Playing It Well: The Life and Times of Jack O'leary Part Ii

By John J. O’Leary

The story of a man who rose from poverty to become a successful engineer, elected and appointed government official and a much exhibited photographic artist. Part 1 opens with his early days on the streets of New York, his later service in the Navy during the Korean War, his 35 years in the aerospace industry, where he helped to put a man on the moon while playing a key role in assuring the national defense. Part 1 ends with his introduction to New York politics when he runs for Governor of the State of New York and is subsequently elected to lead the local Conservative Party in1972. Part 2 follows Jack's adventures through the end of the 20th century to the early years of the 21st including taking a moribund political party and raising it to become a key player in state and local politics. The book gives a unique insight into the complexities of New York politics and government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466962453

John J. O’Leary

The author paints a vivid canvas of life on the streets of New York before and after World War II and gives a keen insight into state and local politics in New York at the close of the twentieth century and the start of the new century.

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© Copyright 2012 John J. O’Leary.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-6243-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-6244-6 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-6245-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918818

Trafford rev. 10/18/2012

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Contents

1972-1974

A Journey Begins

The State Executive Committee

Patient Vigil

Roiling the waters

Turn Around

A Difficult Interlude

A Second Term

1975-1980

Back in the Game

Learning the Ropes

Coming of Age

Congressional Hopes

Stately Objectives

A Long, Hot Summer

Growing Influence

A New Direction

1981-1988

The Reagan Years Begin

Margiotta’s Travails

Gubernatorial Hopefuls

A Change of Command

Four More Years of Hope, Reagan’s Reelection

Let’s Get Organized

1986-New Leadership

1987-Moving Forward

Revolution Abrewing

1989

A Time for Renewal

1990-2000

A Decade of Raprochement, Growth, and Fulfillment

A Time for Introspection

The Big Leagues

A Newcareer

Conservatives Make The Difference (1994)

A Bid For Reelection (1995)

A Mixed Bag (1996-1998)

A Year To Remember (1999)

Goodbye, Mister Chairman

2001-2012

A New Century—A New Life

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

APPENDIX III

Appendix IV

EPILOGUE

FOR

Ranny, who will always

be remembered

with love and fond memories

1972-1974

A Journey Begins

When I awoke on the morning of July 9, 1972 I didn’t feel any different than I did on any other Sunday, until I shook the cobwebs from my head and began to realize that last night my life had taken a profound change in direction.

What had occurred at last night’s meeting to make me hesitate to get out of bed this morning? I awoke with an unpleasant feeling that some unknown and terrible thing was about to happen to me, something over which I would have no control.

The night had gone as planned and I had been successful in winning the election to the Chairmanship of the Nassau Conservative Committee on the first ballot. After the meeting broke up most of the committee members quickly left the hall. Only a few of those that lingered on into the early morning took the time to congratulate me on achieving the dubious honor of being elevated to the new post.

My immediate predecessor, Pete Verity, did not stay very long after the meeting and he left shortly after rebuffing my request for his help in adjusting to the new job and his revelation that he had absolutely no party files to pass on to me. (As Cliff Riccio was to so cleverly phrase it on a later occasion, the Nassau Conservative Party, which was then its tenth year, had only two years of experience—five times. All of the previous Chairmen had served only a two-year term and, as Verity had done to me, had passed on none of the fruits of their tenure to the successor. Now it appeared that we were about to start the two year cycle anew.)

I left the meeting last night without a clue as to how I would begin my one term as Chairman; but I was tired from the long journey to get to this point and decided that I would address the future in the morning.

After breakfast, I started to analyze the situation. Of the six other officers who had been elected on my slate the previous evening, I was only familiar with one, Dennis Kennelly, who at my insistence was on our slate as one of the three Vice-chairmen to join the new administration and I was confident that he would be a great asset. In the course of putting together the rest of our winning coalition, it had been necessary to make deals with some of the larger delegations to get their support. The Wantagh-Seaford Club had one of the biggest delegations and successfully bartered for the largest piece of the ticket. Cliff Riccio, who had been an Assembly District Leader, was successfully put forth for one of the three vice-chairmanships and was joined by Kay Belton as the new Secretary, and Alan Smith as Treasurer; all three from the Wantagh group.

John Donovan was put forward by the Freeport and Baldwin delegation to fill the third spot for vice-chairman. Bob Valli of New Hyde Park brought in the support of a large contingent from the Town of North Hempstead when offered the second spot on the ticket, Executive Vice-Chairman.

I decided that the first order of business was to call a meeting of the Executive Committee to start planning on future directions for the party. I wanted to avoid imposing an autocratic regime on the committee and felt very strongly that by working together as equals on the committee, with everyone’s opinion given the respect of a fair hearing, that we could begin the rebuilding of the party that was so desperately needed.

Our candidates for the upcoming 1972 elections had already been designated by the outgoing Executive Committee and the primary elections were all out of the way, so at least in that area all that had to be done was to run a respectable campaign with the limited resources left to us by the outgoing committee.

I called Pete Verity to again ask for his support and he again declined. Verity, as the immediate past chairman would continue to sit on the Executive Committee as established by the party Rules and Regulations. With this in mind, I asked Verity if we could have the use of his office where we had been conducting our Executive Committee meetings during his two years as Chairman. He refused my request; making one of my first tasks as Chairman the finding of a suitable meeting place; preferably at no cost as the party treasury was in a sad state.

I contacted our new Secretary, Kay Belton, who would prove to be one of the key officers of the party. I wanted to establish a good relationship with Kay from the beginning. She suggested that we try to get a private room at the Sunrise Village, a German restaurant and Beer Hall on Sunrise Highway. Some previous chairmen had been offered gratis use of a small room at the restaurant in the past. Kay contacted the Sunrise Village and the management made a room available to us without cost—problem one; solved.

As I was working all day at Grumman and did not want to set a precedent of receiving party business calls at work, I asked Kay to have a telephone installed in her house for party business; we did not then, nor would we ever, have a permanent party headquarters outside private homes for any length of time. I directed Kay to schedule a meeting of the Executive Committee at the Sunrise Village as soon as practical so that we could start the new regime.

The first meeting of the Executive Committee was most noteworthy because we did manage to have a quorum in attendance; something that would be a rarity in the next two years. I assume that this initial interest by the committee was prompted primarily by curiosity about the direction to be taken under my leadership to guide the party back to the heights it had achieved just two years before when James Buckley was elected to the United States Senate on only the Conservative line; narrowly defeating the two major party candidates, Richard Ottinger and Charles Goodell.

I had no grand plan to straighten out the party. My immediate goal was to attempt to hold the party together and conduct an acceptable campaign for those Conservatives who had offered their service by running on our party line in the 1972 elections. There were no major party candidates accepting our endorsement because of the deal made in early 1971 between the Republican and Democrat County Chairmen prohibiting any of their candidates for office from accepting our support. Our key weapon in our battle to turn around the liberal direction of our state and local governments in New York was our ability to offer our endorsement to the major parties in return for their support for some of our major programmatic objectives. The ban on cross-endorsements was killing our party in Nassau County and decimating our ranks.

The intra-party squabbles that had resulted in regular primary election challenges since first initiated by Noel Crowley in 1968, also deepened the erosion of the party. This decay was further exacerbated by the breakdown of many of the Conservative Party clubs. Most of the clubs had become the personal realms of one or two people, with the memberships dwindling in many cases to non-existence. The presumed leaders of these clubs posed as spokesmen for the party in public forums and were instrumental in breaking down what little discipline had existed in the party prior to the term of my immediate predecessor, Pete Verity. Our numbers were small and I knew, if we did not maintain some discipline within the ranks, we would not have a chance to achieve any of our ultimate aims of a Conservative reform in government.

(Oscar Sommers was a typical example of the independent club chairmen that were hurting the party. In the hamlet of Oyster Bay, Sommers organized a club that existed only on paper and which held no meetings or any elections. The club had been chartered by one of the previous administrations and had become an embarrassment to the party. Sommers would regularly testify before the Town Board in Oyster Bay about items that were not sanctioned by the party but were rather things that were of parochial concern to only Oscar Sommers and his business interests in the hamlet of Oyster Bay where he resided.)

I was firm in my determination to hold the party together and to do this I had to first establish discipline within the party and make it obvious to the outside world that our Executive Committee was in charge of the party. I had to rein in the clubs that were dysfunctional and pull the club charters where it was warranted. This would take some time and I initiated the process by identifying the clubs that were performing and worked with these clubs to strengthen them, while pulling the charters from the others.

(Sometime later in my tenure, Joe Lamberta, an attorney and one of the party’s sages, commented that one of my most brilliant moves as Chairman was destroying the Conservative Clubs. This was not quite what happened and I preferred to think of it as a necessary and overdue house-cleaning more than destruction.)

A campaign had to be mounted for the 1972 general election with the meager treasury that our committee inherited, and ways had to be found to raise some funds in our fragmented party to supplement that campaign.

I would attempt to bring together the various factions of the party who I felt were now ready to work with me, at least to hold the party together, and to allow me, as the Chairman, to be the only spokesman for the party. This was a formidable task and though at times I would get discouraged and be tempted to throw in the towel, there were enough Conservatives around to encourage me to hang on and hope for better times.

One of these people was Fred Valentine who owned some commercial real estate in the Hempstead area. The party had used one of his vacant stores as the party campaign headquarters in Werner Pleus’s Conservative campaign for County Executive in 1967. Fred offered this corner location to us for our current campaign at a nominal rental of $120 a month. His offer was to rent the store to the party until Election Day, at which time we would move to a small one-room office located above the store where we would establish a permanent party headquarters. I accepted the offer and assumed that the party could raise that nominal sum for the monthly rental.

The store was located at 5 Centre Street in Hempstead at the intersection of Franklin Street. The headquarters would be ideally situated to get the attention of the thousands of motorists who passed that corner in the next few months. We festooned the new headquarters with signs identifying our Nassau Conservative headquarters and hung large signs for our current candidates, particularly the Nixon-Agnew Presidential ticket.

We didn’t draw a large crowd at our grand opening (about 35 people) but it was an enthusiastic group; and we did get one major candidate to attend the opening, Republican Congressman Norman Lent. Congressman Lent was one of the candidates endorsed by the Conservatives in 1970 whose victory was attained by the margin of the Conservative Party vote. Over the ensuing 20 years, Norman would always remember with gratitude the part the Conservative Party played in that initial victory which opened a long and successful Congressional career for him. This year, with the ban on cross endorsements in effect, the party had not backed any major party candidates, but was running no candidate against Congressman Lent as recognition of the stellar job he was doing in Washington on our behalf. (This courtesy was also extended to Oyster Bay Councilman Phil Healey who was running for the State Assembly for the first time.)

The opening of the campaign headquarters and the anticipation of opening a permanent headquarters gave us some hope that the party was achieving some maturity and would reestablish its place in the body politic. The realities of the party’s fortunes however, soon became apparent. We could not raise the necessary, if nominal, rental and, more important; we did not have the capability of manning the office for any reasonable length of time. We decided to vacate the headquarters after the election and for the duration of my tenure as Chairman never again entertained the thought of opening a permanent headquarters.

The State Executive Committee

While our new Nassau County Executive Committee was endeavoring to reestablish a presence in the county political arena, Pete Verity resigned his position as a member of the Executive Committee of the State party and the committee appointed me to replace him on that body. Since joining the party six years before, I was primarily involved in the business of the local county and our local Conservative club and was not in tune with affairs being dealt with at the state level. Verity, while a member of that committee, rarely attended those infrequently held meetings in Manhattan; preferring to attend merely by proxy; and consequently he never reported the actions of the state leaders to the County Executive Committee.

I decided, if I were going to be a member of the State Executive Committee, that I would attend the meetings personally and would keep my local leaders up to date on state activities. However, J. Daniel Mahoney, the state chairman, did not call regular meetings of the Executive Committee and I was not obliged to attend any until sometime after the 1972 general election. That first meeting was inconsequential and no business of any note was conducted and no financial reports were given to the few who attended. As a new member of the committee, I did not have anything to say at that time and I would soon learn that this type of meeting was the rule and not the aberration that I hoped it was.

Patient Vigil

We made it through the 1972 elections in Nassau County with no surprises. The Republicans blew the Democrats out of the water as usual, except for some incumbent Assemblymen and a small number of judges who were unchallenged by the Republicans as part of the traditional Republican-Democrat cross-endorsement deal. Our candidates on Row C garnered a respectable vote but with the cross-endorsement ban in effect, the vote was significantly off the peaks we had experienced in 1970.

The Republican national ticket that year did extraordinarily well across the nation, with Richard Nixon getting record breaking votes in suburban counties like Nassau. President Nixon was running on the Conservative line in New York State and the vote for President on Row C in Nassau County was significant. I was hoping that Margiotta would recognize the significance of our vote and reconsider his position on cross endorsements. I was satisfied that we had done our best under difficult circumstances and I was relieved to have this breather after the election to assess our options for the future.

(On September 3, just prior to Election Day, the Sunday News ran an article by William Butler proclaiming the death knell of the Conservative Party in Nassau. The article cited statements by some of the previous Nassau Conservative Chairmen that agreed with the general premise of the article that the party was in its death throes, that the party had been taken over by ne’er-do-well protesters and political morons hung-up on the abortion issue, and that the Conservative Party had served it’s purpose of returning the Republican Party to the right.

These sentiments were echoed by former Chairmen Dick Coons, Jim Marrin, and John Sheehan who were joined by well-known party leaders like Joseph Lamberta, F. Courts Bouse, and A. Werner Pleus, our 1967 standard bearer for County Executive. Pete Verity did not come to the defense of the party but at least he demurred in adding to the criticism.

The article concluded on a note of bitter sarcasm:

. . . However you view it, clearly something big has happened to the Conservative Party. A working newsman looked up from his typewriter in the Mineola pressroom recently and asked his colleagues, ‘Who’s the Chairman of the Conservative Party?’ Silence was his answer, because no one could recall who succeeded Verity last June.

It wouldn’t be too long before Nassau scribes and politicians would learn who was running the Conservative Party in the county.)

After the election was over there was a short period of calm; as there would always be after an active campaign. This period didn’t last too long as the politicians and the seekers started to plan and conspire about the next year; the next election. This year was a bit different for Jean and me. The Conservative Party had backed the winner of the Presidential election and was rewarded with invitations extended to our State Executive Committee to attend the Presidential Inauguration in January of 1973, when Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew would be sworn in for a second term.

Jean and I had never attended a Presidential inauguration before and did not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity. We made reservations at the Washington Park Sheraton Hotel for the minimum four nights required for which we had to send in the entire four night’s non-refundable rate. Jean shopped for a new gown for the Inaugural Ball while I decided to forego the rental of a tuxedo and, instead, purchased a new tux at Alexander’s Department Store for $45. This tuxedo would serve me well for many years before giving it to my brother Bob who wore it at many a funeral as a fourth degree member and Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

We arrived in Washington on January 18th at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and immediately drove to the Department of Commerce Building where we were to pick up our admission tickets for the many events that we would be attending that week; a reception for the Vice-President, a multi-ethnic exhibit of food, music, dance, and culture at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and, of course, the Inaugural Ball which was spread out amongst several locations in Washington to accommodate the expected crowd. We were assigned tickets to attend the ball at the Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.

When we were looking for a parking space at the Commerce Building we noticed signs that indicated that parking was permitted until 4 P.M. at which time the cars would be towed away. Having plenty of time, we parked our car on the street outside Commerce and picked up our tickets. When we returned to where the car was parked, we discovered that the car was missing and assumed that someone had stolen the car. We reported this to a policeman nearby and he informed us that we were parked in a tow away zone and that the sign we had seen did not apply to where we had parked. We learned that the car had been towed uptown to a street directly opposite the capitol building. We walked the several blocks to find the car.

When we located the car parked on the street, the car doors had been left unlocked and there was a parking ticket posted on the windshield. We retrieved the car and didn’t notice until later when we were unpacking at the hotel that Jean’s ball gown was missing. Was it stolen or did we forget to bring it? We called home in Plainview and found that the dress was still hanging in the closet.

I called state headquarters in New York City to see if any of our party members were still in New York and planned to attend the inauguration. Chairman Mahoney and his wife Kathleen were planning on flying out the next day. I made a call to Mahoney and he said that if we could get the gown to him before he left; he would deliver it to us in Washington. I called brother Bob who picked up the dress at our house and delivered it to Mahoney in Westchester County.

We arranged to pick up the gown the following day after the Mahoneys arrived. We picked it up at the apartment of Kathleen Mahoney’s brother Kieran O’Doherty who was an appointed member of the Postal Rates Commission and was currently residing in Washington.

On the day of the inauguration we paid an early morning visit to Norman Lent’s Congressional office to pay our respects to the Congressman. When we went into Lent’s office, Joe Margiotta, the Nassau Republican leader and the architect of the ban on cross-endorsements was sitting behind Lent’s desk with the Congressman standing alongside. Margiotta was going through Lent’s list of people for whom the congressman was holding preferential tickets for the inauguration that was to be held at noon at the Capitol. Margiotta was asking, Who is this ticket for?—to which Lent deferentially replied, Judge Franco (or some other dignitary.) Margiotta crossed the name off and enjoined Congressman Lent to give the special pass to one of his executive leaders. I will always remember the command in Margiotta’s tone as he continued going down the list while typically saying, He’s only a judge, we’re giving this to one of my Executive Leaders.

I was discovering where the real clout was in the Republican Party; with Margiotta and his Executive leaders; and obviously, not the elected officials. The docile response by all of Margiotta’s subordinates was conspicuously on display that day.

We were introduced to Margiotta and he graciously invited us to a private party that was being hosted that night by the Nassau Republican Committee. We accepted this invitation and showed up at the party later that evening after we attended the Inaugural Ball at the Smithsonian where we got a brief glimpse of President and Pat Nixon. This visit to the Republican reception afforded me an opportunity to talk briefly with Chairman Margiotta and I had hoped this would open a dialog between us to convince him to rescind the cross-endorsement ban in Nassau County.

My optimism would soon be tempered by the realization that Margiotta was not about to end a deal that served his party to the disadvantage of the Democrats. The Republicans were in control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature in New York, the Presidency was in the hands of another Republican, and the party was no stronger anywhere than in Nassau County where every office of any significance was in the hands of a Republican. It would be another year before I could get Margiotta’s attention. In the meantime, I was determined to keep our party in business. Perhaps the Democrats would realize their folly in the unholy deal with the Republicans and be open to change. There would soon be an opening to pursue this possibility after Marvin Christenfeld relinquished the Democrat leadership to Stanley Harwood. The job of Chairman would take up much of my time in the years to come and those first few months were especially trying for the family. We did not take a family vacation during that summer; though we did send Patti to a summer camp, Camp Immaculata in Sag Harbor, for two weeks during her summer vacation, accompanied by her friend and neighbor, Maryann Anderson.

I made it a point to attend all of the important events with the children such as Patti’s brilliant starring role as Aydo Annie in the school production of Oklahoma, and Eileen’s Gretel in Hansel and Gretel as well as her appearance as Grandma Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof. Both proudly surprised us with their excellent stage presence.

We took advantage of the post-election hiatus in 1972, and a slow time at Grumman, to take a vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday to visit Disney World in Florida, which was celebrating its first anniversary; the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral; Marine World; and St. Augustine.

Brother Bob married Tina Ciriani in 1972 and I stood in as his best man. This was the second marriage for Bob, with the first marriage to Peggy Carpenter ending in divorce and, fortunately, no children. (Brother Bill would marry Ginny Bang the next year; another marriage that ended in divorce, but after one child, a daughter, Kelly.)

Roiling the waters

It didn’t take long after the second Nixon-Agnew inauguration before opportunity knocked on our door. If the cross endorsement ban were to continue in Nassau County, the party would endure but would never be a major influence on the county government; the best we could hope for, in that case, would be to continue to field our own candidates for office and to do the best we could to help in statewide elections.

This year, 1973, was a year in which no state elections were being held and the top of the ticket would be the candidate for Nassau County Executive, running for a four year term for the first time. Until the last election the term had been three years, but this had been changed so that the County Executive would not be running in the even numbered years when either the President or the Governor was up for election.

Stanley Harwood, a former State Assemblyman, had taken over the reins of the Nassau Democrat Party from Marvin Christenfeld and was apparently open to a unilateral termination of the cross-endorsement ban. He called me in late February to discuss areas of mutual interest in the coming year’s countywide elections. I had previously set up a meeting with Joseph Alfano, a Bayville Conservative, who wanted to introduce me to a young man that he wanted to recommend for Conservative endorsement to run for County Executive. I decided to meet with Joe and his candidate before meeting with Harwood and scheduled my meeting with the Democrat for two days after.

I met with Alfano on March 3rd and had asked Cliff Riccio and Josephine Nunnenkamp to sit in to assist me at the meeting. Alfano introduced us to Patrick McCloskey, an attorney and another Bayville resident. An enrolled Republican and 29 years of age, McCloskey was good looking and articulate; he was familiar with the Conservative Party objectives and we decided very quickly that he would be a very respectable candidate for the party, if we were obliged to run our own candidates that year. McCloskey readily agreed that, in the event he was to receive our endorsement, he would change his enrollment to the Conservative Party before we submitted our designating petitions.

I told McCloskey and Alfano of our impending meeting with the Democrats to discuss the elections and the cross-endorsement ban. I told them that I would keep them informed of the results of my meetings and that the party would be interested in McCloskey’s candidacy if we did not come to terms with the Democrats.

On March 5 Cliff Riccio and I met with Stanley Harwood at Democrat Headquarters, located in an old warehouse on Mineola Boulevard in Mineola. Harwood had invited Herb Sachs, one of his leaders, to join in the meeting. After the introductory pleasantries, Harwood got right down to business. He knew that the Republican Party was a powerhouse in the County, but felt that with the right candidate and a coalition of the Democrats, Conservatives, and Liberals, the fight could be taken to them with a great possibility of an upset of the incumbent County Executive Ralph Caso.

Harwood proposed running State Assemblyman, John Thorp for the spot. I didn’t know if Harwood had approached Thorp about running but, if we could come up with a formula for getting the parties together, there seemed to be no doubt that he would jump at this opportunity. At the time, Thorp was considered a ‘conservative’ Democrat and his voting record, from a conservative point of view, was better than most of the Republican State legislators who were still under the charm and control of liberal Governor Nelson Rockefeller. With Thorp’s record, we could make a strong case for his endorsement by our Conservative Executive Committee.

Harwood was receptive to my suggestion that to make this coalition work, we would have to have an endorsement for a Conservative as our candidate for County Comptroller. We also agreed that the governmental positions to be filled by the County Executive would be filled on a basis proportional to our respective votes in the general election. I didn’t have any idea of who we could run for the County Comptroller position or who was available to fill an unspecified number of jobs, but the prime motivation at the time was to get either the Republicans or the Democrats to break the ban; we would concern ourselves later about filling these posts.

The only problem, I explained to Harwood, was that we could not permit the Liberal Party to participate in the coalition as we were precluded by our by-laws from endorsing any candidate that accepted the endorsement of the liberal party; except for candidates for judicial or quasi-judicial positions. (The wording, ‘quasi-judicial’, permitted District Attorney William Cahn to get the endorsement of the Conservative Party in 1968, even though he had accepted the Liberal Party endorsement.)

Harwood was adamant in insisting that the Liberals join our coalition even as I explained our dilemma. I did not want to close the door on getting the ban dropped so I told him we would consider what could be done. (One thing I discussed with Riccio was having the Liberal Party run a ‘fill in’ candidate until the petitions were all filed and then have him withdraw to be replaced with Thorp. We would be in technical agreement with our by-laws and would not be in a position at that point to replace Thorp on our ticket. I didn’t like this subterfuge but for now, it kept all the options open for discussion.)

We set up a follow up meeting for later in the month. Cliff and I left the meeting with a little more hope for the future of the party than when we had entered.

It was only about three days later that I received a call from Joseph Margiotta, the Republican County Chairman. He had gotten wind of the Harwood meeting and I thought that he was ready to talk in positive terms about rescinding the ban before Harwood and would be looking for an endorsement for his candidates. However, all he offered was an admonition that the Conservatives could not possibly get into bed with the liberal Democrats without selling out on our party principles. I wanted to tell Margiotta that he was in no position to lecture me on what the Conservative Party is about but I remained courteous but cool in anticipation of that day when he would have to drop the ban himself, if the deal with Harwood should fall through.

A second call from Margiotta less than a week later produced the same lecture and the same courteous response. If Margiotta felt he needed our help in the election, I was sure that he would be the one to initiate a dropping of the ban.

Riccio and I met again with Harwood and Sachs on March 30. Although the option of accepting the Liberal Party endorsement was left on the table, John Thorp advised Chairman Harwood that he would not be amenable to accepting the endorsement of the Conservative Party and would not be a candidate for County Executive. Harwood had focused on the candidacy of another Democrat, William Deeley, an unknown name, and a long shot to win the race even with all party endorsements. Thorp had a ‘conservative’ reputation that we could justify his endorsement with, but a Deeley candidacy was a big problem for us. As much as we wanted, and needed, the end of the ban on cross-endorsements, I could not take the party down the road of backing a suspected liberal.

(Although we had all agreed at the first meeting between the Conservative and Democrat leaders that we would keep confidential everything that was said at the meeting I would quickly learn something that would prove true for every meeting over the next several years; as long a there is more than one person at a meeting, everything said at the meeting would have wide public exposure before the next day.)

Between the two meetings with Harwood, my phone was constantly busy with calls from Conservatives of all stripes in the county putting in a plug for themselves for one of the many patronage jobs that would ostensibly be ours after a successful election in the fall. These callers included many of the party faithful who were still active to some degree as well as many of the dissidents who had aligned themselves with Noel Crowley during the ‘troubled years’ and had been noticeably absent during my short tenure. One of the blessings of not having pulled together this coalition with the Democrats was that I did not have to deal with what could have been a patronage mess.

It’s interesting to note that shortly after Thorp turned down the opportunity to run for County Executive, he accepted the endorsements of the Republicans and Democrats to run for an open seat on the Nassau County Court. I have no independent knowledge of the events leading to this endorsement but it doesn’t seem like too remote a possibility that Chairman Margiotta realizing the potency of a Thorp candidacy for County Executive on a coalition ticket, had offered this opportunity to Thorp; a guaranteed judgeship or a hard fought and unsure race for County Executive.

In the end, we decided that the best thing for the party was to run our own candidate for County Executive and the rest of the positions that were open that year. We selected Patrick McCloskey to lead the ticket, former Chairman Pete Verity for Comptroller, and Vincent DeMeo of Syosset for County Clerk. One of our leaders from North Hempstead, George Maiorelli, rounded out our countywide ticket when he agreed to run for the Chairman of the Board of Assessors.

We were still looking for cracks in the Democrat or Republican resolve to continue the ban and when our endorsement was sought out by Democrat Lewis Yevoli to run for the Supervisor of the Town of Oyster Bay on the Democrat and Conservative line, we seized the opportunity. Yevoli had won his election to the town board by the margin of his vote on our line in 1969 and he had run as our unsuccessful candidate in the 1971 election for the Supervisor’s post. He was now returning for our endorsement and we readily accepted his candidacy. He signed the papers accepting our endorsement and we felt we had an opportunity to at least cause a bit of mischief in Oyster Bay even though the odds were against an outright win in that race even with the two party endorsement.

Frank Ahearn, a Conservative Attorney from Hempstead and a former party vice-chairman, was of great assistance to me in rounding up enough attorneys to represent the party in the judgeship races for County Court, Family Court, and the 2nd District Court in Hempstead and Long Beach. I managed to get one Democrat, I. Stanley Rosenthal of Baldwin, to defy his party leaders by accepting our endorsement for one of the judgeships on the District Court. I was hoping that this small break in the party discipline would continue the erosion of the cross endorsement ban agreement.

We managed to enlist enough Conservatives to round out the rest of the ticket in the county, the three towns, and the Cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach and, with the few working activists we had working for the party, we gathered sufficient signatures on all of the designating petitions to get our candidates on the ballot and we filed these petitions before the deadline at the County Board of Elections.

After the petitions were filed, the only paperwork remaining was the filing of the acceptances or declinations of our party endorsements by the people who had our endorsement but were not enrolled Conservatives; Conservative Party members and candidates for judicial offices could decline the nomination but were not required to file an acceptance. This year only two acceptances had to be filed; one for Lewis Yevoli, the Democrat running for Supervisor of the Town of Oyster Bay on our line and the Democrat line and, William Wildermuth, a Republican who was running only as a Conservative Party candidate for Councilman in Hempstead.

Shortly before midnight on the evening before I was to file the acceptances I received a telephone call from Lew Yevoli. He wanted to come over to discuss his candidacy. He said it was very urgent.

He arrived at my house around midnight and was accompanied by Bernie Chetkov, a Democrat leader and a friend of Yevoli. Yevoli told me at this late juncture that he wanted to rescind his acceptance at the urging of his leader, Stanley Harwood, and the Democrat leaders. He told me that he had met with them that evening at Democrat headquarters and they had threatened to run a primary against him if he accepted Conservative Party endorsement.

I was shocked that he had the audacity to come to me in the middle of the night before the acceptance was to be filed and leave me high and dry without a candidate. If I went along with not filing the acceptance, I would have a mere three days to find a substitute candidate and file the appropriate papers for the replacement. Lew and his crony Chetkov pleaded with me to let him off the hook so that he wouldn’t have problems with his own party. I was very reluctant to permit him to put me in such a terrible bind.

After some thought on the situation, I decided that the party would be better off running no one for that position than to have a reluctant and unenthusiastic candidate who in the end might cause us more embarrassment than we needed. I returned Yevoli’s signed assent and had him sign a declination that I would file in the morning. I would have to find a candidate in the next couple of days so that I could submit the papers to the board of elections before the impending deadline. The candidate would