Inside Jay Jacobs' Deteriorating Democratic Party in Nassau County
Democrats outnumber Republicans by over 100,000 registered voters. But earlier this month, Republicans scored a larger victory than they did back when they had the six-figure registration advantage
In 1993, a federal court ruled that the structure of Nassau County’s local government, a six-member Board of Supervisors whose votes were weighted by the population of the localities they represented, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. To remedy the situation, Nassau did away with the board and set up a county legislature, with 19 districts drawn in conformity with the standards of the Voting Rights Act. The first elections for the new body took place in November 1995, and Republicans prevailed up and down the ballot. From the New York Times:
Well you know what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same - especially on Long Island. By the end of election night last week, Republicans were in the lead in 14 of Nassau’s legislative districts; absentee ballots offer Democrats dim hope for a miracle in only two. County Executive Laura Curran, the Democratic incumbent, lost reelection to none other than Bruce Blakeman, the Republican who gaveled in the county legislature’s inaugural session as its presiding officer more than a quarter century ago. The district attorney’s office, held by Democrats for the past 15 years, also fell back into Republican hands.
Not everything stays the same, of course. For instance, after his party’s rout at the polls in 1995, Nassau’s Democratic chairman at the time “noted that with six legislative seats, two supervisors' offices and a mayoralty...the Democrats had never been elected to more top offices” than they were that year. By contrast, Democrats were ejected from their last remaining supervisor’s office and mayoralty in the county last week, meaning that they’ll control zero of its executive offices come January.
The strength of Tuesday’s red wave is remarkable in light of another change that’s taken place in Nassau County. In 1995, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by over 100,000 registered voters; in 2021, it’s the reverse. Yet last week, Democrats suffered an even worse defeat than they did 26 years ago, despite enjoying the very same six-figure enrollment advantage that the Times credited for Republicans’ victory in the county’s first legislative elections. And if low participation is a boon for the party with more registered voters, this year really should have been Nassau Democrats’ time to shine: turnout was just 27 percent - two points lower than it was in 1995.
What accounts for such a spectacular collapse? If you ask Jay Jacobs, the current Nassau Democratic chairman who also heads up the state party, a specter is haunting Mineola - the specter of democratic socialism. From the New York Daily News:
But knowledgeable sources tell me that the real obstacle to moderate Democrats getting elected in competitive areas of Long Island is Jay Jacobs. On Friday, I called up one of my readers - a fixture in Nassau politics for years with deep relationships inside the county party - to get their take, and they agreed to speak with me on the condition of anonymity. Their analysis was that although Democrats faced a hostile national environment in 2021, the extent of the carnage was primarily the result of poor leadership and decaying infrastructure.
“The dirty little secret of the Nassau Democratic Party is that there is no Nassau Democratic Party. It’s Jay and half a dozen caucasian men,” they told me. “As a friend reminded me in a call this morning, he said: ‘You realize these conventions haven’t had a quorum for years, it’s just all fake.’ I’ve been at those conventions, and he’s right,” they added, referring to the party’s annual meetings where its leaders are elected by the county committee. According to my reader, these roles used to be filled by real organizers - cogs in an old-style machine that could actually turn out votes. But these days, it’s mostly seat-warmers chosen for their personal loyalty to Jacobs.
“People pay their obeisance to Jay by having their relatives, friends, neighbors in place as local committee people so that they control, say, 100 votes,” ensuring a reliable pro-Jacobs bloc in party leadership contests. “For this, they get a job at the Board of Elections, and once every two years they’re called upon to produce the pieces of paper - called proxies - that prove all these people exist, which in fact they barely do. They haven’t had a real quorum in years, and Jay continues to get reelected.”
The county committee is composed of representatives from each of Nassau’s election districts, whose voting power on the committee corresponds to voter turnout in recent elections. The higher a district’s turnout, the greater its influence on the committee. When skilled organizers occupy these posts, they can drum up huge margins for Democrats, which in turn amplifies their own power within the party structure. Stacking the committee with ineffectual cronies might be a bad strategy for defeating Republicans, but it also prevents the emergence of rivals who could threaten Jacobs’ grip on power.