Letter To The Editor From Suffolk Democratic Committee Chairman

SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY — Rich Schaffer, chairman of the Suffolk County Democratic Committee and Town of Babylon supervisor, recently wrote to the editor about the re-election of Legislator Susan Berland to Suffolk County Legislative District 16. The district covers Commack, Dix Hills, East Northport, Elwood, Melville and South Huntington in the Town of Huntington, Deer Park in the Town of Babylon and Brentwood and North Bay Shore in the Town of Islip.

The full letter is below.

All thoughts expressed in the letter are Rich Schaffer's.

To the Editor:

I want to express my appreciation to voters in Huntington, Islip, and Babylon for returning Legislator Susan Berland to the Suffolk County Legislature.

At the risk of showing my age — as someone who has been involved in politics and government in Suffolk County since the 1970s — I have rarely come across an elected official who works as hard as Sue Berland. Perhaps this sounds old-fashioned, but in this time of extreme partisanship and loudmouths who spend their days yelling on Facebook and Twitter, I have a greater appreciation for Sue Berland’s sensible, community-oriented leadership. Whether you agree or disagree with Sue, she will always do the right thing and fight hard for the communities she represents. That's because instead of spending her time Tweeting, Legislator Berland spends her time in the community and doing her job. In just her first term, Sue participated in more than 400 meetings with constituents and civic groups. What makes that more impressive is that she also currently serves on eight legislative committees, far more than most Legislators. And no matter how busy she is, she makes sure that she is always accessible to her constituents.

You know someone is effective when the worst thing that can be said about them is that they try to do their job even on vacation. Yes, it’s true. Sue and her husband of 30 years take one vacation a year to a condo in Key West, which she schedules in August, when there is no general session of the Legislature. Unfortunately, this past year, some committee meetings ended up being scheduled for August, and instead of just missing them, as elected officials of all parties do all the time, Legislator Berland attempted to find a way to participate remotely because she takes her responsibility to her community so seriously. Sue's opponent [Republican Hector Gavilla], with the complicity of his party chair, tried to twist Sue's unmatched devotion to her constituents into a negative by deliberately and unabashedly misstating the facts. But when that did not work, he took negative attack-campaigning to a new depth, first verbally assaulting Legislator Berland at a meet-the-candidates night when he saw that the audience wasn't buying his misrepresentations, and then, after the moderators insisted that he leave the podium, charging at her physically, hurling epithets at her as he ran up the aisle toward where she was speaking with constituents with her back turned. It was only the quick, instinctive reactions of those surrounding Legislator Berland that prevented him from carrying out the assault he quite clearly was determined to perpetrate. Then, evidently thinking that his outrageous behavior hadn’t been caught on camera, he attempted to cover it up by, absurdly, trying to make himself the victim, only to have numerous eyewitnesses call him out for it.

Worse still, he has continued his threatening conduct toward Legislator Berland post-election. He has continued to text her regularly in which he refers to her as a "jerk," "disgusting pig," and her husband as a "little girl." No candidate, incumbent or not, should be subjected to conduct of that kind.

In any age, but especially in an era in which the memory of fatal and near-fatal assaults on elected officials have become an unsettling part of the zeitgeist - not just Presidents (Kennedy, Ford and Reagan) and members of Congress (Lowenstein, Giffords and Scalise), but also local officials (Harvey Milk, James Davis) have been murdered or seriously injured — such contemptible behavior must receive the strongest condemnation across the political spectrum. We must be better than that. It is the responsibility of every political leader to loudly and clearly send the message that such conduct will not be tolerated and that candidates who exhibit such conduct will not have the support of their parties, and that threatening behavior has no place in our political discourse. If we want our best and brightest to run for office, we owe them no less.

Suffolk County does indeed face new challenges, but the best way to meet them is with old-fashioned hard work, experience, and determination. If you live in the 16th Legislative District, whether you agree with Sue Berland or whether you voted for her, you have a tireless advocate who will sit down with you, listen to you respectfully, and fight for the issues that matter to you and your community.

I am grateful to the voters of the 16th Legislative District for their wise decision to keep Legislator Susan Berland working for all of us.

Sincerely,

Rich Schaffer
Chairman, Suffolk County Democratic Committee
Supervisor, Town of Babylon