BY PETER KING, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 11/28/23 3:30 PM ET
Though the leading presidential candidates of both major parties are largely unpopular with the American people, the parties are hopelessly unable to do anything about it. In the Senate and the House, we see the likes of Sen. John Fetterman and Rep. Matt Gaetz turning their august chambers of debate and protocol into C-Span’s version of “The Gong Show.”
It didn’t use to be this way, and our political system doesn’t have to remain in this current state of non-responsive incoherence.
This is not a call to return to the “good old days” or any attempt to gloss over corruption and abuse. But it is time to use the best of the past, combined with more sophisticated methods and techniques, to undo the political circus and roadblocks of politics today. Results are there for those willing to see, observe and extrapolate.
Political experts and the consultant class predicted that the 2022 and 2023 elections would produce red waves across the nation. Instead, Republicans stumbled across the finish line in 2022, barely eking out what became a non-governing House majority with eccentric backbenchers calling the shots. In 2023, the GOP lost high-profile races in Kentucky and Virginia and got disappointing results almost everywhere.
But not everywhere! Amidst blue victories and Republican failures, there was a bright red wave on Long Island both years, which brought overwhelming GOP victories in Nassau and Suffolk Counties — whose combined population approaches 3 million.
Contrary to general perception, these counties are not Republican strongholds. Nassau, for instance, not only has 100,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, but, as of 2019, Democrats held every major countywide office. Democrats also held, for the first time ever, the supervisor’s post in Hempstead, which is America’s largest township with a population of over 800,000. Democrats had also taken three Long Island State Senate seats and had stranglehold control over the cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach.
Taking over as GOP chairman at that perilous time was Jo
e Cairo who, like me, was a longtime product of the Nassau County Republican organization. Joe and I had served together as town councilmen in Hempstead when Al D’Amato was the supervisor in the 1970s and have held numerous political positions, including being executive leaders representing our home communities of North Valley Stream and Seaford on the party’s executive committee. I am a vice-chairman today.
Upon assuming the county chairmanship, Cairo immediately sought to revitalize the GOP’s almost 2,000 committeemen and women — the foot soldiers who constitute the party’s base — by personally visiting the almost 70 Republican clubs and committees throughout the county and by seeking recommendations for potential candidates from those communities. Cairo also looked at current or previous officeholders he thought could win the big races. That was a disciplined application of old school organizational politics to which he applied updated tools and technology.
Importantly, Cairo brought in John McLaughlin to exhaustively survey issues that meant something to voters in our communities. Unlike some national consultants who too often rely on boilerplate Republican talking points, McLaughlin aimed to gauge existing issues unique to Nassau and identify others before they emerged. (Full disclosure: McLaughlin was my consultant throughout my 28 years in Congress.) Candidates would be expected to meet regularly with Cairo and his top executives to coordinate strategy and focus like lasers on designated issues, not go freelancing on frolics of their own.
Results showed quickly. In 2019, a longtime GOP officeholder upset Hempstead’s Democrat supervisor. In 2021, Cairo ran an incumbent councilman for county executive and a non-political career prosecutor who had been recommended by police officers to run for district attorney. He also recruited for the county legislature a female Ethiopian refugee who had escaped to Israel, where she served as an IDF paratrooper, before moving to Nassau County, where she was now a mother of seven, married to a Ukrainian cardiologist and active in her Great Neck community — which had never before elected a Republican to the county legislature.
Cairo applied this mix-and-match method of nominating proven political veterans and promising newcomers who campaigned on a coordinated strategy from a centralized GOP headquarters, buttressed by the 2,000 foot soldiers. The campaign achieved landmark victories in 2021 not only at the county and town levels but sweeping the city of Glen Cove as well. Then, in 2022, gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, with extraordinary financial and ground support from Cairo, overcame deficit of 100,000 registered voters to win Nassau by 50,000 votes, as Nassau Republicans also won back three State Senate seats and swept its three congressional districts. All this and more was repeated in 2023, which saw the Nassau GOP resist the national blue tide to hold all they had while picking up additional victories, and sweeping the Democratic stronghold city of Long Beach.
The campaigns focused on Democratic failures in neighboring New York City on gut issues of crime and illegal migrants, coupled with a pledge to maintain Nassau’s suburban way of life. Similarly, in Suffolk County, the Republicans under Chairman Jesse Garcia won back the county executive office for the first time in 20 years, now hold every countywide office and have a supermajority in the county legislature.
(The George Santos fiasco is the exception that proves the rule I’m advancing. While his district encompasses Nassau, he was a Queens County candidate.)
The bottom line is that through local input, centralized coordination, a strong political organization with many foot soldiers, and sophisticated and coordinated messaging laser-focused on issues important to Long Island voters, the Nassau and Suffolk Republican organizations and their chairmen have provided a roadmap to victory for Republicans in the rest of the country — and Joe Cairo’s recent elevation to the Republican National Committee may well speed that along!
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Peter King was the U.S. representative of New York’s 2nd and 3rd congressional districts for 28 years, including serving as chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Follow him @RepPeteKing.
