Democrats Won Another One in Long Island NY…..

Tom Suozzi succeded Santos earning Democrats a additional US House seat in GOP strong Long Island 

(Suozzi won re-election last week..)

Laura Gillen is the second House ‘get’ for Democrats in the NYC suburb ….

Ms. Gillen had a lot to lose. She not only faced possible defeat but also the humiliating prospect of being beaten by the same opponent twice. Mr. D’Esposito won two years ago, when Democrats lost the House with failed efforts in five competitive New York races. Before running to represent the Fourth District, Ms. Gillen was the Hempstead town supervisor, the first Democrat to hold the office in 112 years. That should give you some sense of the strength of Republican influence in the area. Although registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in Nassau County, the G.O.P. machine that had dominated local politics for decades had been revived in recent years.…

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District Four is made up of more than two dozen Nassau County towns and villages, with different demographics and personalities. Waterfront communities on the South Shore may have little in common with those in the center of the island, where more Latinos have settled over the years. Democrats have been losing Latino voters, which the presidential election reaffirmed. The Gillen campaign was intensely focused on reaching them.

What kept coming up over and over in discussions with these voters, Ms. Gillen said, was the rising cost of health care, particularly insulin. Hispanics, according to federal data, are 1.5 times more likely than non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes. The Gillen campaign was responsive. The candidate pledged to work on enlarging the class of drugs subject to government price controls. Two weeks before the election, she wrote an op-ed in El Diario, the prominent Spanish-language daily newspaper, in which she committed to the unsexy support of the bipartisan Emergency Access to Insulin Act, expanding access to Medicaid and creating more community health centers.

Various direct mail ads were sent out in Spanish, Punjabi and Creole, the last to speak to the significant Haitian community in Elmont. In one television ad, delivered in English, Ms. Gillen stood in Elmont right on the Queens-Nassau County line. “I’m here at the border,” she said, a cheeky pretext for recitation of her views on immigration. “We’re 2,000 miles from Mexico, but we are feeling the migrant crisis every day.” She promised to work “with anyone from any party” to end it….

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