side fired off more than a dozen protests to the CSEA statewide election committee.
"A very heated election for sure," D'Amico told the Press in the week before votes were tallied. "Spirited," she added with delicate understatement.
YOU'RE A LIAR. NO, YOU'RE A LIAR.
By the end of May, with the June 13 vote count imminent, accusations were flying thick and fast through the halls of Nassau government.
"From even before the election began, there was a lot of mudslinging from the other side," D'Amico said.
What the challenger and some union members were saying was that D'Amico didn't represent their interests as well as her own. They also believe that both the administration of Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi and the Democratic Party were bucking for D'Amico's re-election. They say such pro-D'Amico forces were playing hardball to ensure her continued leadership.
For example, last December Laricchiuta attended a union-sponsored holiday party with Ken Dash, a seasoned politico who is the acting treasurer of Nassau's Democratic Party, a member of the state committee and president of the union's administrative unit at the Nassau County Board of Elections. At the December party, Dash walked around glad-handing with the challenger, introducing him to Democratic movers and shakers, and posing for photos. To Laricchiuta, who is a Republican, it was a big deal that helped him tremendously: He subsequently posted photos of himself with Dash and others on his campaign website.
In March, according to Laricchiuta, Dash called and told him about an exchange that took place between himself and Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs. Dash told Laricchiuta he could no longer support his candidacy, asking that photos of the two of them be taken down from the website.
"He called me up and said to me, 'You've got to remove my picture. I'm not allowed to support you. I can barely even talk to you,'" says Laricchiuta. "He said because the party chairman called him up and threatened him... '[Jacobs] said that I got to watch out for my job,'" Laricchiuta quotes Dash as saying.
Dash, contacted by the Press, confirmed that he and Jacobs had talked, although he denied feeling threatened.
"I had to tell Jerry that I had to—I'm not supporting him," says Dash. "I had to tell Jerry to take my picture off the Internet, which I didn't even know was there. But those were my instructions, and I followed through."
Jacobs confirms that he and Dash had an exchange regarding Laricchiuta, but says it was a friendly conversation. Jacobs says that the Democratic Party takes no stance on union candidates, and he vehemently denies threatening Dash with his job.
"I don't make threats," says Jacobs. "All I remember saying to him is that I was surprised to hear that there were Democrats who were supporting a Republican county committeeperson and former executive leader. I never directed anyone to do anything."
Yet several officials who attended an April meeting of the union executive board said that Dash stood up in front of the 20 or so union leaders present and shouted that he had been threatened for his perceived support of Laricchiuta. Dash tells the Press he doesn't recall exactly what he said. His gripe, he now says, was with how the overall election was being run: with a certain with-us-or-against-us tone that has crept into union operations.
"It was triggered by Jane D'Amico's statements that we're all one union family, we should all do this, we should all do that," Dash says. "Her response to me said that if I'm having trouble with management, then I shouldn't be there. I said, 'Isn't this the forum, that we bring these concerns back to the union?' And Jane says, 'No.'"
According to D'Amico, Dash's outburst was a big surprise: "That was the first time I had heard about it and I told everyone at the board meeting, if they had any concrete information to provide to us, that they should do so." No one has come forward as yet, she says.
Jacobs tells the Press he has solid information that Laricchiuta's campaign has been funded aggressively by GOP supporters. He declined to give any of this information to the Press to confirm. Laricchiuta scoffs at the suggestion: "I never got a penny from anyone. As a matter of fact, me and my team didn't take one dime from anyone. We raised all our own funds."
Even if Jacobs had threatened Dash, that action would not be illegal because Jacobs is not employed by the entity the union negotiates with. But rank-and-file union members might question the efforts of a political party leader to influence who leads them. Jacobs and Suozzi were the co-hosts in April of the Nassau County Democratic Committee's annual spring dinner. Among the honorees: D'Amico.
THE LADY DOTH PROTEST
It's unlikely any of these campaign tactics will be tried in a court of law. But CSEA's statewide election committee has already found both sides in violation of the rules for fair campaigning. Election protests are filed with the committee, which considers the charges, the response and supporting documentation before rendering a decision. Continued repeat violations can even put a candidate's win in jeopardy. D'Amico, who has yet to concede, has indicated that she is considering challenging the result.
But Laricchiuta is not worried about losing his win. While both sides have already been found guilty, not all violations are equal. According to election committee documents obtained by the Press, as of presstime Laricchiuta had been cited on just two issues: He was directed to remove from his campaign website photos of other union officials and also guest-book posts that contained the name of any opposing candidate.
D'Amico was cited at least three times. She was directed to refrain from using union funds to create and distribute material containing references to future matters. She was also admonished for creating a new newsletter during the campaign and told to stop distributing the newsletter until after the election. Additionally, she was cited for campaigning on union time.
"[D'Amico] is doing every dirty trick that you could possibly think of," says Debbie Imperatore, president of the union's Police Civilians Unit and a Laricchiuta slate member. D'Amico and some of her vice presidential candidates came to Imperatore's unit to campaign at a St. Patrick's Day meeting.
"She tried to disrupt [our meeting]," Imperatore recalls. "She came into the meeting with five administrative aides, people that had no reason to be at my meeting. They barged into my meeting...she was trying to interrupt."
Not surprisingly, campaign fliers have generated major protest. Although there are strict regulations as to what can and cannot be said on a campaign flier, such materials can be distributed anonymously.
In this campaign, however, one flier in particular stood out for its nastiness. An anti-Laricchiuta leaflet was placed on car windshields in the parking lots of several county buildings. In at least one instance, it was placed on windshields by someone disguised in a mask/headdress, according to Mike Sloma, a Nassau police service aide, and others who witnessed it. The leaflet listed the candidates on Laricchiuta's slate, making scurrilous claims about each candidate's past: that Laricchiuta was investigated for corruption (without saying which entity was investigating); that one of his vice presidents was investigated for fraud and misuse of power (true, but he was cleared of all charges); that yet another of his candidates shouldn't be in charge of union funds because of that candidate's sister's financial misdealings.
Three vice presidents on Laricchiuta's slate, Robert McLaughlin, Ron Gurrieri and Diane Russ, say that current union treasurer Stan Bergman told them, in two separate conversations that took place at Nassau University Medical Center (where the flier was posted on the union bulletin board), that D'Amico was behind it. According to Laricchiuta, Bergman also told him that D'Amico was behind the flier, that she called to ask his opinion on the content prior to the fliers' release and that he advised her against using it.
However, Bergman in a conference call with a Press reporter—and D'Amico—gave a different version of events. He admitted that D'Amico called him and asked about the possible content of a flier just prior to the incendiary leaflet's posting, but insisted that Laricchiuta is misconstruing his explanation. He denied the other two conversations ever even took place, and added that he had so testified in an affidavit to the union election committee.
Both Bergman and D'Amico also deny knowing who is the author of the anti-Laricchiuta material. Of course, Laricchiuta and his team similarly deny any knowledge of the source of the most egregious anti-D'Amico fliers.
COLLUSION?
The protests and counter-protests are internal union matters, and will be dealt with by the election committee. But the allegations of support from the county administration are more serious. Collusion is defined as a conspiracy for a fraudulent purpose, and, according to Michael D'Innocenzo, a professor of history at Hofstra University and former political candidate, it happens between unions and municipalities more than one might think.
But collusion can be hard to spot and even harder to prove. The Taylor Law (the Public Employees' Fair Employment Act, a civil service law), as set forth in a New York State Public Employees Relations Board statute, addresses such coercion. It describes it as "improper practice" for either a public employer or its agents—or an employee organization or its agents—to deliberately "interfere with, restrain or coerce public employees in the exercise of their rights."
Imperatore, county workers and other union officials say D'Amico has an all-too-cozy relationship with David Green, the director of the county's Office of Labor Relations. Green is described by county workers as an ill-tempered enforcer with a reputation for retaliation and negotiating union issues in bad faith.
"David Green was Jane D'Amico's campaign manager," says Imperatore, who, soon after the incident in which D'Amico interrupted her unit meeting learned that Green had complained to Imperatore's supervisors about her behavior at the meeting. "There's absolutely, positively no question in my mind that there is union-management collusion. There is definitely collusion with David Green," Imperatore maintains.
Contacted by the Press, Green did not deny any of the specific allegations, chalking them up to the normal mudslinging of a union campaign.
"I'm not going to waste my breath discussing these things because they're just so foolish and frivolous," he says. "I'm just amused by how people can spend their off hours on the computer gossiping about me. I would hope they'd get a life."
According to D'Innocenzo, one possible indication of collusion occurs when a long-standing piece of proposed legislation is suddenly railroaded through at a strategic moment. Team Laricchiuta members question the timing of a long-sought-after title change for fire marshals as well as an upgrade for deputy sheriffs, both of which were approved during the campaign—after years of wrangling.
County 911 operators also believe that pay equity, for which they've spent nearly two decades fighting, came to the surface only recently because Suozzi wanted D'Amico to win. On May 11, the Nassau County Legislature voted unanimously to approve an agreement between the county and CSEA that would bring the salaries and benefits of the 911 operators, most of whom are women, more in line with their male counterparts in the fire department.
The deal, however, does not satisfy at least 100 operators who will be taking the county—and possibly the union—to court in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. Why? The new agreement doesn't even address one of the operators' biggest gripes: back pay from an improper pay upgrade in 2001.
"It's to make [D'Amico] look good, that's all it is," says Police Communications Operator (PCO) Helen Jean Ebbert, one of the operators spearheading their cause.
What's more, after the operators voted down a proposed agreement that had been negotiated by D'Amico and Suozzi—a deal that required concessions from the workers, even though an arbitrator had ruled that they were entitled to an award—a scare campaign of intimidation targeted those who voted against the proposal or just didn't vote, the women say.
Kathleen Monaghan, a PCO with more than 30 years experience, even wrote a letter alleging collusion to her supervisor, D'Amico and CSEA Regional President Nick LaMorte.
"I was continually harassed," wrote Monaghan. "I believe the union is in collusion with my employer in avoiding the arbitrator/arbitration process."
D'Amico categorically denies the charges and that the timing of the CB operators' raises had anything to do with favors from the Suozzi administration.
"Of course I negotiated it, but I think it was an excellent settlement, because there was really nothing that they suffered in that settlement and it was win-win for them," says D'Amico.
Suozzi has made no official statement about the election. Bruce Nyman, spokesperson for the county executive, says that the timing of recent agreements is just coincidental.
"The county executive doesn't get involved in CSEA politics," Nyman says. "I would think if someone's running for CSEA president they wouldn't necessarily want the endorsement of management, right?" No one is claiming that Suozzi made a public endorsement, but rather that the county administration lent a hand behind the scenes.
Still, "I don't know how collusion would have helped Jane," Nyman adds.
UNION NEWS
The election is over, but it may take some time for the scrapes and bruises inflicted during the campaign to fade. At the Runyon's celebration, the winners enjoyed their victory—perhaps a bit too gleefully.
"It's a big victory for me, my team, and for all the members of CSEA, because we're going to make a big difference," Laricchiuta said.
But victory is the easy part. Come July 2, Laricchiuta will be dealing with the same county administration that he has criticized so soundly for the past 18 months. He says that already, Nassau Deputy County Executive Anthony Cancellieri has extended an olive branch of warm congratulations from himself and Suozzi.
Laricchiuta says that as president, he aims to unclog what he calls a "backlog of grievances" that have piled up in the Office of Labor Relations under David Green. Laricchiuta also wants to revamp the union's various committees, perhaps even establish a community education committee for public outreach. He even plans to give the 911 operators more support in their efforts.
As for Jacobs and D'Amico's other supporters, Laricchiuta says he's willing to make peace, but that he's the union's chosen boss.
"From what I understand, the Democratic Party chairman was very interested in this race, and for whatever reasons, he did not want me to win," the president-elect said. "If that's true, I don't know what to say other than: Well, we won, and he's going to have to deal with me now."