The Long Island Feud That Could Decide Control of Congress

Nassau County is the land of political nepo babies. It’s a place where, for most of the modern political era, “patronage jobs” have been handed out liberally to friends, family members, and supporters of the party in power — which has largely been the Republican Party. 

Laura Gillen’s family learned this when they first arrived in Long Island decades ago. “My Italian grandfather came with his young family, he came into town and tried to get a job, and the first thing he was told when he was applying as a sanitation worker was: ‘You and your wife both need to register as Republicans,’” Gillen, a Democrat running to represent a large swath of this county in Congress, recalled recently. “That’s the way it’s been in Hempstead, and in Nassau County, for a really, really long time.”

Republicans have retained a grip on local elections, but over the last three decades, Democrats grew to dominate federal contests in Nassau County’s 4th Congressional District — right up until the last cycle, 2022, when Anthony D’Esposito edged Gillen out here by less than 10,000 votes.

The pair are longtime rivals, dating back to the days when D’Esposito was a member of the Republican-controlled Hempstead Town Board, and Gillen was Town Supervisor — the first Democrat elected to the role in 112 years. (During her first day on the job, Gillen has said, D’Esposito and other members of the board tried to haze her by removing all of the furniture from her office, and they tangled repeatedly over the following years, including over Gillen’s efforts to refinance the town’s debt at a lower interest rate.)

Last month, The New York Times reported that not long after D’Esposito was elected to Congress, he quietly placed two close associates on the payroll at his district office: the daughter of his fiancée, and the woman with whom he happened to be cheating on that fiancée. (It remains unclear if D’Esposito’s lover ever appeared at her job, where she held the title “office liaison.”) Payments to both women abruptly ended this spring after D’Esposito’s fiancée learned of the affair. The ruse was reportedly discovered by his affair partner’s (now) ex-husband and D’Esposito’s fiancée’s son, who worked in the same Nassau County sanitation department.

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“I think it says a lot about his character — and also about his intelligence,” Gillen said to gales of laughter at luncheon hosted by EMILY’s List, the Democratic political action committee, last month. “That did not go very well for him.” (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert spent three minutes on the scandal the week that it broke.) 

The question — and it’s a question that could decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives — is whether voters on Long Island, who may have become inured to such bald-faced nepotism, after years of witnessing (or even personally benefiting from) the area’s machine politics, will care enough about the scandal to kick D’Esposito out of Congress. 

And there is a second, larger question hanging over this particular race: whether the gains that Republicans made here in 2021 and 2022 are durable and emblematic of a more widespread frustration that middle-of-the-road voters like the ones in this district are feeling toward the Democratic Party writ large.

In one sense, it’s a marvel that D’Esposito made it to Congress in the first place. A former detective with the New York City police department, he was the subject of three separate complaints during his police career — all three lodged by Black men — including two accusations of excessive force (one he exonerated for, the other deemed “unsubstantiated” the Civilian Complaint Review Board), and one accusation of unlawful search for which the board recommended he be charged. He was reprimanded by the department and docked vacation days — for moonlighting as a DJ and, in a separate incident, leaving his gun unattended. (It was stolen out of his unlocked cruiser.) 

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It wasn’t just D’Esposito’s history of dubious personal and professional judgment that made him the underdog back in 2022. Democrats should have had a significant edge: Before he was elected, Democrat Rep. Kathleen Rice represented New York’s 4th Congressional District for eight years, and in 2020, Joe Biden routed Donald Trump in the district, beating the former president by more than 14 points. (That result shouldn’t necessarily have been a surprise: During Trump’s rise, the local paper reported, Nassau County shed more Republicans than any other county in the country, save Manhattan, with at least 25,720 Republicans dropping off the rolls during that period.)

But something changed after Biden won: In 2021, Democrats were swept out of office across Long Island. To Rice, that off-year election was a flashing red light for Democrats the coming midterms. As she recalled in an interview with Politico: “I said [to party leaders], ‘You guys, don’t understand, we’re gonna lose Long Island.’” Voters, she added simply, “wanted to send a message to Washington.”

In November 2022, that message manifested in the election of D’Esposito and his Republican colleague to his north, George Santos (who actually outperformed D’Esposito’s margin by more than 3 points). Observers credited both victories to disaffection with the Biden administration and a resurgent Nassau Republican machine.

Now, with the control of the chamber on a knife’s edge — thanks, among other reasons, to Santos’ expulsion from the chamber after he was charged with credit card fraud and other crimes — Democrats only have to win a handful of seats to reclaim the majority. D’Esposito’s seat, the most pro-Biden seat in Congress currently held by a Republican, is one of their top targets. 

Somewhat counterintuitively, in its home stretch, the race for control of NY-4 has transformed into a miniature version of a national race that is centered on immigration and reproductive rights — with both candidates arguing that they are the one who will secure the border and protect women’s ability to make their own health care decisions.

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In her ads, Gillen pledges she’ll work to “end the migrant crisis,” while D’Esposito claims on a special  section of his website devoted to “women’s rights” that he is working to “guarantee [women’s] right to make their own health care decisions.” His claims aren’t supported by his history or voting record: He opposes Proposal 1, the ballot measure that would enshrine the right to abortion in New York’s state constitution, supported numerous piece anti-choice legislation in Congress, and previously said he would “probably” back a 15-week national abortion ban, before attempting to walk that stance back.

In the end, as personal and provincial as the race in NY-4 has been, the race may ultimately offer a striking counterpoint to the axiom that all politics is local.