Fresh Start Versus Status Quo In Nassau's 8th LD

Tumminello Challenges Muscarella For Seat In Nassau County Legislature

If Vincent Muscarella, the longtime Republican incumbent representing Elmont (part), Floral Park (part), Franklin Square, Garden City South, Stewart Manor, and West Hempstead in the Nassau County Legislature, appears to have a familiar face, it could be because that face is plastered all over the local papers, week after week after week.

Give Muscarella, who has been in the County Legislature since it was created back in 1995 (time to update your photo, Vin), credit for showing that face all over the District, at pancake breakfasts, pasta dinners, street fairs, and ribbon cuttings, anywhere there's likely to be a camera.

Okay. So Vincent Muscarella is the consummate politician, rivaling, perhaps, only Town Supervisor Kate Murray for that smile behind the photo op. That's the name of the game. Can't fault him for that.

What does irk us at The Community Alliance is, that while Muscarella has been the 8th LD's placeholder going on 15 years, and an Assemblymember, representing pretty much the same district, prior to that, very little of substance has changed on the ground since.

While Muscarella often cites his status as a minority member of the Legislature, Dems having ruled the roost since Tom Suozzi swept into office as County Exec, the snail's pace of progress in the 8th -- be it the reconstruction of a major thoroughfare (Hempstead Avenue) more than a decade in the making, or the rehabilitation of a local park (Hall's Pond), for which monies have long ago been appropriated under the Environmental Bond Act -- are demonstrative of representation that looks to maintain the status quo, rather than to change it.

Worse yet, Muscarella's tendency to use taxpayer-funded mailings, by way of Legislative reports, to do little more than lambast the folks across the aisle, does nothing to enhance his standing among his legislative peers, or to improve the quality of life of the people he has been elected to serve -- Democrats, Republicans, and independents, alike.

Vincent Muscarella has always said that there is no greater service to the community than public service.

How true!

Yet, to serve the community, which Vin Muscarella has done for lo these many years, on the whole, admirably so, requires more than keeping things the way they are, or, heaven forbid, returning things to the way they were -- under, say, Tom Gulotta.

To serve the public of Long Island's too often forgotten South Shore requires not a nostalgic look back to an era long passed, but a forward-looking vision with new ideas, a fresh perspective, and the notion that change can be for the better.

Gaspare Tumminello, Democrat, has taken up the challenge to the status quo in Nassau's 8th LD.

Tumminello is a Deputy Commissioner (Purchasing) in the Suozzi administration, and, like Vin Muscarella, a local boy committed to serving his community through public service.

Full of youthful enthusiasm, and embracing change as a forerunner of a brighter, more prosperous future, Tumminello may just be that shot-in-the arm fresh start residents in the 8th LD need to spur real economic growth on "Main Street," not to mention something akin to a renaissance along Hempstead Turnpike.

We applaud Vincent Muscarella for showing up at civic meetings, community forums, Rotary functions, and, yes, those pancake breakfasts. Visibility is important, both to the candidate and the community.

Progress in the 8th LD, however, requires so much more than just showing up. To get the district moving forward necessitates a desire to move off square one, abandoning the status quo for a more hopeful tomorrow. It requires a different vision, a fresh start, and, in this instance, a new face.

The Community Alliance is pleased to endorse that change in Nassau's 8th LD.

On Tuesday, November 3, elect Gaspare Tuminello to the Nassau County Legislature!



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