Tierney, Toulon
By Matt Meduri
Four years ago, Ray Tierney (R) mounted a campaign then thought to be unwinnable, but ousted then-District Attorney Tim Sini (DMt. Sinai) by a whopping ten point margin.
Unopposed for re-election this year, Tierney earned 144,417 votes to earn a second term.
“Four years ago, I was told I wouldn’t win,” Tierney told supporters Tuesday night at the GOP watch party in Patchogue. “My opponent had more money, more institutional support, and the advantage of incumbency.”
Continued on page 4
Wehrheim Secures Third Term Formica
Wins Open Leg. Seat
By Matt Meduri
Smithtown remained reliably Republican on Tuesday night as Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R-Kings Park) easily secured a third term. Wehrheim was re-elected with 12,283 votes over Rosemary Griffin’s (D-Kings Park) 6,970 votes. Griffin had suspended her campaign for Supervisor in July, but remained on the ballot as the deadline to remove her name had passed. Smithtown Democrats then touted a write-in campaign for term-limited Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga). Trotta had previously told The Messenger he was not actively campaigning in that regard.
Continued on page 10
(Left to right) Suffolk GOP Chair Garcia, Suffolk Conservative Chair Torres, D.A. Tierney (Credit - Matt Meduri)
Supervisor Wehrheim (R-Kings Park) (Credit - Wehrheim For Smithtown)
Sal Formica (R-Commack) (Credit - Matt Meduri)
FALL EVENTS
Port Jefferson
Summer Farmers Market at Harborfront Park
Every Saturday and Sunday, May 18-November 28 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Islip Farmers Market at Town Hall
Every Saturday June 7 - November 22 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Goatman’s Haunted House Museum in Manorville
Every Saturday and Sunday until November, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Community Yard Sale 137 Walden Court East Moriches
Saturday, November 8th 10am-5pm
Craft Fair at Hauppauge High School
November 8 and 9, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Eisenhower Park Christmas Vendor Fair
November 8, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Christmas Craft Fair in Yaphank
November 8, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Moriches Veterans Day Parade November 9 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Seeds of Hope 5K & 10K at Moriches Field Brewing Company
November 9, 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Line Dancing at Lucky Strike Bar & Grill at Port Jeff Bowl, Port Jefferson Station
November 10, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Oheka Castle Private Tour
Mansion & Gardens + Happy Hour All Ages November 11, 5:45 PM to 7:30 PM
Second Annual Turkey Drive at Station Yards November 14 7:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Conveniently
and
Raheem Soto EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Matt Meduri
Sergio A. Fabbri
PJ Balzer
Ashley Pavlakis
Madison Warren
OFFICE
Giavanna Rudilosso SOCIAL
Madison Warren
HAUPPAUGE:
WHERE TO FIND OUR PAPER
COMMACK
Bagel Chalet
Bagel Toasterie (Mayfair Shopping Center)
Candlelight Diner
HAUPPAUGE
Hauppauge Palace • Shop Rite (Smithtown Bypass)
KINGS PARK
3 Sons Deli • Bagel City Company
Kings Park Card Shop
Kings Park Manor • Linda’s Pizza
LIRR Kings Park Train Station Park Bakery • Raleigh Poultry Farm
LAKE GROVE
Lake Grove Village Hall
RONKONKOMA
718 Slice Pizzeria (719 Hawkins Ave)
SMITHTOWN
American Legion
Hot Bagels • LIRR Smithtown Train Station
Maureen’s Kitchen • Millennium Diner
Smithtown Bagels
Smithtown Seniors Center
Smithtown Town Hall
Stop & Shop • Sweetwaters
ST. JAMES
50% Cards Store (Lake Avenue)
7 Eleven (356 Lake Avenue) Lake Ave Deli
LIRR St. James Train Station
Folded Turkey Centerpiece- November 13, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Take & Make Kits Thanksgiving Turkey- November 21, All Day
COMMACK:
Dance Cardio SculptNovember 14, 9:00am - 10:00am
NESCONSET:
Turkey TreatsNovember 21, 6:30 PM to 7:15 PM
KINGS PARK:
Baby BookwormsNovember 7, 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM Monkey ManiaNovember 17, 3:30 PM to 4:00 PM
SACHEM:
Afternoon Movie - Thunderbolts November 9, 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Election Results
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Tierney Re-Elected D.A., Toulon Re-Elected Sheriff
Tierney swept then-D.A. Tim Sini (D-Mt. Sinai) out of office by a ten-point margin.
Tierney (pictured right) thanked his family, colleagues, law enforcement partnersincluding Sheriff Toulon - for their collaboration and support.
“Law and order is the way here in Suffolk County. We are the safest county in the state and one of the safest big counties in the nation,” said Tierney. “That’s the way it’s going to be - as long as I am District Attorney of Suffolk County.”
Meanwhile, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon (D) (pictured middle right) was re-elected in an unopposed contest, securing a third term with 165,571 votes.
“I am deeply grateful to the residents of Suffolk County for their continued trust and support in the work I’ve done as Sheriff,” Toulon told The Messenger. “I look forward to serving four more years and continuing the initiatives I’ve started, like rehabilitation programs, leveraging intelligence to protect our communities, and expanding efforts to support our youth. Together with our law enforcement partners, I will continue to work to strengthen the safety, security, and future of Suffolk County.”
County Results
Democrats overperformed in Tuesday’s election, flipping one seat on the County Legislature and costing the Republicans their supermajority.
Southold Town Councilman Greg Doroski (D-Mattituck) ousted one-term Legislator Catherine Stark (R-Riverhead) in the North Forkbased First District, which includes parts of Manorville and Calverton in Brookhaven Town, northern hamlets of Southampton Town, and the entire towns of Riverhead, Southold, and Shelter Island.
“I am very proud of our victory. It not only affirms the hard work we put into this campaign and my record on the Southold Town Board; it rejects the tired cliched attacks the Suffolk GOP ran against me and my record that disrespected the intelligence of our community,” Legislator-elect Doroski told The Messenger
With 100% of precincts reporting, Doroski defeated Stark with 11,219 votes to 10,311 - a 52.09%-47.88% margin.
In the South Fork-based Second District, one-term Legislator Ann Welker (D-Southampton) cruised to victory with 69.95% of the vote over Raheem Soto’s (R-East Quogue) 30.03%.
The First District was the only flip of the night on the County Legislature, with Republicans and Democrats holding all their other seats. Races that were on our watchlist, the Brentwoodbased Ninth District, the Three Village-based Fifth District,
and the Huntington-based Sixteenth District reelected their incumbent Democrats handily.
However, Republicans across the board underperformed relative to 2023, with some incumbents facing only paper opposition winning with less than 60% of the vote.
Democrats were bullish on ousting twoterm Legislator Stephanie Bontempi (R-Centerport) in the northern Huntingtonbased Eighteenth District.
“As we await the full outcome of this race, I’m proud that our vision, our values, and our determination remain unchanged,” Stark told The Messenger. “We have accomplished great things - historical changes that will have longstanding benefits for the East End. Thank you to my family and every supporter who stood by me. Our work continues.”
town seats and challenged Democrats in seats they had to defend.”
Garcia added that despite the “natural” backswing after a national romp in 2024, Suffolk County is still in “good hands” with Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) as County Executive and Ray Tierney as District Attorney.
“When you capture the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House, there is natural time for the electorate to feel they’ve done their job and there’s a little bit of relaxation,” said Garcia. “Our job is to remind the voters of the importance of local elections because it’s these local elected officials that truly make the difference almost immediately in real-time in their lives.”
Of the loss of Legislator Stark, Garcia said that the letdown really washed ashore in Riverhead.
Bontempi was re-elected with 50.84% of the vote to Craig Herskowitz’s (D-Northport) 49.15%.
Democrats took a strong hold of Babylon, with incumbent Democrats winning with north of 75% of the vote, while in the Riverhead Supervisor’s race, incumbent one-term Supervisor Tim Hubbard (R-Aquebogue) is trailing political newcomer Jerry Halpin (D-Riverhead) by just 21 votes out of about 7,600 ballots cast.
Suffolk County Republican Chairman Jesse Garcia (R-Ridge) (pictured left) discussed the implications of the results.
“We’re going to come back with a Republican majority in the Legislature, but I think there’s national trends that hit us tonight and the fact that there’s a natural letdown after a very successful national election,” Garcia told The Messenger. “The voters did their job. Now our job, in a low-turnout election, is to generate enthusiasm in that election. I’m very proud of the work we did. We retained many
“We performed as suspected in Brookhaven and Southampton, we knew we were going to have a problem in Southold, and Shelter Island is always a gambit there. It’s a bit of a mixed bag,” said Garica. “In 2022, 2023, and 2024, Republicans in Riverhead Town outpaced Democrats in early voting. This year, they did not. We applied a few more resources to the town and we were getting some mixed data on our identifications there. That underperformance is truly what hurt Catherine Stark.”
Of the national moods, Garcia said the Democratic surge wasn’t a “natural overcorrection”, but rather a “natural exhale of the electorate.”
“They’ve just gone through a bruising national election. We walked out of there with an eleven-seat majority in the Legislature and a district attorney [Tierney] that is truly America’s District Attorney.”
Ballot Measures
Proposition 2, the Term Limit Preservation Act, passed handily, with 128,870 votes 95,476 votes57.44%-42.56%.
Suffolk County Legislators will now serve four years terms going forward, with the incoming term set to start in January being a three-year term to align with the State’s even-year election law. The law was bitterly contested by Suffolk and Nassau counties, with the law being upheld on appeal about two weeks ago.
The initiative avoids a scenario in which County Legislators elected on Tuesday would have to run again in 2026, followed by another campaign in 2028. The County Legislators elected on Tuesday night will not have to run again until 2028, after which the all eighteen seats on the horseshoe will be up in 2032.
The New York State ballot measure to allow development rights for the Mount Van Hoevenberg Sports Complex in Lake Placid, while offsetting it with 2,500 acres of forest to be included into the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Unofficial results have the initiative, which would be an amendment to the State Constitution, passing with 1,895,861 votes to 1,750,855 - 52%-48%.
Down Ballot
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Down Ballot: Dems Surge in National Races
By The Editorial Board
Last week, we made our final predictions for this election cycle. We said we’d perform an autopsy on the results regardless of how “impressively correct or preposterously wrong” we are.
Well, unlike our highly accurate 2024 forecast, we were preposterously wrong this year. Let’s get into the numbers.
Virginia - A Total Blowout
The earliest call of the night came in the Old Dominion. Major networks projected former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (D) to flip control of Virginia’s governor’s seat within the poll closing hour.
While we did predict a Spanberger win, that result was practically a foregone conclusion. The biggest question was what her final margin would look like. We assumed, incorrectly, that the controversy around the text messages of Attorney General candidate Jay Jones (D) would lower Spanberger’s threshold, as many reputable pollsters clocked a tightening race at that juncture. We estimated a Spanberger win by a margin of 3.5% to 6% - somewhere in that window.
Spanberger trounced Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears (R-VA) by a whopping 15.2% - 57.5%-42.3% - a blowout in the blue-leaning battleground. It’s the best gubernatorial performance by a Democrat in the commonwealth since 1961 and the first double-digit win for any party since 2009. With 1,967,646 votes reported as press time, Spanberger earned the most votes for any gubernatorial candidate in Virginia history.
Part of the political calculus in Virginia is that in every gubernatorial election going back to 1977, except 2013, Virginians elected a governor opposite the White House party.
What’s clear here is that this was a massive repudiation of not just the White House party, but President Donald Trump (R-FL) himself. We also underestimated just how politically toxic the ongoing government shutdown would be, which is quickly on track to become the longest in history. We ascribed blame for the shutdown to the Democrats and believed that either party would relent until it proved to be a toxic issue for them. Democrats made a dicey gamble and ended up winning big, as Northern Virginia (NoVA) is home to a massive chunk of the federal workforce that is currently either furloughed or were let go under the first round of the DOGE cuts.
Spanberger overperformed across the entire state, with the biggest shifts relative to 2024 coming from the NoVA-based Manassas Park (D+22 shift), Prince William County (D+16), Manassas (D+16), and the college town of Harrisonburg (D+15) - the latter home to James Madison University.
Earle-Sears, on the other hand, overperformed in just four counties and the independent city of Lynchburg. All were only marginal gains of less than 5%.
The Jay Jones text message controversy wasn’t even of a negative effect on the gubernatorial race, it seems like it was an entire nonissue. Moreover, Jay Jones himself defeated incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) by a decisive 6.5% margin - something that the polls, which are typically accurate in Virginia, missed by a long shot.
Democrats also flipped control of the Lieutenant Governor’s seat, with Ghazala Hashmi (D beating John Reid (R) by 11.4%.
Even more startling, the narrowly-divided Virginia House of Delegates saw a blue wave, with Democrats netting a whopping thirteen seats.
We severely underestimated the environment in Virginia, seeing as the Democratic ticket did not handle the fallout of the Jay Jones text messages that made some of the polls recoil sharply, especially in Jones’ A.G. race.
Spanberger will become the first female governor of Virginia.
New Jersey - A Stunning Overperformance
New Jersey, however, was an even bigger shocker, one that likely surprised Democrats more than it did Republicans.
Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D, NJ-11) has been elected governor of the Garden State, breaking a historical streak in the process. Since 1965, New Jersey has not elected the same party to govern the state three consecutive times. Sherrill broke that streak on Tuesday nightone of the main reasons we thought 2021 challenger Jack Ciattarelli (R) was narrowly favored to win.
We predicted a Ciattarelli margin of 0.8%-1.2%.
voters for the GOP since 2021, a net loss of 50,000 voters for the Democrats, and a plethora of local Democratic endorsements for Ciattarelli was enough of a fundamental change to hand him the keys to the governor’s mansion. We also thought that Sherrill’s inability to parry the allegations of insider trading would be terrible PR for her campaign, especially as, in a more populist electorate nowadays, it seemed odd she couldn’t explain how she made $7 million since she entered Congress in 2019.
And, as we mentioned last week, registered votes aren’t guaranteed votes. It clearly didn’t pan out for Ciattarelli - not even remotely close.
New York City - A Paradigm Shift
As expected, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria) is the next Mayor of New York City. He becomes the first Muslim mayor of the Big Apple, the first self-avowed Democratic Socialist mayor of NYC, and, at 34 years old, the youngest NYC mayor since 1892. Mamdani started as a little-known, dark-horse challenger in the Democratic Primary, a contest many thought was a foregone conclusion for disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-Sutton Place). Cuomo lost the primary in a remarkable upset and within a week of his stunning loss - a signal of the old Democratic guard falling by the wayside - launched an Independent bid for mayor.
Sherrill won by 13% even, as of press time - a massive overperformance of the polls that were within the margin of error, even in the aggregates, that stunned Democrats four years ago.
Moreover, Ciattarelli severely underperformed his 2021 performance. Sherrill flipped the South Jersey counties of Gloucester, Atlantic, and Cumberland, and the north-central Morris County, a traditionally Republican county that makes up the base of Sherrill’s congressional district that she flipped in 2018 and held every two years since then.
The Democratic overperformance in New Jersey is not just surprising; it’s stunning. Our talks with people on the ground from both parties saw good momentum for Ciattarelli and a sense of nervousness for Sherrill.
Sherrill has also overperformed in all of New Jersey’s twenty-one counties, with the largest gains in the Newark-based Hudson County (D+22 shift from 2024), the heavily-Latino Passaic County (D+18), and the New Brunswick-based Middlesex County (D+17).
This essentially erases the gains made by Ciattarelli in 2021, when he came just three points away from flipping the seat red, and the significant shift the state saw in 2024, when Donald Trump came less than six points away from flipping a state that has not backed a Republican presidential nominee since 1988.
Our call in New Jersey wasn’t as bold as some think; this was more or less where the winds were blowing in our conversations and research. We assumed that a net gain of 170,000
While we weren’t ambivalent about predicting Mamdani would win, we did make a bold claim: Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa (R-Upper East Side) would experience a surge in support as both the far-left socialists and the diehard Republicans jointly - and ostensibly - saw no value in a Mayor Cuomo. We also posited that a second-place finish was also on the table for Sliwa.
Once again, a huge swing and a miss. Not only did Mamdani consolidate support in all four boroughs besides Staten Island - which went to CuomoCurtis Sliwa failed to even break 10%.
As of press time, Mamdani earned 1,036,051 votes, 50.4% of the city-wide vote, to Cuomo’s 854,995 votes, 41.6%, and Sliwa’s 146,137, 7.1%.
The lopsided margin means the race was much more engaged between Cuomo and Sliwa than we previously thought. However, assuming every Sliwa vote would have gone to Cuomo, the former governor would have still come up short by a couple of points. Mamdani received a majority of the vote and NYC will likely undergo some serious fundamental changes within the next few months.
Part of what made us think Sliwa had a stronger presence starts in his results in 2021. Though he lost to Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) handily, Sliwa made gains in majority-minority districts across southwestern Brooklyn and parts of Queens - gains that would precipitate a strong Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) showing in 2022 and what made New York such a closer state for Kamala Harris (DCA) last year. Those trends didn’t pan out this year. In fact, 91% of precincts reporting, Sliwa appears to have not won a single neighborhood across all five boroughs.
Even more so, Sliwa appears to not have won a single precinct in the city. Cuomo’s biggest margins came from Staten Island, the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Midwood, and Gravesend, the Manhattan neighborhoods of Midtown and the Upper East Side, and the Queens communities of Jamaica Estates and Kew Garden Hills.
Mamdani’s base of support came from the Brooklyn areas of BedfordStuyvesant, Bushwick, Crown Heights, and Park Slope, to name a few.
Odds and Ends
California’s Proposition 50 has passed with flying colors, meaning a Democratic-drawn gerrymander will replace the current independently-drawn congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. The map gives the Democrats a significant upper-hand in three seats and might help them win another one or two - enough to counterweight the GOP-drawn Texas gerrymander. The measure passed 63.8%-36.2% with 71% of votes reported.
In Minnesota, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey (D), who received criticism for his handling of the George Floyd riots in 2020, heads to a runoff against State Senate Omar Fateh (D), a Democratic Socialist who has spoken highly of his Somali roots.
In Maine, voters rejected an amendment 63.9%-36.1% that would require photo ID’s for in-person voting and ballot drop box use, among other changes.
Democrats also held control of the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court by a 5-2 margin, avoiding a lengthy and likely bitter gridlock in Harrisburg over appointments.
Our forecast wasn’t as great as last year’s, that’s for sure. Democrats clearly had a much stronger-than-expected night, even among Democratic circles. We’ll get our ear closer to the rail in 2026.
A Rude Awakening for the GOP
The GOP Must Take Notes
Tuesday night’s elections were expected, at least somewhat, to be a referendum on the Trump Administration.
But the results were far more severe than the GOP expected, even more than what the Democrats did, to a degree.
What Was Expected
Democrats were largely expected to take Virginia in the gubernatorial race. As we’ve covered before, in every gubernatorial race in the Old Dominion since 1977, Virginians have elected the party opposite the White House to govern their state - except in 2013. Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (DVA) was expected to win here essentially from the very beginning.
Everyone on the ground in New Jersey was bracing for a tight race between 2021 challenger Jack Ciattarelli (R) and Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D, NJ11). Although much conventional wisdom owed itself to a Republican flip in the Garden State. Neither party has ever won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since the 1960s. It was also assumed that New Jersey would be bracing for impact in the next-door mayoral race.
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria) was the heavy favorite to become the mayor of New York City, trouncing disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-Sutton Place) and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa (R-Upper East Side). However, Sliwa saw a bump in his numbers after Mayor Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) dropped out, and saw massive online enthusiasm after his performance in the second debate. Final polling had him capturing 15% to 21% of the city-wide vote.
In Nassau County, the tension was palpable, even from here - east of NY110 - where one-term County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R-Atlantic Beach), who is controversial and bombastic at times, was possibly in for a tight race, along with other Nassau Republicans.
In Suffolk County, the county-wide seats were already foregone conclusions: Ray Tierney (R) was unopposed for District Attorney and Errol Toulon (D) was unopposed for Sheriff.
But the feeling on the ground was that Democrats were panicking at the last minute, calling in emergency door-knocking and GOTV operations in the final days, even in some bluer parts of the county. The GOP seemed poised to pick up a seat or two, with some races likely going down to the wire.
Overall, in a midterm election, dominant party turnout is usually complacent, opposition party has no reason to not vote, while Independents are likely rethinking their choices after a brutal presidential election.
What Was Anomalous
Spanberger won the Virginia gubernatorial race by a whopping fifteen points. As she becomes the first female governor of the commonwealth, this is the first time since 1985 that a Democratic candidate won by a double-digit margin, and the best Democratic performance in general since 1961. It was also the first such race here where any party won by double-digits since 2009.
Moreover, Spanberger’s coattails were so long that Jay Jones (D) was elected Attorney General - the same man who fantasized about killing a Republican colleague in the Virginia House of Delegates and said that it would take the representative’s “wife holding their dying children in her arms” for him to act on gun safety legislation.
Not only did Jones overcome one of the most shocking incidents of violent political rhetoric, it wasn’t even close - he won by about 7 points.
In New Jersey, where a nail-biter was expected for either candidate, it turns out that Democrats had nothing to sweat.
Sherrill won in a thirteen-point blowout, ending a near-seventy-year streak where New Jersey flips between parties regularly in their gubernatorial races. She not only shored up margins in the swingier and red-leaning counties, but she essentially restored the massive drops in enthusiasm that the bluest counties saw for Kamala Harris (D-CA) in last year’s presidential contest - a stunning reversal that puts the GOP on shaky ground with Hispanic voters, whom they have just learned to court by significant margins.
In Suffolk County, the GOP didn’t have the strongest showing. They lost one seat on the County Legislature. Although they retained the majority, it cost them their supermajority. Moreover, Huntington Town Supervisor Ed Smyth (R-Huntington Bay) and Riverhead Supervisor Tim Hubbard (R-Aquebogue) should have been locks for re-election.
Smyth is ahead by just 500 votes, with that race going to a recount. He’s the apparent winner at present, as a Working Families candidate took 1,100
votes that likely would have swept him out of office in an upset had those votes gone to Cooper Macco (D-Huntington).
Huntington is a swing town as it is, but Riverhead is a solidly-red bastion on the East End. In what’s easily the biggest nail-biter of the local races, Hubbard is trailing political newcomer Jerry Halpin (D-Riverhead) by just 21 votes out of nearly 7,600 ballots cast.
Moreover, Republicans facing paper candidates saw some drastically reduced margins, while Democrats absolutely cruised in their races by staggering margins.
Meanwhile, in Nassau, Republicans had a decent night. Blakeman was handily re-elected, as were Republicans to the Nassau County Legislature and the top executive spots - likely the expectation that Mamdani would win in NYC.
What Happened?
This was a national environment that is certainly a harbinger of a blue wave in 2026, if current trends and national moods persist until at least June 2026 - when most states’ primaries are held. It’s hard to blunt the force of those types of political headwinds, but this was far better for the Democrats than the GOP, and even the Democrats themselves, likely expected.
Democrats are now thinking, and rightfully, that they have lightning in a bottle and that this is the model to repeat to flip the House next year, make gains in the Senate - with the outside shot at flipping control of the chamber outright - and defending some tough open seats in gubernatorial races.
Republicans, on the other hand, are likely looking to course-correct. President Trump (R-FL) has already demanded that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) break the filibuster in the Senate to pass a stopgap without the needed 60-vote minimum. Trump is already caving on the government shutdown, even though we ascribe blame to the Democrats for it.
But for Trump, the writing is on the wall. He’s already thinking of coursecorrecting to preserve what little chances his party has left of retaining the House - egregious and unprecedented mid-decade gerrymanders notwithstanding.
We’re not going to endorse the decision of removing the filibuster as we’re not a fan of the precedent it sets, but we also understand that the public is clearly blaming the GOP for the shutdown, which explains the lopsided margins in Virginia, with the D.C. suburbs being the essential hub of the federal workforce currently furloughed or already in a bone-picking mood over DOGE cuts.
The tectonic leftward Hispanic swing in North Jersey signals to us that Trump and company have gone too far on immigration reform. Many have already agreed it was necessary and that laws must be enforced, but the manner in which it’s being carried out is clearly politically toxic. Whether the scare tactics are hyped up by inner-city liberals and paid disruptors, or whether there’s genuine fear on the ground - two things can be true at the same time - in this case, perception is reality.
We think if Trump just laid off the AI-generated trolling and the constant need to “own the libs”, more people might be willing to hear him out. He’s his own worst enemy; always has been, always will be. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good policies and intentions there, but the demeanor, above all, is hard for most people to root for.
While the GOP was clearly complacent in most jurisdictions, the Democrats, as expected, had no reason to not be vocal. While their net favorability ratings are at historic lows and while voter registration statistics across the country are trending red, Independents, we estimate, pushed the pendulum to the other side.
It wasn’t just a natural over-correction as typically expected in midterm races - it was a stunning, unadulterated repudiation of the state of the union.
And in NYC, Cuomo received more than 40% of the vote. Curtis Sliwa, a mere 7%.
Exit polls show that Mamdani is mayor-elect because of foreign-born New Yorkers or those who have not lived in the city for more than five to ten years. Life-long New Yorkers went big for Cuomo and decently for Sliwa - 17% in the latter.
A paradigm shift is in effect in the Big Apple, and the pendulum swing nationwide cannot be missed, especially as the blue tide creeped into Suffolk, albeit not as massively as it did elsewhere.
The GOP needs to take notes and do some serious soul-searching. Democrats clearly have the momentum and the model on their side.
If the GOP does not get to their ear to the rail, 2026 will be a bloodbath for them.
Op-Ed Response to Unfounded Allegations Against Former Legislator Sarah Anker
To the Editor,
I am writing to respond to your October 10, 2024, article, “Former Leg. Sarah Anker Under Investigation for Document Removal and Destruction,” which contains false, misleading, and defamatory statements that continues to cause significant harm to my reputation, both personally and professionally. Moreover, it has all the markings of a political hit job, timed one-month before the election, to damage my candidacy for the New York State Senate, First District.
For more than two decades, I have proudly served the residents of Suffolk County as a Legislator and public servant. Throughout my years in office, I maintained the highest ethical standards and worked tirelessly to improve the quality of life for our communities. My record reflects a consistent commitment to transparency, diligence, and integrity.
The article’s claims, based on unfounded allegations from my legislative successor, Chad Lennon, are false. Neither I nor any member of my staff ever destroyed, deleted, or improperly handled legally required official records. All records were lawfully and properly transferred in accordance with Suffolk County Local Law 39-2020 (§A2-18), which requires outgoing legislators to provide their successors with unresolved constituent case files.
Every such file, along with additional materials such as grant documents, budget notes, Rail Trail records, and opioid reports, was properly left in the office for Mr. Lennon’s use. That Mr. Lennon waited until one month before Election Day to ask his fellow Republican legislators to sponsor an investigation into a transition that took place almost one year earlier strongly suggests his political motive. It must be noted that Mr. Lennon was formerly a legislative aid to my opponent.
The claim that “information about any constituent and their history was nowhere to be found” is demonstrably untrue. Mr. Lennon later acknowledged there were “maybe three files in total” left, and my staff continued forwarding relevant constituent emails as a professional courtesy, well beyond what the law required.
Other statements in the article are equally inaccurate. It claimed, “nobody had been in the office for months,” when in fact my staff worked until December 29, 2023, and all voicemails were returned. The suggestion that mail “piled up” is also false; a labeled mailbox key was left on-site, and any issue could have been easily resolved by contacting me or the local post office. The allegation that confidential records were “thrown in dumpsters” is defamatory and entirely false. All sensitive materials were securely shredded according to county protocol. The office itself was cleaned and organized before departure, with all supplies and records properly arranged. The “good luck” note referenced in your article was written by my office manager as a gesture of goodwill.
Furthermore, Mr. Lennon declined two invitations to meet with me prior to taking office to review files and facilitate a smooth transition. He also made no effort to contact me afterward. His decision to raise these baseless accusations just three weeks before my State Senate election, clearly demonstrates a political motive.
While I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the article, it is deeply troubling that The Messenger Papers, a Republican-oriented publication, failed to contact me or my staff for comment before publishing such serious allegations. Responsible journalism requires fact-checking and affording those accused of wrongdoing an opportunity to respond. Your reporter’s failure to do so not only violated professional ethics but also contributed to the spread of false information timed to influence an election.
As a County Legislator for over a decade, I won seven elections in one of the most Republican districts in Suffolk County, as a Democrat. Why? Because I served the people and not the party. This country has become severely politically divided and there’s no doubt that media influences public opinion. That is all the more reason that accuracy and balance in all media is essential if we are to have a well-informed electorate.
As a parent of three children, being moral and involved in politics means leading by example, showing your children that integrity, empathy, and courage are not just ideals, but everyday responsibilities. It’s about demonstrating that public service begins at home, through fairness, compassion, and the willingness to stand up for what’s right even when it’s difficult. Balancing family life with civic engagement teaches the next generation that moral leadership doesn’t come from power or position, but from the choices we make to improve our communities and protect the values we hold dear. In the end, being both a parent and a public servant is about building a better future, not just for my children, but for all children.
For readers who would like to know more about me and my legislative accomplishments, visit www.sarahanker.com, to fully understand why integrity, accountability and moral courage counts.
Sincerely,
Sarah S. Anker
Former Suffolk County Legislator, 6th District
Former Legislator Sarah Anker (D-Mt. Sinai) represented the Sixth District of the Suffolk County Legislature from 2011 to 2024. Anker first won a special election in March 2011 to fill the vacant seat, and was reelected every two years from November 2011 to 2021.
Editor’s Note: This letter does not represent the views and stances of The Messenger.
Takeaways from This Election
By Hank Russell | Long Island Life & Politics
It was a big week for Democrats nationwide, which should have been expected from the start, given that the party in power during an off-year election traditionally gets slaughtered.
And that was the case, in most places across the nation yesterday, as Democrats cruised to victory for governor in Virginia and New Jersey.
Virginia’s huge win was expected, but Jersey was at least expected to be close. It wasn’t. Democrats even elected an attorney general who texted about his desire to see his opponent’s children die in their mother’s arms.
The off year is the time when the voters out of power are motivated to express their wrath against the president of the other party, whom they usually loathe.
This does not portend well for Republicans next year in the midterms.
One thing that could be a counterbalance to a blue wave is having newly elected socialist Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria) as the face of the Democratic Party nationwide. While his Marxism might not be anathema to the ultrablue liberal New York City, he could be a motivating factor for Republicans worried about Marxism spreading beyond the blue inner cities.
Locally, Suffolk Democrats gained by taking at least a seat in the County Legislature and running very tight races in a number of towns. Huntington and Riverhead supervisor races, both with Republican incumbents, will likely result in recounts.
Nassau remained solidly Republican, though it was no blowout. The difference between Nassau and Suffolk is probably that Nassau folks who live closer to New York City are much more worried about the impact that Marxist Mamdani will have on their quality of life.
Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman (R-Atlantic Beach) was also benefiting from flat-tax budgets over the last four years.
Elections swing back and forth over the years and decades. This isn’t the last midterm slaughter that we will see.
The biggest trend to follow is whether the move towards socialism will take over the Democratic Party in the near future… if it hasn’t already.
This op-ed originally appeared in Long Island Life & Politics. For more from LILP, visit them online at lilifepolitics.com. Thursday, November 6, 2025
CUT DOWN ON THE COMMUTE. NOT THE CARE.
As part of our commitment to bringing top-quality care to Suffolk County, we’ve opened another multispecialty practice here in Commack. This new practice brings more specialists under one roof and gives us a total of 51 practices across Suffolk County. We’re bringing the #1 physician practice network in the U.S. closer to home.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
National, State, and Local Temperature Checks
By Matt Meduri
National
Republicans just scored a top-tier recruit to flip a blue state red in next year’s Senate elections.
Former U.S. Senator John Sununu (R-NH) has entered the field for the 2026 Senate race in New Hampshire. Sununu, a scion of perhaps the Granite State’s most beloved political dynasty, is attempting a historic comeback - claiming the seat he held almost twenty years ago. He is attempting to win the open seat currently held by three-term Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who is retiring.
New Hampshire is one of the most ancestrally Republican states in the country, although it leans blue today. The Granite State hasn’t backed a Republican presidential nominee since 2000. However, on varying statewide levels, the GOP has more success. New Hampshire has elected Republican governors every two years since 2016, with Sununu’s brother - Chris Sununu - having served from 2017 to January 2025 as the state’s executive. During his tenure, Sununu regularly polled as one of the most popular governors in the country. That type of name recognition will be of invariable help to John Sununu in his Senate bid, as Governor Sununu was not only elected four times - his latter two terms by wide margins - but he was a vocal moderate in his party that hearkens to New England’s classically liberal profile. Governor Sununu was considered a possible primary opponent to Donald Trump (R-FL) in 2024, but ultimately did not run.
In terms of U.S. Senate races, New Hampshire had a storied history at electing Republicans almost exclusively to represent them in Washington. Democrats currently control both seats, but the GOP held the Class 2 seat from 1979 to 2009. Sununu was elected to the open seat by a narrow margin in 2002, but went down in the 2008 blue wave that swept Republicans out of office amidst Barack Obama’s (D-IL) national landslide.
The Class 3 Senate seat was held by the GOP from 1855 to 2017, with just two Democratic terms in between those years. Sununu must first advance from a Republican Primary, which currently includes former Senator Scott Brown (RNH). Brown is most known for his win in the 2010 Massachusetts Senate special election. His victory in the solidly-blue state just two years after it had backed Obama by a wide margin was seen as the greatest political upset in years.
Brown would then lose the 2012 general election to Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and later move to New Hampshire and run in the 2014 Senate race. He lost by a narrow margin, but is eyeing a comeback of his own.
On the Democratic side, the party has also landed a top recruit in Congressman Chris Pappas (D, NH-01). Pappas held the open seat in 2018 and has been re-elected three times. Pappas, a younger face in the Democratic Party, has represented the Manchester-based NH-01, the lesser blue of the two Granite State congressional districts.
The development comes as a welcome reprieve for the GOP who have since
weathered two heavyweight Democratic recruits in Maine and North Carolina to challenge the GOP’s 53-47 majority in the Senate.
Regarding the national redistricting “arms race”, Ohio Republicans have scored an upper-hand, although the courtordered redraw could have gone worse for Democrats.
This scenario is notable as it is one of the only mid-decade redistricting efforts this year to be a product of a court-order and a deadline date set from 2021. Ohio’s regularly-scheduled 2021 redraw did not receive the bipartisan support that is mandated by the state constitution. As a result, the Legislature-drawn map was set to be active for only four years.
Ohio’s bipartisan redistricting commission approved a new congressional map on Friday, bypassing the Republicancontrolled State Legislature.
Republicans currently hold a 10-5 delegation to the U.S. House, with two solidly blue seats around Cleveland and Columbus, and three but-leaning, but competitive, seats around Cincinnati, Akron, and Toledo.
While the GOP was expected to seize the opportunity to give their party the highest floor possible for next year’s midterms, they went relatively easy on Democrats. The Lake Erie-based OH-09 - a seat that Donald Trump (R-FL) won by about seven points last year and is held by long-time Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D) - got even redder - a 54.5%-45.5% spread - but still competitive for 2026.
The Cincinnati-based OH-01, held by Congressman Greg Landsman (D), has also gotten redder. Landsman, who flipped the red seat in 2022, was re-elected last year by about ten points, while Trump lost this district by about seven. Now, the partisan breakdown is practically inverted - a roughly 54%-47% gap, according to The Ohio Capital Journal.
However, a Democratic-held swing seat got slightly bluer - the Akron-based OH13, held by Congresswoman Emilia Sykes (D), who won the open seat in 2022 and was narrowly re-elected last year. This part of Ohio was once the bread and butter of the Democratic Party’s working-class base not only in Ohio, but nationally. Since then, these counties have raced to the right in the Trump Era. No Republican presidential nominee has carried Summit County (Akron) since Ronald Reagan (R-CA) was re-elected in 1984, and Trump’s margins since 2016 have been the best for the GOP since the 1980s. Summit County makes up the bulk of OH-13; the new partisan spread benefits Democrats to a 52%-48% tune.
The best-case scenario for the GOP under this new map is a 13R-2D spread, although a 12R-3D delegation might be more feasible.
Meanwhile, the Virginia Senate has approved an amendment that would allow Richmond to draw new congressional lines before next year. The amendment stipulates that the Old Dominion reserves that right if another state redraws their House map first before the end of the decade - a likelihood given the current rate.
In Nebraska, Governor Jim Pillen (R-NE) now says he is “open” to redistricting, but
that the act was “off” his “radar” when he was first elected in 2022. The Nebraska State Legislature is unique in that it only has one chamber - unicameral - and is officially nonpartisan, but Republicans do have ideological control. NE-02, centered on Omaha, is one of the Great Plains’ most rapidly left-trending areas, and the open seat being vacated by the centrist Don Bacon (R, NE-02) makes for a likely Democratic pickup next year.
In Maryland, State Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-MD) says that the path his party is on is “unsustainable” and that the “risk of redrawing the congressional map in Maryland is too high.”
Maryland Democrats attempted a gerrymander in 2021, axing the one Republican-held seat in the Old Line State, only for a court to strike down the map and for MD-01 to stand. Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) has insisted that “one person [Ferguson] cannot stop a process” and that a “special session is not off the table.”
Kansas Republicans are hitting a snag in their redistricting plans as several GOP holdouts are being courted by leadership to change their mind. Their votes are necessary to force a special session to redraw the map and axe Democrats’ only seat from the Sunflower State.
In terms of special elections, Republicans have another overperformance under their belt, albeit a slight one.
Last Tuesday saw the GOP retain a State House seat in Alabama. District 12, just north of Birmingham, had elected a Republican by an 85%-15% margin in 2022. Cindy Myrex (R) won the open seat 87.1%-12.9%, with about 2,200 ballots cast.
While something of an innocuous result, the special election marks one of just a handful of times that the GOP has overperformed in such elections since 2025. These types of elections, especially on the state level, are generally seen as the earliest harbingers of the ensuing midterm’s national political environment.
State
Voter registration statistics show a startling development in New York State,
according to the latest data released on November 1.
Reports show that the GOP has enrolled 97,925 new voters since 2022 - a 3.3% increase across all but seven of the Empire State’s sixty-two counties. Their largest gains, interestingly, were in the Bronx - a 23% increase for the GOP to the tune of over 11,000 new voters.
Queens saw a 12.9% shift in favor of the GOP and Brooklyn saw an 8.79% shift, while Manhattan was the only borough that saw a net decline of enrollment for the GOP.
However, since last year, the GOP has lost enrollees in forty-two counties, including Manhattan and Brooklyn, but Queens and the Bronx still show a net increase.
Since 2022, Democrats, meanwhile, have lost a net 79,014 registered voters, with 28,478 coming from the Bronx alone. Since last year, however, Democrats have lost a net 108,219 voters - a sharper decline than 2022 to 2025.
While both parties have seen a net loss in enrollment since last year, the GOP isn’t declining as badly as the Democrats are, while Independents seem to be getting the last laugh. There are now 307,622 more voters who have not signed on with one of the major parties compared to 2022.
Democrats remain healthily ahead of the GOP in terms of overall registrationabout 6.4 million to the GOP’s 2.9 million.
Local
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) is urging residents to donate to local food pantries ahead of the holiday season.
“My administration continues to work at great lengths to help our communities, but what has always made Suffolk County so special is the willingness of our residents to help their neighbors in times of need,” said Romaine in a statement. “I encourage our residents to find a food pantry in their town by calling Suffolk’s 311 Call Center.”
The 311 Call Center will provide callers with a complete list of pantries accepting donations. Information can also be obtained at suffolkcountyny.gov.
Continued from front cover
Wehrheim Secures Third Term, Formica Wins Open Leg. Seat
Trotta had mounted a primary against Wehrheim in the spring, which, by Election Day in June, had disintegrated into a brutal, nasty campaign. Wehrheim defeated Trotta by about ten points in the June primary.
Wehrheim took 58.60% of the vote to Griffin’s 33.26%. According to the Suffolk County Board of Elections, 1,706 write-in ballots were cast, making up 8.14% of the town-wide vote.
“The people of Smithtown have spoken loud and clear. They have chosen proven leadership over chaos, progress over politics, and community over division,” Wehrheim told supporters at Napper Tandy’s in Smithtown on Tuesday night, where he declared victory. “Tonight, the people rejected a desperate attempt by the socialist party to circumvent democracy - by writing in the same candidate who was already defeated by double-digits in the primary. Good riddance!”
Wehrheim touched on his record as the town’s chief executive over the last eight years, as well as what motivated the electorate to hand him a mandate for another four years.
“They want our parks fully restored. They want walkable, thriving downtowns. They want outstanding infrastructure, safe neighborhoods, and quality services that make Smithtown the envy of Long Island,” said Wehrheim. “This victory belongs to the peopleand to every single one of you who made it possible.”
Wehrheim also thanked Suffolk GOP Chairman Jesse Garcia (R-Ridge), Smithtown GOP Chairman Bill Ellis (pictured top), and Suffolk Conservative Party Chairman Mike Torres, and County Vice Chairman Gary Forte.
“To our volunteers, our incredible athletic leagues, coaches, parents, and kids - you are the heartbeat of this town,” said Wehrheim, also expressing his thanks to partners in law enforcement and the “hardworking men and women of labor who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us - from the cold days back in February, through one of the grimiest, dirtiest primaries we’ve ever seen.”
Wehrheim also spoke highly of his executive team, campaign managers, and department heads in Smithtown for their “leadership” and “synergy” throughout his tenure.
“You’ve endured more stress, heartache, and relentless attacks these past eight months than anyone should in one lifetime,” said Wehrheim. “You were followed, doxxed, bullied, and harassed online by cowards - yet you stood tall beside me through it all. I am forever grateful for your courage and strength.”
Wehrheim pledged a night of celebration, but right back to work on Wednesday morning to complete the park renovations, the sewering and revitalizing of the three downtowns, and protecting the “bedroom communities for years to come.”
In the Town Council, Councilman and Deputy Supervisor Tom McCarthy (R-Nissequogue) (pictured left) and Councilwoman Lynne Nowick (R-St. James) (pictured top left) were reelected with 12,126 votes (29.33%) and 12,005 votes (29.03%), respectively, over challengers Michael Catalanotto (D-Smithtown) with 8,629 votes (20.87%) and Jesse Phillips (D-St. James) with 8,563 (20.71%), respectively. 24 write-in votes were accounted for in this race.
“Thank you to every volunteer, supporter, and neighbor who stood with us. Your hard work and belief in our team made this victory possible,” said McCarthy. “Our families endure
these races with us; thanks to my wife and daughter who are here with me tonight. I am thankful to have them stand alongside me.”
“We did it! You all did it!” said Nowick. “The long weekends at the grocery store, the miles we walked together - it was all for this moment and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m so grateful to everyone who gave their time, energy, and heart to this campaign. This win belongs to the people of Smithtown.”
McCarthy and Nowick earned decisive primary wins in June alongside Wehrheim.
Town Clerk Tom McCarthy (R-Smithtown) (pictured below right) was handily re-elected for a full term after winning a 2023 special election. He earned 12,569 votes (60.69%) to Deborah Roberts’ 8,122 (39.22%). Roberts did not actively campaign.
Highway Superintendent Bob Murphy (R-St. James) (pictured below middle left) was re-elected for another four year term. He earned 14,977
votes (99.04%), while write-in votes accounted for 145 votes (0.96%). Murphy faced no partisan opposition.
County Legislature Results
The northern half of Smithtown and parts of Huntington have a new Legislator in Sal Formica (R-Commack).
Formica will succeed term-limited Legislator Trotta in the solidly-red Thirteenth District. He earned 9,285 votes (59.14%) to Kings Park Board of Education Trustee Shala Pascucci’s (D-Kings
Park) 6,398 votes (40.75%).
“Boots on the ground - that’s what got all of us over the finish line,” Legislator-elect Formica told supporters at the GOP watch party in Patchogue on Tuesday night. “Most importantly, I want to thank my fellow brothers and sisters in blue; I look forward to working with you.”
Formica, flanked by his wife, Susan, thanked his family,
“It’s a real honor to be able to serve with this majority,” said Formica.
Formica leveraged his extensive record in law enforcement - namely with the NYPD - fire and EMS - a decades-long member of the Commack Fire Department, with years served as an ex-chief - and as a small business owner who ran Sal’s Ristorante, where he was also head chef.
The Thirteenth District includes Fort Salonga, Head of the Harbor, Kings Park, Nissequogue, San Remo, St. James, and parts of Commack and Smithtown hamlet within Smithtown Township, and parts of Commack within Huntington Township.
In the Twelfth District, Legislator Leslie Kennedy (R-Nesconset) (pictured above right) easily won a sixth and final term. First elected in a March 2015 special election, Kennedy has won handily every two years.
“We are winners here today, but we’re not winners alone. Without all the help and volunteers, we wouldn’t be where we are,” said Kennedy to supporters in Patchogue.
The Twelfth District is split between the southern half of Smithtown and parts of Middle Country, with the Brookhaven parcels taking in Lake Grove and parts of Centereach.
Credit - Matt Meduri
Suffolk Matters
Funds Secured for Water Reuse and Runoff Study
By Matt Meduri
One of the biggest questions regarding the everpresent issue of water quality in Suffolk County is how wastewater can be reused, apart from simply being removed from vital waterways.
Suffolk County recently passed I.R.1690-2025, which appropriates funds for a multi-year water reuse and runoff remediation study in conjunction with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The project will monitor and evaluate five rivers within Suffolk with the hopes of protecting groundwater resources and improving the health of the rivers and tributaries - as well as the bays into which they flow.
The USGS monitoring stations will be installed and operated at Carlls River in Babylon, Sampawams Creek in Babylon, the Connetquot River in Oakdale, the Nissequogue River in Smithtown, and the Peconic River in Calverton. The initiative will be designed to produce “accurate, real-time water quality data while increasing public access” to the information. The study will also consist of studying the flow, organic and inorganic runoff, and stream temperatures.
The study will also take into account the variables that each river might face, with solutions being gauged appropriately.
Suffolk’s sole-source aquifer provides drinking water for about 1.5 million residents, vis-à-vis more than fifty streams and rivers throughout the county.
Legislator Steve Flotteron (R-Brightwaters) said at a press conference at Carlls River last week that while the efforts to provide clean drinking water and remediating the quality in waterways are a priority, efforts need to go further.
“It’s not just sewers and I/A systems; they’re a major part of things,” said Flotteron. “Increasing challenges such as nitrogen pollution, emerging contaminants, and saltwater intrusions require sciencedriven, proactive solutions. We’ve had sewers in some areas for years, but our clams haven’t come back, and other problems have grown. We need to find all the different things we need to do to resolve it.”
Strategies taken by the County emphasize “long-term monitoring, data transparency, and public engagement,” according to Flotteron.
Road runoff is a large component of this initiative. Road runoff involves any substances and chemicals left behind by vehicles and/or debris, especially in times of flash floods and rainstorms, that spill into
Moloney Family
CreditSuffolk County Legislature
the drainage systems, but further contaminate the waterways into which those systems empty. Flotteron even mentioned that car washes adjacent to rivers could be an area of further scrutiny.
Flotteron also discussed a live board in the lobby of the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge where the public can observe the monitoring in real time.
“All these streams have one thing in common, they all flow into the Great South Bay,” said Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey (R-Lindenhurst). “This is one of the biggest issues we have. We expect the USGS survey to come out sometime next year. One of the ways we can recharge our aquifer is to control the stormwater runoff.”
Legislator Tom Donnelly (D-Deer Park) added
that the Carlls River is an “ecological treasure”, but that it is “susceptible to water runoff,” adding his appreciation for the ongoing sewer work for Deer Park and North Babylon.
“When it rains, the rainwater picks up pollutants such as bacteria, pathogens, pet waste, oil, and plastic and carries it to our local creeks, bays, and rivers,” said Maureen Murphy, of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “This leads to toxic rides, fish kills, closed beaches, and closed shell fishing areas.”
Enrico Nardone, Executive Director of the Seatuck Environmental Association called Suffolk’s water its “most valuable resource.”
Andrew Mirchel, of Save the Great South Bay, a self-avowed “creek defender” of West Islip, called the initiative a “gratifying day”, especially as how the “citizenry of Long Island has raised their level of environmental awareness and their ability to do something about it.”
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) spoke highly of the USGS from his prior experience working with them on the East End.
“I know they can pinpoint some of the problems that we have with our waterways,” said Romaine, adding that the next step will be a lift, based on the USGS’ findings. “It’s not going to be easy. It may require bioswales or filters in all of our road drains. We’ve got to be prepared to make the adjustments. It might be expensive, but we’ll be saving the future of this island.”
Romaine spared no expense in calling on Governor Kathy Hochul (D) to release funds from the Environmental Bond Act to Suffolk, stating that Hochul could be “very, very helpful” in that regard.
The
Smithtown Matters
Smithtown Holds Public Hearing on 2026 Budget
By Matt Meduri
The Smithtown Senior Center played host to a packed-house public hearing for the 2026 budget on Tuesday night.
Contention swirls as the Town is pitching a budget that includes a 10.7% tax levy hike, exceeding the 2% New York State tax cap. Smithtown has never pierced the State’s tax cap. Last year, Smithtown was one of the ten Suffolk towns - the other being Huntington - to not pierce their cap.
The Town is leveraging their long-held ability to “do more with less”, citing a leaner workforce and more expansive services than other towns. The estimated tax burden is $160 per household, coming down to about an extra $3 a week. The Town is also citing frozen discretionary spending, streamlined operations, and the securing of millions in grants for infrastructure and revitalization projects.
For every property tax dollar collected, six cents go to the Town, four cents for the Highway Department, three cents for the fire departments, two cents to the libraries, ten cents to the Suffolk County Police Department, and two cents to the County. The bulk of the property tax dollar goes to the school districts, which account for 69 cents of every dollar.
The Town argues that the rate of inflation and a deluge of unfunded State mandates have forced their hand. This year, Smithtown’s tax levy was increased to 2.33% - far below the regional average of 9.88%. While a significantly larger tax levy is not necessarily an indemnification of a municipality’s fiscal practices, a tax levy is essentially a reflection of a town’s spending, cost of public services, and land value.
Unfunded mandates account for $7.5 million in increased operating expenses, courtesy of New York State, which consists of $1.7 million in retirement, $1.4 million in healthcare increases, a 17% hike in the minimum wage since 2020, a 5.8% State Aid for the Highway Department - stagnant from last year - and additional mandates, such as full-time salaries, waste disposal, and mortgage tax losses.
Inflation has also risen sharply to 12.9% since 2020.
The Town also posits that if Smithtown were to stay under the tax cap, they would only be able to raise $1.5 million in new revenue, resulting in the lay-offs of 46 full-time employees and 132 part-time employees. The Town is also adamant in using a reserves surplus to fund operating expenses, as it creates an unstable balance. Fiscal experts regularly advise against it, as dipping into reserves would likely foment a deficit next year and downgraded credit ratings, resulting in higher interest rates for bonded projects.
Residents made their voices heard at the Senior Center last night, as Town officials stayed post-meeting to further explain and showcase their findings. All members of the Town board were present.
“The tax cap was put in place by the Governor, the Assembly, and the Senate of New York State. My God, all three supported it; you just pierce it for the first time,” said Fred Gorman, President of the Nesconset-Sachem Civic Association, (pictured left) and a vocal critic of the current Town ensemble. “You could have used our money that you have in your pockets right now to take care of the problems.”
Gorman said that State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli (D-Great Neck Plaza) has made it “very clear” that he “doesn’t like people that have a lot of money in their reserve funds.” Research shows that DiNapoli has a nuanced opinion on dipping into reserves - greatly dependent on economic outlook, among other factorsand has prioritized shoring up rainy-day funds as New York lags behind other states in that
regard.
“You have a fund balance of $45 million; that’s higher than what was expected. No bond rating is going to be affected by anyone that has $40 million in reserves with a budget the size of Smithtown’s,” said Gorman. “I’d like you to reconsider; you took a monumental step.”
Gorman, however, wished the Town “good luck” and said he “trusts the Town knows exactly” what they’re doing regarding the amounts within the budget.
Irwin Eisen (pictured left), called the posited ramifications of staying within the tax cap a “dark narrative”, adding that people “cannot afford the cost” of a $170 yearly hike.
“People in this audience are losing their jobs; taxpayers are losing their jobs,” said Eisen. “The Town of Smithtown should not be immune to the economic realities of this world. Services will be impacted, yes. But what services can we reschedule or redo so that those services will not be adversely impacted? Clerical functions in this Town can easily be shared. You say inflation, I say innovation; you say inflation, I say consolidation; you say inflation, I say reorganization.”
Eisen posited that the Waterway Department, the Environmental Protection, and the Forestry Department could be consolidated, calling certain items in the spending plan “budgetary nonsense”, such as longevity line-items and intra-fund capital transfers.
Highway Superintendent Bob Murphy (RSt. James) (pictured right) represented his workforce. He said that a 2% property tax cap was enacted by the Governor, which has “created significant challenges to maintain the services and quality of life our residents are accustomed to.”
“Salt used to be $70 a ton, now it’s roughly $98 - about a 50% increase. Sand was $12 a ton, now $27 - only in the last seven years,” said Murphy. “Dumping fees and material removal costs went from $21 a ton to $47 - a 125% increase. Dump trucks are the backbone of our fleet. Six-wheel dumps went from $140,000 five years to $240,000 - a 70% increase. Ten-wheel dump trucks went from $215,000 to $375,000 each. The Highway Department has about twelve of them. Street sweepers went from $214,000 to $300,000 each - a 54% increase. We have twelve of them to take care of the 470 miles that we maintain. Super-sucker drainage cleaning trucks went from $460,000 to $800,000 - a 75% increase. Pickup trucks that our crew drives went from $30,000 to $55,000-$60,000 - and 83% increase.”
Murphy added that over the last thirteen years, his department has reduced the workforce through attrition from 140 employees to 120.
“To meet the 2% cap and another 10% staff reduction means critical Continued on following page
Smithtown Matters
Smithtown Holds Public Hearing on 2026 Budget
Continued from previous page
stone removal will be delayed. Brush and bag services will be severely impacted. Removal and disposal costs are astronomical,” said Murphy, adding his warning that once the Brookhaven Landfill closes, the fees will go over budget even further.
Janice Melrose-Brown, a self-described CPA who headed the Real Estate Review and Assessment Board for the City of Yonkers for two years, said her “maths are pretty good”, but grappled with the numbers the Town presented. She blamed the news media for not accurately describing the cents-on-the-dollar model of property taxation as it relates to this budget.
Catherine Kaya, Deputy Director of Public Safety, said that if the Town does not pierce the cap, Public Safety might be “forced to reduce or eliminate critical staff and services.”
“It is impossible to adequately fund our staffing levels, training requirements, and necessary equipment without an increase to our budget,” said Kaya, urging the Town Council to vote in favor of the resolution.
Doreen Perrino, Program Director at the Eugene Cannataro Senior Center, (pictured right) said budget cuts would be “detrimental to the seniors and services” provided by the facility.
“This year, we have served 11,102 graband-go meals. We delivered 13,396 meals to homebound seniors,” said Perrino. “Transportation has made 15,766 trips, which include transport to the center, doctor’s appointments, drugstores, and food shopping, among other things. Our residential repair program served 896 residents and we completed 1,093 jobs. Our expanded in-home services for the elderly services thirty-one clients weekly with three part-time aides - totalling 1,733 hours of service.”
Perrino added that outing trips are not only fully attended, but waitlisted as well.
“All of these services are provided by twenty full-time employees, including myself, and thirty part-time employees. It’s all-hands-on-deck,” said Perrino. “We run pretty lean. A 10% reduction would dramatically impact the programs and services.”
Joseph Arico, Director of Building and Grounds for the Parks Department, (pictured right) said that a budget cut would foment a closure of the Town’s water parks and picnic areas, the latter openable on weekends if staffing allows. Athletic fields would have “abbreviated schedules of league play” - with the leagues “growing immensely” that serves children as young as 5 to seniors into their 70’s - and tournament schedules would have to be “reviewed” in order to provide services to incoming leagues.
“Hoyt Farm would suffer. Educational service would have to be cut and we would not be able to man Hoyt Farm during the season, maybe only on weekends,” said Arico. “Callahan’s Beach or Shore Beach would have to be closed for the season; camping facilities would be canceled.”
Arico also said that park bathrooms would have delayed openings and would be difficult to service, while staff would also need to be cut.
Brandon Modrov, Superintendent of Recreation at the Town Recreation Department, said that his team plays a “vital role in shaping the future of Smithtown through safe and affordable programs that foster wellness, growth, and social connection.” He referenced the 2020 shutdowns during the Pandemic as an example of the “consequences of losing recreational programming.”
“Families called in desperation for their children to have a chance to once again connect, play, and belong. Our department gives children a safe place to make friends, learn teamwork, safely make mistakes, and find their passions,” said Modrov. “Beyond traditional education, summer camps, sports, and extracurricular activities are vital to the development of
our youth. The unfortunate experience of 2020 was a powerful reminder of what happens when these non-essential services and opportunities disappear. When recreation is taken away, children lose more than activities. They lose connection, structure, confidence, and belonging. To reduce or cut these programs would risk repeating these same harms again.”
Modrov outlined amenities offered to Smithtown residents, such as summer camps, summer employment opportunities for high-school and college students, concert series, community events, adult athletic leagues, and adult socialization services. He argued that many of the school districts within Smithtown’s boundaries produce “countless student-athletes” who “excel at the high-school and collegiate levels”, many of whom “got their start” in Smithtown’s youth camps and sports leagues.
Mike Engelmann, Solid Waste Coordinator, said that “conservation laws require that we engineer and implement all aspects of waste disposal systems” for Smithtown’s near-37,000 households. This is done, according to Engelmann, with two weekly refuse collections and one curbside collection through “publicly-bid contracts that are consistent with our waste management plan and applicable laws.”
“Proper funding may not be available for deductions in these waste collections, as well as popular programs household hazardous waste collection events, paper shredding events, bulk item disposal, free mulch programs, curbside e -waste collection programs - all would need to be scaled back with bulk reductions in frequency of collections and new limits on volume, especially for yard waste,” said Engelmann.
Engelmann added that costs associated with waste disposal have increased “dramatically” over the years due to “contractual escalators and limited alternative disposal options for residues, such as ash.”
Engelmann read a statement from Mitch Crowley, the Traffic Safety Director, who was away in Texas celebrating his daughter’s wedding. Crowley said that a 10% reduction to their labor force would inhibit their ability to maintain their many assets, which includes 13,000 streetlights, 18,000 signs, 12,000 regulatory and warning signs, 100 traffic signals, and over eight miles of pavement markings.
“Smithtown is one of the only remaining towns on Long Island that still uses its own in -house labor force to maintain these critical assets,” said Crowley. “Our team performs all rebuilds, maintenance, troubleshooting, and repairs of our traffic signals, as well as the maintenance, troubleshooting, and repairs of all Suffolk County traffic signals in Smithtown. This approach saves Smithtown taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.”
Crowley added that a typical traffic signal costs the Town “approximately $70,000 to $90,000 to rebuild” when completed in-house. The same project would cost $250,000 if bid out to a contractor, a common practice in other municipalities.
“All street lighting installations, repairs, troubleshooting of outages, as well as the installation of maintenance and replacement of all town regulatory warning and informational signs are performed by town employees. This is in contrast to other townships, which pay a substantial fee to outside contractors, often with long lead times to perform these tasks,” said Crowley.
Alexandra Waseleski, Chair of the Smithtown Youth Advisory Board, (pictured right) said that her organization helps train the youth to be “future leaders, employees, and community members”, by providing “community service, mentorship, and programs to help build confidence, resilience, and essential life skills.”
“The Youth Bureau has made a huge difference in my life. It has taught me leadership and the importance of being involved in the beautiful town that is our home, a place where I and others feel supported and encouraged to do our best, not just in school, but in life,” said Waseleski If the Youth Bureau had less support, that would mean fewer programs and fewer chances for teens like me to grow, learn, and give back. Supporting the Youth Bureau means believing in us, the next generation.”
The Town Board is scheduled to make a final decision and vote on the 2026 budget at Town Hall on Thursday, November 13, 2025, at 2:00p.m.
The Necessary Standard for American Education
Ratifying Constitutions
By Matt Meduri
Since New York State just had a measure on the ballot to ratify the State Constitution, we figured this would be a good opportunity to discuss how a state constitution, or even the U.S. Constitution, is amended and ratified.
Amendment Vs. Ratification
The first is the distinction between these two terms, neither of which really exist without the other.
An amendment is a proposed change or set of changes to a document or law, while ratification is the process of approving said changes.
What Can an Amendment Consist Of?
Practically anything, so long as it does not interfere with previously-established rights - namely suffrage. The Constitution has only a few exceptions for what’s not on the table.
All fifty states have the same number of Senators - 2 - regardless of population. Originally intended to be the state government’s lobbying arm in Washington, the Senate delegations are meant to ensure states are represented equally in the federalist republic, a direct contrast to the U.S. House’s representation by proportion. Therefore, no amendment can deprive a state of equal representation in the Senate, without that state’s consent.
While not a codified rule, the single-subject rule is often upheld in amendments to the U.S. Constitution; some states require them for amendments to their individual constitutions. This requires that an amendment only deal with a single issue so as to maximize clarity, purpose, and transparency.
No amendment to the U.S. Constitution has ever been deemed unconstitutional.
We’ve reviewed all twenty-seven amendments to the Constitution in this column. Amendments are and have been concerned with individual liberties, civil rights, suffrage, minimum voting age, the direct election of U.S. Senators, presidential term limits, congressional compensation rules, a federal income tax levy, to name a few.
Only one amendment exists to have nullified a previous one. The Twenty-First Amendment overturns the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment, which instituted Prohibition.
Amendment Origins and Passage
In the federal government, a proposal for an amendment can start like any other bill, but with the purpose of amending the Constitution. These can be sponsored by members of the House, Senate, or jointly. Both chambers engage in debate over the parameters, possible effects, and overall scope of the proposition.
One notable origin is that of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. This one was one of the first amendments submitted to the First Congress in 1789 but did not receive enough support from the states. It was forgotten until 1982, when Gregory Watson, a 19-year-old student at the University of Texas at Austin wrote a paper for a government class in which he argued that the amendment could still be ratified. He launched a national campaign for its ratification, which succeeded in 1992.
In order to pass the halls of Congress, an amendment must be approved by the House and Senate by separate
two-thirds majority votes. Failure to achieve that threshold in either chamber means the end of that amendment’s progress - at least for the time being.
If an amendment should receive the necessary twothirds support in both chambers, the amendment is then sent to the legislatures of all fifty states for the second part of the process: approval from three-fourths of the states.
State legislatures then convene for debate. When 38 states - three-quarters of 50 - vote to ratify, the amendment becomes law - all devoid of presidential approval or veto opportunity.
The alternative to the aforementioned chain of events is a constitutional convention, in which two-thirds of the state legislature (34 of 50 states) call for a convention to be held by Congress in which the states deliberate. This method has never been used before.
Amendment Difficulty: A Flaw or a Feature?
This is an area of frequent debate, as some scholars have noted that the U.S. Constitution is extraordinarily difficult to amend, which they argue is a case for “democratic backsliding.” Some argue that the two-thirds majorities required in Congress and the three-fourths majority required by the states is far too high a threshold to be met without a significant campaign or deliberation. Moreover, they argue that when an amendment might be “most necessary”, polarization and/or thinly-divided federal and/or state governments preclude the changes desired.
However, others argue that the difficulty is a solid feature.
Proponents of the current process say that a document as wide-reaching and as sacrosanct as the U.S. Constitution should be difficult to change, especially in times of polarization. As various factions might form within the country and/or states along ideological lines, the current thresholds required are a failsafe against runaway legislation pushed by the dominant party at the time. They also argue that the amendments previously passed have had significant changes to the American landscape over the last 250 years and that extreme caution should be utilized when altering such an influential document.
State Constitutions
State constitutions operate more or less the same as the federal constitution, but its power is only limited to the state in question. This is one of the classic provisions that make the United States a constitutional republic; each state has its own sovereignty of any powers not afforded to the federal government - vis-à-vis the Tenth Amendment. States are free to regulate a host of issues, such as firearm ownership, elections, abortion, income taxes, sales taxes, and term limits, to name a handful.
Some states also have provisions in place to mirror the deliberate difficulty of the federal Constitution’s amendability. Florida, for example, has a 60% threshold required in order to pass amendments as ballot measures. If less than 60% of the population votes in favor of the amendment, the initiative fails. This was seen very recently in 2024, as two separate amendments to codify abortion rights and the legalization of recreational marijuana failed with just under 60% of the vote. However, state constitutions might deal with more
This column will seek to address the long-forgotten concept of civics and how it relates to American government in general, from the federal level to the local level. This column will explore Constitutional rights, the inner workings of government, the electoral process, and the obligations and privileges of citizens.
regionalized issues, which, if they are to be amended, requires the entire state to be on board.
This is what was on the ballot last week in New York. Adirondack Forest Preserve lands protected by the State Constitution were being endangered by development at the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Sports Complex in Lake Placid. The agreement, as stipulated by the amendment, allowed development rights to a set number of acres, while 2,500 additional acres of forest would be added to the preserve. Since the New York State Constitution has jurisdiction over those lands, it was a ballot measure in all sixty-two counties of the state.
How is the New York State Constitution Amended?
New York has an interesting method of passing amendments, something we’re seeing unfold with the state’s current redistricting fight.
In order for a constitutional amendment to pass the State Legislature, it must be approved by both the Assembly and the Senate in two consecutive legislative sessions before it can be delivered to the public. It essentially boils down to this flow chart:
1. An issue arises - whether it be a sweeping statewide initiative or a more localized problem.
2. Legislators in both chambers sponsor the resolution to address said issue in Legislative Session 1.
3. The resolution passes both chambers in Legislative Session 1.
4. Legislators in both chambers sponsor the resolution in Legislative Session 2.
5. The resolution passes both chambers in Legislative Session 2.
6. The resolution is then delivered to the voters in the form of a ballot measure, for them to reject or approve in a simple “yes” or “no” vote. Only a majority vote is required by the voters. If achieved, the resolution amends the State Constitution.
Another method in New York is the constitutional convention, in which voters, during a general election, can decide whether or not hold a convention to consider constitutional amendments. The State Constitution currently requires that the question of holding a convention be put to a statewide vote every twenty years. If a majority of voters approve it, delegates are elected in the next general election, after which they convene to propose, deliberate, and vote on amendments to the state constitution.
Voters elect three delegates from each of New York’s sixty-three Senate districts and fifteen at-large delegates from across the state - a grand total of 204 delegates.
If called, a constitutional convention is slated to begin on the first Tuesday of April in the year following the delegate election.
The last constitutional convention in New York was held in 1967. The proposed changes were given to voters in the 1967 general election, but were rejected. The convention ran from April 4 to September 26. New York voters have rejected the last three opportunities for a convention in 1977, 1997, and 2017. The next opportunity will be in 2037. The last time a constitutional convention resulted in approved amendments by the voters was in 1938. Changes approved in 1938 included a Stateenacted Social Security program, NYC being excluded from its debt limits to finance a public transport system, and permission for the State Legislature to fund transportation to parochial schools.
Town of Smithtown Officials Got the VIP Tour at Smithtown’s Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI) earlier this month. Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R-Kings Park) and Councilman Tom Lohmann (R-Smithtown) toured Smithtown’s Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI) residence and facility on Wednesday, October 15, alongside Kim M. Kubasek, Chief Executive Officer of DDI and Michelle Sciara, Director of the Children’s Day Program.
Town Officials Tour DDI Facility
The visit included a stop at the new Sensory Gym at the Children’s Day Program — a project made possible through a successful community fundraiser. The state-of-the-art sensory space will benefit more than 100 students up to the age of 22, including 41 children who reside in DDI’s on-campus residences. Designed to promote physical, emotional, and sensory development, the gym is a testament to DDI’s ongoing commitment to innovation, therapy, and inclusion.
Kubasek, whose three-decade career in healthcare administration includes leadership roles at Staten Island University Hospital and St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, guided officials through DDI’s gymnasium, sensory room, life-skills training center, and children’s residences. Supervisor Wehrheim and Councilman Lohmann met several students during the visit and admired the vibrant artwork displayed throughout the halls.
“The work DDI does for individuals and families in our community is extraordinary,” said Supervisor Wehrheim in a statement. “Their programs not only empower residents with essential life and vocational skills but also enrich our entire town. We’re proud to collaborate with organizations like DDI that are truly making a difference.”
During the visit, Town officials and DDI leadership discussed exploring grant opportunities to further support employment initiatives for individuals with developmental disabilities, as well as ways to encourage local businesses to create inclusive job opportunities.
“It was an honor to welcome Supervisor Wehrheim and Councilman Lohmann to see firsthand the impact of our programs and the dedication of our staff,” said Kim M. Kubasek, CEO, Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI). “We’re continuously evolving to provide innovative, person-centered supports that help the children and adults we serve to live fulfilling lives. Partnerships with local leaders and our community are essential to advancing that mission.”
About Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI)
With nearly sixty-five years of service, DDI provides a full continuum of care -from preschool to residential, day habilitation, and vocational programs -- for over 1,600 children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. DDI is driven by a dedicated staff and a belief in every individual’s potential. Learn more at www.ddiny.org.
DDI’s programs are designed to meet the unique needs of every individual it serves, maintaining the highest standards in education, therapeutic care, and staff training. The agency remains dedicated to applying research-based methods across all of its programs—ensuring quality, innovation, and compassion in every aspect of service delivery.
The Cougars Roar Once Again
By PJ Balzer
On a chilly November evening with a fired-up crowd and nearly two thousand fans in attendance at the neutral field at Islip High School, two Long Island soccer titans were getting ready to battle it out for the Suffolk County AAA championship.
The buzz in the air was different, as the green jerseys warmed up on one side of the field and white on the opposite. These two teams faced off earlier this season and ended up in a deadlock tie after regulation and one overtime period.
Championship games like these don’t end in ties though, this is “lose and sit down.” There has to be one winner and one loser, even if that means facing off in penalty kicks after a double overtime draw.
Commack and Brentwood are two nearby communities. Their high schools are just 8.2 miles apart yet couldn’t be any more different. But what these two communities have in common is their passion for the game of soccer and their ability to persevere to win. Both schools have won County, Island and State titles. Both are also currently nationally ranked teams.
The Commack Cougars came out of the gate looking sharp. Their touch, touch, long pass and run style of soccer worked almost immediately as Ryan Curcio scored in the first few moments of the game. Brentwood eventually kindled their own fire later in the half getting multiple really clear looks at the goal.
The Cougars remained on top at halftime by the score of 1-0.
Brentwood came out swinging early in the second half as they controlled much of the ball possession and kept the Cougars on their heels. Commack struck again though on a breakaway goal by Ferenc Bagi as the Cougars went up 2-0 at around the twenty-five-minute mark.
Brentwood did answer back with a goal which restarted the energy in their crowd, bench and towards possibly striking again and tying up the game. It never happened though, and the Commack Cougars were crowned the large schoolboy’s soccer champs of Suffolk County for the first time since 2020. Commack will play against Herricks High School this Saturday at 2:00p.m. for the Long Island crown and a possible trip upstate to compete for a NYS championship.
Congratulations to the Commack Cougars and best of luck on Saturday!
16 Local History
Published by Messenger Papers, Inc.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Women Veterans of Lake Ronkonkoma
By Ellyn Okvist B.Sc.
Our history of Women Veterans in Lake Ronkonkoma is vast. From World War I to present, we have a group that we respect and offer our pride as a community.
President Harry Truman (DMO) signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act on June 12, 1948. The act officially granted women the right to serve actively and permanently in the U.S. Armed Forces. It wasn’t until 70 years later, on June 12, 2018, that the first Women Veterans Day was established and honored. Now recognized by 21 states and U.S. territories, Women Veterans Day honors the persistence and dedication of the women who defy convention, break barriers, and serve the mission. On June 12, 2023, the 75th anniversary of President Truman’s barrierbreaking signature, the White House served honor to the women whose courage and example no doubt guided his pen.
The date is not recognized nationally, but is recognized by a number of states, either through legislation or proclamation, and organizations. The stated goal of Women Veterans Day varies somewhat by state but can generally be acknowledged as an effort to honor the work of women in the United States Armed Forces and recognize the unique challenges that they have faced. The date was first recognized when the New York State Assembly declared June 12, 2008, to be Women Veterans’ Recognition Day. National Recognition has remained strong with November 11 for all service Veterans, male or female. A by-state or by-area determination should be arrived at, of which the women can decide on the appropriate date and recognize their valor on the date that best serves them. This Veterans Day, November 11, is the 28th Annual Military Women’s Memorial Veterans Day ceremony. The ceremony, one of the major observances in the nation’s capital, is free and open to the public and will include formal military honors, a keynote address, Veterans’ remarks, and wreath laying’s. Their program will be held inside the Memorial, located on the Arlington Cemetery grounds at Memorial Avenue & Schley Drive, Arlington, Virginia.
The Military Tribute Banners of Lake Ronkonkoma proudly share 18 women Veterans, most you may know and love due to family, neighbors, or friends. They have served with honor from World War I to present. The Lake Ronkonkoma Veterans Association now presents the “Adopt A Woman Veteran”, the first project in the group of similar projects. We will ultimately honor our local KIA and Veterans alike. The official name is “Tell Her Story.” By participating in the “Adopt a Woman Veteran” project, the very important job of documenting and telling the story of a woman Veteran is in your care. She will be depending on you to ensure her legacy, the Memorial is depending on you to capture and preserve her story, and the nation is depending on you to ensure history is complete, one story at a time.
How To Participate: To take the pledge to honor a woman Feteran by telling her story. Sign up at an in-person event with us for the Military Women’s Memorial OR Contact us at thelakeheritage@aol.com. Each participant will receive or supply the name of a woman who served, a copy of her available documents, and a link to a resource guide on how to tell and register her story in the national Register, including sample Register profiles to use as inspiration.
We need you as Volunteers, we have many other specialty groups that served our Country. Killed in Action individuals are already compiled in a book written by local author George Cristino; however, please advise us of any additional names of our Armed Forces so we may add them to the projects. We will include Gold Star, Pilots, French & Indian War, Revolutionary War, Indian Wars, War of 1812, Mexican American War, Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, all Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others. Lake Ronkonkoma’s representation is a solid union which we are all proud of, their accomplishments and we want to have all share the respect they deserve. Other projects are ready for public participation and will ultimately honor our local KIA and Veterans alike
Ask family members, friends, Veterans’ groups, schools, and organizations to give their support to this important project. Adopting A Woman Veteran can be an individual or group service project. It is a great way to get involved and give back by honoring our women Veterans and showing gratitude for their enormous sacrifice made for our nation and our freedom.
“They say you die twice: one time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” -Bansky
What is the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day? as told by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs:
Many people confuse Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring military personnel who died in the service of their country, particularly those who died in battle or as a result of wounds sustained in battle. While those who died are also remembered, Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor all those who served honorably in the military – in wartime or peacetime. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank living Veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served – not only those who died – have sacrificed and done their duty. KIA & died in service - Memorial Day. However, Veterans Day also honors all KIA and died in service. They are honored two times a year. Veterans Day thanks living Veterans one day per year.
Women in the Village Currently Honored with a Military Tribute Banner
Rosemary Cleary - Red Cross World War I
Lillian Devere - Navy World War I
Natalina E. DelMar - Coast Guard World War II
Barbara Greene - Army World War II
Dolores M. Henri Holzapfel - Army Air Force World War II
Dorothy M. Holzler - Army World War II
Susan T. Taylor - Navy Desert Storm-plus
Joanne E. Aiello - Marines Vietnam Era
Judith A. Lloyd - Air Force Vietnam Era
Linda Belden-Women’s Army Corp. - Vietnam Era
Barbara Beran Dupuis - Navy Vietnam Era
Tina Ann Stark - Air Force Vietnam Era
Sharon M. Potter - Air Force 1980-1984
Ilona Torraca - Air Force 1986-92
Rachel Fredericks - Marines 2008-2011
Gail Germano - Marines 1976-Iraq plus Aimee L. Treutlein - Navy Global War on Terror-plus; present
Lauren Nicole Klos - Army to present
If you are aware of Lake Ronkonkoma Women who served the Military, or any other action, please contact us ASAP. We have a time limit as to the monument construction.
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Deacon Kenneth J. Maher, Aelysche Marie Maher & Kenneth J. Maher, Jr. Serving All Surrounding Communities
Proud to Serve Our Veterans, Law Enforcement and Fire Service Our State-of-the Art Building Offers:
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829 Midd le Countr y Road, Route 25, S t. James, NY 11780
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P roudly Ser ving Our Community Since 1961
Microsoft’s AI Push Tests the Line Between Productivity and Orchestration
By Mollie Barnett | AI Strategist and Growth Architect
Microsoft’s latest Copilot enhancements mark a pivotal moment for enterprise software: AI is no longer an add-on; it’s the operating texture of everyday work. The rollout folds advanced agent capabilities into Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams; adds government-cloud credentials; and routes among top models such as GPT4.1 and alternates. The result is simple to describe and tricky to navigate: AI where employees already live.
Adoption is rising. After October’s release, implementations climbed meaningfully, with large professionalservices firms piloting deployments across tens of thousands of seats. Expanded access through Microsoft 365 tiers is pulling in smaller organizations that previously sat out the AI wave. The numbers signal successful penetration. Whether that equals transformation is the open question.
At the heart of the decision is a strategic fork that will shape competitive dynamics for years: use AI to accelerate tasks, or architect AI to coordinate the business.
Copilot excels at discrete automation: drafting faster, summarizing meetings, and cleaning data. Those gains are real and measurable. But orchestration is different. That’s the capacity to connect data sources, models, and decisions across functions so the system learns and improves week after week. Think beyond a quarterly sales summary to a live spine that blends demand signals, supply constraints, service loads, and pricing, and then recommends actions before problems surface.
The economic profiles diverge at that point.
Workspace AI delivers linear returns, often between 10–30% time back on targeted activities. Orchestration compounds: better forecasts improve inventory; improved inventory frees cash; freed cash funds growth; and the loop tightens. If competitors build orchestration while you optimize tasks, the gap won’t show up in tomorrow’s dashboard - it will show up as next year’s market share.
Lock-in arrives quietly. There’s no hard contractual trap; instead, workflows hard-wire to familiar apps, teams build prompt habits, and budgets assume “we already have AI.” That ambient dependency makes alternative exploration harder over time. Meanwhile, Microsoft retains flexibility by swapping underlying models, while users stay attached to the workspace layer. The asymmetry is strategic.
Leaders now face four practical choices.
The first choice, name Copilot for what it is: an on-ramp, not the destination. Treat productivity wins as the entry ticket to a broader architecture conversation, not the end of it.
Second, invest in capability as seriously as licenses. Train teams on how AI coordinates across functions and how to frame problems as systems, not just how to click the Copilot button. Skills outlast tools.
Third, explore infrastructure early. Pilot a small orchestration use
case in parallel. For example, finance-ops-sales profitability views; maintenance prediction tied to supply lead times; service routing that blends NPS with cost-to-serve. Build a path before habits calcify.
Fourth, align urgency with your market. In categories where prediction, reliability, or capital efficiency drive advantage, staying at the task layer is a strategic risk, not just a tech choice.
Microsoft’s push is democratizing access to sophis-ticated AI, and that has real economic value. But easy access can blur the line between being AI-enabled and being AI-advantaged. The former speeds up what you already do. The latter changes how you compete.
The leadership question is now plain: will your AI program make individual tasks faster—or make the whole business smarter?
MOLLIE BARNETT is an
Published by Messenger Papers, Inc.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Trump – Changing Drug Traffickers’ Calculus
By Robert B. Charles | AMAC National Spokesman
President Trump has authorized the use of force against “go-fast” boats carrying large quantities of illicit drugs – fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin – to the United States, as more than 80,000 US citizens die each year of overdoses and cartels spread violence. Democrats “rage.” They should sit down. President Trump is changing drug traffickers’ calculus.
As the former Assistant Secretary of State who helped architect and implement the successful Plan Colombia strategy in the early 2000s, worked legally with the US Coast Guard to enable shooting Colombian “go fast” engines, and pushed global drug trafficking deterrence, President Trump is exactly right. Consider the key facts.
First, those 80,000 US overdoses (ages 18 to 45) are almost entirely from foreign source drugs. Overdose deaths tripled since Obama’s first term. More young Americans die each year from foreign source drug overdoses than died in the whole Vietnam War. So, the damage is enormous.
Second, the US presently has an estimated 33,000 street gangs, many linked to eight (8) major Mexicanbased drug cartels, categorized by the FBI and DEA as Transnational Criminal Organizations, as well as pervasive Chinese, Dominican, and other foreign drug trafficker penetration.
Third, these TCO groups – foreign source Organized Crime groups – are often lumped together, but are both competitive (violently competing) and cooperative (dividing up US states).
Collectively, they represent a major national security threat, pushing ODs, violence, and even national interests. They are the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel (177 members just arrested in New England), Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Northeast Cartel (CDN), La Nueva Familia Michoacana (LNFM), Gulf Cartel (CDG), United Cartels (CU), Zetas Vieja Escuela, plus the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA), El Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and Chinese Triads.
Trump’s DEA, FBI, and joint interagency task forces –across the US – have literally “thousands” of cases open against these groups. Directly and indirectly, trafficking ties to nearly 80 percent of all crime, flow-down crimes including homicide, assault, burglary, robbery, and domestic violence.
Fourth, some of these groups are tied to governments overtly and covertly hostile to the US, including Venezuela, Bolivia, and other trafficking nations of South America and Asia, most notably China, the prime source of fentanyl and chemicals used to make fentanyl.
Chinese organized crime, linked to the CCP, has thousands of illegal marijuana “grow houses” across the US. When one state closes them – such as Oklahoma –they reseed in low prosecution states – like Maine. These TCOs link to money laundering, fentanyl, banks, and real estate firms.
Other nations, like Mexico and Colombia, have simply proved unable to control trafficker violence, as public corruption expands and law enforcement is overwhelmed. Mexico saw 400,000 murders from 2006 to 2010, and today sees 30,000 drug-related murders annually.
Without credible deterrence, major, direct state and federal support for law enforcement, strong international attention to expanding TCO threats, and international action, the threat grows.
Accordingly – and thankfully – President Trump has not downplayed this national security threat. He has linked lifting of tariffs – with Mexico, Colombia, China, Canada, and others – to reinvigorated international law enforcement against TCOs, those trafficking in all highpotency drugs.
Finally, he has taken laws written in the 1990s –operationalized in the 2000s – such as shooting out
engines of “go fast” drug boats from armed helicopters, support for aggressive international engagement with traffickers, such as with “shoot down” policies, up a notch.
He has used the same laws, justifications, methods, and cooperative international intelligence, law enforcement, and military means to directly confront the supply arm of these dangerous, violent, rapidly spreading cartels before they get to US shores, destroying trafficker supply lines.
He has also been uncompromising in seeking, arresting, deporting, and prosecuting drug and human traffickers inside the US, aggressively tracking down illegal aliens in
Overview - AMAC -
The Association of Mature American Citizens
The Association of Mature American Citizens represents Americans 50 plus. AMAC is centered on American values, freedom of the individual, free speech, and exercise of religion, equality of opportunity, sanctity of life, rule of law, and love of family, with benefits at all levels.
AMAC plays a vital role in helping build the services that will enrich the lives of America’s seniors. AMAC Action, a 501 (C)(4) advocates for issues important to AMAC’s membership on Capitol Hill and locally through grassroots activism. To Learn more, visit amac.us
those 33,000 street gangs tied to international traffickers, or to TCOs.
Legally, while Democrats whine about how President Trump is confronting the violent TCOs and their threat to our internal security, as they have vigorously defended violent illegal aliens, he is on sound footing.
The question is not whether these violent drug traffickers and supply chains should be stopped, but how quickly deterrence can be reestablished. If the drop in border crossings is any indication, drug traffickers will change their calculus. For that, President Trump should be congratulated, not condemned.
WORD OF THE Week
Etymology: mid 18th century: from water + shed in the sense ‘ridge of high ground’ (related to shed), perhaps suggested by German Wasserscheide.
WATERSHED
noun
Pronounced: /waa·tr·shed/
Definition: (sense 1): an area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas; (sense 2): an event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs.
Example: “The unprecedented election results signaled a watershed among typical voting patterns, behaviors, and expectations.”
Synonyms: pivotal, earthshaking, turning point
Antonyms: noncritical, inconsequential, anticlimactic
Source: Oxford Languages
See how many words you can create. Must have center letter in word and can use letters more than once. 4 letter word minimum.
November 11, 1925: Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five begin their first recording session at Okeh Records in Chicago.
November 8, 1701: William Penn presents the Charter of Privileges, guaranteeing religious freedom for the colony of Pennsylvania.
November 6, 1947: NBC’s “Meet the Press” debuts, the longest running TV show in the U.S.
November 9, 1980: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declares a holy war against Iran.
November 12, 1880: Best-selling American novel “Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ” by soldier Lew Wallace is published.
Source: Onthisday.com.
November 7, 1786: The oldest performing musical organization in the United States is founded in Stoughton, Massachusetts, as the Stoughton Musical Society.
Tornado Warning: Harborfields Field Hockey is Brewing Up a Storm
By Ashley Pavlakis
Field hockey has wrapped up the regular season, and the Suffolk County playoffs officially began last Tuesday. For Harborfields, they ripped through Long Island like a tornado…
The Harborfields field hockey team is a member of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA) and competes in DIV II. The Tornadoes are led by 16th-year head coach Lauren Desiderio. She’s joined by assistant coach Briana Rubenstein.
The Tornadoes had themselves a solid regular season, posting a 14-2-0 record. Their only losses on the season came against Shoreham-Wading River and Bayport-Blue Point. Aside from that, their offense was brewing up a storm as they outscored their opponents 65-12 with eight shutouts to go along with it.
Harborfields has won the Suffolk County Championship twice in its history, in 2021 and 2024. The playoff brackets for Suffolk County have been set, and the Tornadoes competed in the Class B bracket. Their first opponent was fellow DIV II member, Comsewogue. The two teams met once in the regular season and the Tornadoes took home the ‘W’ with a 3-1 score. They have played each other consistently each season, and for the last five years, Harborfields has emerged victorious with decisive wins.
The Messenger spoke with coach Desiderio prior to the matchup against Comsewogue to get her thoughts about the playoff game.
“Comsewogue has a fantastic goalie in Grace Peyman, and this is the first time in quite a while for Comsewogue to make the playoffs. You know that they are super pumped and super excited to take us down as the returning county champs. We just have to stay focused and play our game, and create scoring opportunities. If we play our game, then it will hopefully go our way, but we expect to have a really competitive game tomorrow,” said Desiderio. “We graduated twelve seniors [last year], so we had a lot of holes to fill, a lot of eager underclassmen, and a great returning senior class that really built great team camaraderie. They work well together, and we have great leadership,” said Desiderio. “They take accountability and responsibility, they come to practice to work hard every day, and I think that really has made the difference in why we’ve been able to be so successful this season.”
Harborfields went on to defeat Comsewogue 2-1 to advance to the next round where they played East Islip. Versus the Redmen, they emerged victorious with a 3-0 shutout. Two ‘W’s’ put them in the
championship matchup against Eastport South Manor. ESM was the ‘23 Suffolk County championship winners, whereas Harborfields won in ‘24.
Overtime in the title game? Pure chaos. Eastport-South Manor won the game 2-1 in extra time to claim the County title - a hardfought match by both teams to force sudden death to get the win.
The squad is led by nine seniors: Talia Steinberg, Morgan O’Brien, Reese Nitekman, Erin Lindkvist, Caroline Gilhuley, Juliet Gianfrancesco, Joceyln Frein, Mackenzie Doig, and Sarah Blitz.
“We have four captains, three of whom are returning starters, and another earned a starting spot. Some of our other seniors, their experience last year on the varsity team really allowed them to step onto the field and take on starting roles. Morgan O’Brien’s a first year starter as our center forward, and she has done an incredible job there. Whether she’s assisting her teammates, coming up with tackles, she’s been great. We’ve had a new senior goalie [Mackenzie Doig], it’s her first year as our starter, and she’s risen to the occasion. People who have come off the bench to fill in either starting spots because of injuries or just be great subs. I can’t say enough about the senior class. They’re wonderful examples. Because they work so hard, the underclassmen want to do their best to make sure that this season goes as long as possible for this special group,” Desiderio told The Messenger
Gilhuley and O’Brien are top-30 in scoring for Suffolk County this season as they’ve notched 13g-1a and 5g-11a, respectively. She’s not a senior, but she’s also on the list; Emma Glick has 8g-7a as a freshman.
“I think that’s why we’ve been so successful, we don’t have just one or two go-to players, like we did last season. You never really know who’s going to put the ball in the net and who’s going to step up. Going from our freshman forward Emma Glick, first year on varsity, immediate impact player and starter, to having some of the experienced players like Caroline Gilhey, Morgan O’Brien, and just some other underclassmen. We’ve had a lot of different people score and assist, and that makes us a very dangerous team because you can’t just mark one of them out. You really have to try to defeat our entire team, not just one or two players on the field,” said Desiderio.
Congratulations Natalie Affenita: Top 40 Under 40
Natalie was recently Honored in a special edition of the Long Island Real Producers Magazine as being one of the Top 40 Under 40 Licensed Real Estate Agents
Natalie Affenita has never been one to follow a straight path. In fact, she’s taken more detours than most-including captaining a collegiate dance team, traveling the world, working as a travel agent in Florence, and selling stone in a mason’s yard before realizing that real estate was where she was meant to be.
Her journey into the industry was anything but conventional. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was working with her father in construction when a customer walked in, looking for materials. Natalie didn’t just sell him a piece of stone-she sold him on her talent. So much so that he took her to lunch the next day, not to discuss masonry but to convince her to get into real estate. After a few conversations and some paperwork, she was officially in the business, and she hasn’t looked back since.
Real estate has tested her in ways she never expected, especially when health complications forced her to undergo surgery to insert a cardiac monitor, which Natalie still has today. But slowing down? Not an option. Even during recovery, Natalie found a way to keep her deals moving, show properties, and stay present for her clients-thanks to an incredible support system of family, colleagues, and sheer determination. “Real estate doesn’t pause, and neither do I,” she says with a laugh.
Now, with Douglas Elliman Real Estate, She’s laser-focused on breaking into the luxury market, expanding her network, and making a difference through her extensive charity work. And if her track record proves anything, it’s that no matter what life throws at her, Natalie will always find a way to turn it into an opportunity.
By Raheem Soto
There are moments in sports when the punches that land outside the ring hit harder than the ones inside it. The UFC’s recent fight-fixing scandal—now under FBI scrutiny—may be one of those moments. It’s the kind of controversy that doesn’t just threaten a few reputations; it challenges the very marketplace of trust that professional sports depend on.
The case centers on Isaac Dulgarian, a promising featherweight who entered UFC Vegas 110 favored to win. Hours before the fight, betting lines swung violently the other way—so sharply that sportsbooks froze wagers. When Dulgarian lost by first-round submission, the odds makers didn’t need a replay. The integrity alarms were already blaring. The UFC cut ties with him immediately, and federal investigators got involved.
The Price of Integrity
Fight-fixing is not new. Boxing nearly destroyed itself over it in the 20th century. But mixed martial arts was supposed to be the antidote—the raw, unfiltered meritocracy where truth couldn’t hide behind referees or scorecards. You fight, you win, or you don’t. Yet the moment gambling became embedded in every broadcast and app notification, the purity of that exchange began to erode.
Markets run on incentives, and so does corruption. Fighters on the lower end of the UFC pay scale often earn less than $30,000 a bout—before taxes, coaches, and travel. That may sound decent until you remember they’re independent contractors paying for their own training camps and medicals. For some, a backroom offer to “go down in the first” can look like a paycheck, not a scandal. The math is ugly, but rational.
Thomas Sowell once wrote that “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Here, the trade-off is between freedom and regulation—between allowing athletes to earn through open markets and protecting the credibility of those markets from being gamed.
The Business of Belief
The UFC sells more than violence. It sells authenticity. Every punch is marketed as real, every outcome as earned. The moment fans believe that what they’re watching might be scripted, even slightly, the product loses its soul. That’s not a moral argument—it’s an economic one.
Just ask the NBA, which is still
untangling its own integrity issues in the wake of betting and officiating controversies. Fans don’t abandon leagues because of one crooked player; they leave when they start to suspect everyone’s compromised. Confidence is capital, and once it’s spent, there’s no bailout big enough to buy it back. Dana White knows this. His tone after the Dulgarian fight wasn’t defensive—it was grim. “It doesn’t look good,” he admitted. And he’s right. One scandal like this can do what no opponent ever could: knock out the credibility of the entire sport.
The Economics of Temptation
It’s not enough to condemn the fighter; we have to understand the system that created the vulnerability. When prizefighters are paid by the fight, not by the year, every loss risks their livelihood. When promotion contracts are one-sided, leverage shifts toward the organization, not the athlete. In such an ecosystem, temptation doesn’t need to whisper—it shouts.
Some call for lifetime bans, others for reforms in glove design or officiating. But none of that will solve the central problem: a sport that commodifies violence must also safeguard virtue. When the rewards for honesty are smaller than the payday for deceit, you’ve created a market failure.
The UFC’s best defense isn’t the FBI— it’s fairer pay, transparent oversight, and public accountability. Punishment can scare a few. Incentives can protect many.
The Final Round
It’s easy to dismiss scandals like this as isolated—one bad apple in a locker room full of good ones. But sports history teaches otherwise. Baseball had its Black Sox. Basketball had its point-shaving years. Boxing had its mob era. Every time, the lesson was the same: no sport is immune from the laws of human nature. The UFC stands now where those leagues once stood—at the crossroads between spectacle and integrity. Fans will forgive blood, sweat, and brutal losses. They won’t forgive betrayal.
If the league truly believes in its creed—“as real as it gets”—then it must prove it, not in press conferences but in policy. Because in the end, this scandal isn’t just about one fighter or one fix. It’s about whether truth can still survive when the price of losing looks cheaper than the cost of honesty.
Jones Brings the Storm to Newfield
By Vic Hernandez
The storm didn’t stop Yasir “Yaya” Jones — it moved with him.
Under freezing rain and slick turf that felt like wet sheetrock, the Huntington senior running back turned a cold night into a classic, rushing for 267 yards and four touchdowns on 18 carries as the Blue Devils powered past Newfield, 34–21, in Thursday night’s Suffolk Division II matchup.
“This was one of those games,” said Assistant Coach Kevin Graham. “I don’t even know how we were able to play in that weather — but Yaya made it look easy. Every time he touched the ball, something big happened. It was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.”
After a quiet first quarter, Jones caught fire. He broke a 56-yard touchdown to get Huntington rolling, then ripped off runs of 32, 48, and 65 yards as the Devils took control. On his final score, he slowed up at the goal line, flashed the Steph Curry ‘Night Night’ celebration, and the sideline erupted — a perfect exclamation point to a legendary night.
Quarterback Jacob Guzik made the most of limited opportunities, going 2-for-2 for 85 yards, including a 56-yard strike to Chase Northrop that electrified the crowd.
On defense, Ethan Lawless was the anchor — two sacks, an interception, and constant leadership. “Any other day,” Graham said, “Ethan’s my Beast of the Week. He sets the tone for everything we do — leads by example and never takes a snap off.”
Even in defeat, Newfield’s Dante Powell earned respect across the field. The senior punched in a touchdown and made plays on both sides of the ball. “That kid’s got heart,” Graham said. “He battled through the cold and never stopped competing.”
When the final whistle blew, Huntington’s players were frozen, soaked, and smiling — proof that no weather, no conditions, and no opponent can shake their focus.
“This group is locked in,” Graham said. “We’re prime and ready for whoever we see in the playoffs.”
23 Dodgers Repeat — and Baseball Remembers Its Pulse
By
They did it again.
The Los Angeles Dodgers won another World Series, and somewhere the baseball gods probably smiled, leaned back in their bleachers in the sky, and muttered, “Somebody still knows how to do this right.”
This wasn’t coronation baseball. This was a knife fight in a cathedral alley. Toronto brought brass knuckles, Los Angeles brought patience, and both left their fingerprints on history. Seven games, one winner, and a week’s worth of heartburn later, the Dodgers are once again on the throne.
Game 7 reminded America that baseball doesn’t need pyrotechnics — just nerve. It was long, late, and louder than logic. And when it was over, you felt like you’d seen something that won’t fit in a highlight reel. It had too much soul for that.
Winning Once Is Skill. Winning Twice Is Scripture.
The Dodgers didn’t just win — they reread the rulebook and wrote their own gospel. Winning one title is hard; winning two straight is something closer to divine dictation. They did it the hard way, too. No blowouts. No cruise control. Every pitch had the gravity of a courtroom verdict. A superstar turned utility player into legend with one swing. A starting pitcher became a folk hero when he trotted out of the bullpen on fumes and faith.
Manager Dave Roberts didn’t steer a juggernaut; he nursed a ship through a hurricane. His bullpen was a game of musical chairs played with dynamite, and somehow nobody lost a limb. When he finally exhaled, you could see the years it took off his life — and the pride it put back in it.
Toronto’s Bruise, Not Its Burial
Give the Blue Jays their flowers, even if they’re the kind that come after heartbreak. They didn’t lose this series so much as run out of innings. Their bats thundered. Their bullpen bent but didn’t break — until it did.
Toronto came to the stage with youth, hunger, and a little bit of destiny in their pockets. They leave with scars that will turn to armor. Every great team goes through this chapter. The Dodgers did. The Braves did. Now it’s Toronto’s turn to learn how close greatness can stand without shaking your hand.
Their fans will replay every pitch like a film critic who knows how the ending goes but can’t stop hoping for a rewrite. The pain is proof they belonged here.
Game 7: Baseball’s Heartbeat, Unfiltered
Baseball has a rhythm no algorithm can find — that slow, deliberate heartbeat of tension and hope. Game 7 gave it back to us.
Extra innings. Tied nerves. One swing that silenced the noise. No pitch clock could rush it, no commercial break could cheapen it.
The hero wasn’t a marquee name but a kid who probably still gets recognized more at the DMV than on ESPN. That’s baseball — the game where legends pop up out of nowhere and immortality wears a backup’s jersey.
On Long Island, you could almost feel it — dads waking up their sons for the last inning, bar TVs frozen mid-replay, people remembering why October baseball still feels like an event that belongs to everyone.
A Saturday Night Sermon
Now that the confetti’s settled, the critics have crawled back out with their calculators.
Game 7 on a Saturday? Bad for ratings, they say. Competing with football, they say. The World Series isn’t what it used to be.
Maybe. But here’s the thing: baseball never promised you fireworks; it promised you suspense. And suspense doesn’t care what night of the week it is.
Yes, the Dodgers’ payroll could fund a small nation. But you can’t buy a clutch hit in the eleventh inning or a slider that remembers how to break under pressure. That still belongs to the game itself.
The 2025 World Series didn’t trend; it transcended. It wasn’t meant for everyone scrolling past it — it was meant for the people who still keep score by hand, the ones who know silence before a pitch is its own kind of music.
Dynasty or Déjà Vu?
So now we ask the question that keeps baseball writers up at night: Are the Dodgers a dynasty or just a well-timed thunderstorm?
They’ve become the standard — but the standard always changes.
The same headlines once crowned the Yankees, the Giants, the Astros. Now the Dodgers wear that halo, but halos have an expiration date in sports.
If Toronto’s heartbreak hardens into hunger, next October might be theirs. That’s how this game regenerates itself: pain recycled into ambition.
Baseball Still Belongs to the Patient
In the social-media age, baseball feels like an act of rebellion. It asks you to wait. It rewards you for noticing. The World Series reminded America that slow doesn’t mean dull, and silence can be louder than any touchdown dance.
Sure, the TV numbers might not make Wall Street happy, but the moments made history happy.
The game still gives you that flutter in your chest when a fastball whistles past a bat and the crowd forgets to breathe.
Baseball doesn’t need to chase cool. It is cool — it just doesn’t know it.
From the Messenger Bleachers
Here on Long Island, we still measure summers by innings and autumns by how long the lights stay on at the local diamond. Watching this World Series end the way it did — grit beating glamour, patience outlasting panic — felt like a win for everyone who still believes in fundamentals.
Somewhere in a Southampton sandlot or a Smithtown backstop, a kid’s practicing that same late-night swing, dreaming of hearing a crowd erupt. That’s the gift of a good World Series — it doesn’t just crown a champion, it recruits a generation.
So yes, the Dodgers repeated.
But more importantly, baseball repeated — as itself.
No gimmicks. No shortcuts. Just tension, talent, and time.
Raheem Soto
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