Former State Sen. James Gaughran, who previously said that he would drop out if he lost his base of support in Huntington Town, announced Tuesday afternoon that he would not seek the Democratic nomination in the First Congressional District.

While the new map only moved a few of Huntington’s election districts west to CD3 and kept Gaughran’s East Northport residence in CD1, he told The Point, “They gutted my support.” Gaughran urged the remaining prime Democrats, Nancy Goroff and John Avlon, to rally around one person. “I was hoping they could work something out. The district is now more Republican, all the more reason why a primary should be avoided,” he said.

But it doesn’t seem as if there will be a kumbaya moment among Suffolk Democrats, at least not yet. Late Tuesday, Gaughran said he will be supporting Avlon.

“Voters have the right to choose their candidate in a primary and their representative in the general. I welcome anyone to this race who is ready to join the fight to beat Nick LaLota in November,” said Goroff in a statement to The Point.

Avlon, the journalist and former CNN political commentator from Sag Harbor who jumped into the race last week, said he is pressing forward. “I am in it to win it,” he said.

“The new lines increase the argument for my candidacy,” he told The Point, contending that as a centrist he has the best chance of drawing Republicans and independent voters. “Nancy Goroff already had a shot and the results speak for themselves,” he said. Goroff, the former chair of the chemistry department at Stony Brook University, lost to Republican Lee Zeldin in 2020 by almost 10 points. Attorney Craig Herskowitz has dropped out of the race and is expected to support Goroff.

Meanwhile, the lines in CD4, represented by GOP freshman Anthony D’Esposito, were untouched in Albany. Laura Gillen, the former Hempstead Town supervisor who lost in 2022, is seeking a rematch and has the support of many Democratic organizations. State Sen. Kevin Thomas, who is not running again for his seat, initially jumped into the House race but fundraising has remained elusive and he is under a lot of pressure to drop out. He was not available for comment Tuesday, but the talk among Democrats is that he is planning an exit soon.

However, former Nassau County Legis. David Denenberg told The Point that he’s still in. “Nothing has changed my plans,” said Denenberg, who represented South Shore Nassau communities for 15 years in the county legislature and lately has been fighting to get rid of Liberty Water, the private utility that services the area.

“I think primaries have worked both ways. They can make the winner stronger because you are dominating the news and the candidates get into the public,” Denenberg said, while acknowledging that such races can use up “precious” resources for the general election.

The poll found the Democratic New York junior senator had a 40-32% favorability rating among registered voters. About 38% of respondents had no opinion or didn’t know.

That is relatively on track with a 42-28% favorability rating back in January and a 41-27% favorability back in September. At this point during her last reelection campaign in 2018, Gillibrand had a 48-27% favorability rating.

The Tuesday poll found that 39% of New York voters said they would reelect her, including 26% of Republicans, while 37% said they would prefer someone else, including 27% of Democrats. Registered independents said they would prefer someone else 43-30%, the poll said.

Regionally, 44% of voters located in New York City said they would vote to re-elect her while 39% would prefer someone else. In the upstate region, 39% said they would vote for her while 34% would prefer someone else. In the suburbs, more voters said they would prefer someone else, 40-33%, than Gillibrand.

Gillibrand is expected to be on the ballot concurrently with Democratic President Joe Biden, who has a negative 43-53% favorability rating among New York voters in Tuesday’s poll. Gillibrand herself ran for president unsuccessfully in 2020.

A former member of the House of Representatives first appointed by Gov. David Paterson in 2009 to fill replace Hillary Clinton after she was nominated to be secretary of state in the Obama administration, Gillibrand is seeking her third full term in the U.S. Senate.

In her last re-election in 2018, Gillibrand received 67% of the vote, and has never received less than 60% of the statewide vote.

Last week, the New York state Democratic Committee officially designated Gillibrand as their candidate for another term.

New York Republicans are meeting in Binghamton this week to hold the party’s statewide nominating convention, where they are expected to nominate their candidate for the U.S. Senate seat. Republican businessman Josh Eisen and retired-NYPD Detective Mike Sapraicone are both seeking the party’s support.

Now the race for the First Congressional District seat is on the cusp of getting an extra dose of national notice as John Avlon, who recently departed CNN as an on-air political analyst and fill-in anchor, prepares to jump in on the Democratic side. Sources close to the 51-year-old Avlon, a Sag Harbor resident who has voted in the East End congressional district for years, confirmed to The Point that he’ll publicly disclose his candidacy in the coming days.

Party sources said other Democratic primary candidates are expected to include: Nancy Goroff, a chemist who won the Democratic primary for the seat in 2020 and lost the general election to then-Rep. Lee Zeldin; former State Sen. Jim Gaughran, who has also served in the Suffolk County Legislature; and Kyle Hill, a health care policy wonk who was an aide to ex-Rep. Steve Israel and to Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington State.

They’d be vying to take on first-term Republican Rep. Nick LaLota.

From his former perch at CNN, Avlon has voiced deep concerns about the MAGA movement and Donald Trump, who is expected to lead the national GOP ticket for the third straight time, while LaLota has been part of the House majority caucus targeting President Joe Biden.

Last September, Avlon appeared at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington to talk about his recent book, “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.” The discussion was moderated by his wife, Margaret Hoover, who hosts the current “Firing Line” program on PBS and is a great granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover.

Avlon started out as a speechwriter in the mayoral administration of Rudy Giuliani. He’s been editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast and in 2010 a founding leader of No Labels, the nonprofit organization. On X, formerly Twitter, he’s most recently reposted coverage of Democrat Tom Suozzi’s recouping of the CD3 seat.

“We addressed the issues, and we found a way to bind our divisions,” Suozzi told a cheering crowd at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury Tuesday night.

“There are divisions in our country where people can’t even talk to each other … all they do is yell and scream at each other,” Suozzi said. “The answer is to bring people of good will together to try and find that common ground.”

Suozzi’s win represented the first significant victory in a major race for Nassau Democrats in three years.

“We out-machined the machine,” said Nassau and state Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs, referring to the turnout operation of the county GOP.

In a concession speech to her supporters at the Lannin restaurant in East Meadow, Pilip said: “We are fighters. Yes, we lost, but it doesn’t end here.”

‘We fell short’

Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Cairo said Pilip had already called to congratulate Suozzi on his victory.

“We fell short,” Cairo said. “It was a very short campaign, very compact and Mazi did a great job.”

Suozzi gave up his congressional seat in 2022 for an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary bid, and Santos won the seat by nearly 8 percentage points amid a Republican wave.

Santos, a Republican, served only 11 months. The House expelled him on Dec. 1, after a blistering ethics report accused him of defrauding campaign donors for personal profit. Santos has pleaded not guilty of federal charges that he made thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges on credit cards belonging to some of his campaign donors.

“Thank God,” Suozzi said as he began his victory speech, putting his hands in the air. “Let me just enjoy this for just one more minute.”

He kept his cool as a protester holding a Palestinian flag chanted: “You support genocide.”

Both Suozzi and Pilip, a second term Nassau County legislator, have expressed strong support for Israel in its war with Hamas militants.

Ran as moderate

Pilip, 44, of Great Neck, is a registered Democrat who ran with GOP backing. The Ethiopian Israeli immigrant and Orthodox Jew centered her campaign on the influx of migrants at the U.S. southern border, attempting to lump Suozzi in with progressive Democrats and President Joe Biden.

But Suozzi ran as a moderate Democrat and kept Biden at arm’s length.

“Despite all the attacks, despite all the lies … about Tom Suozzi being the ‘godfather’ of the migrant crisis, about ‘sanctuary Suozzi,’ despite the dirty tricks … we won,” Suozzi said.

Suozzi’s victory gives House Republicans an even slimmer majority. On party-line votes, the GOP will now only be able to afford two defectors.

Those high stakes led to a heavy focus on national issues in the special election, particularly the migrant influx, and heavy outside spending. Democratic- and Republican-aligned super PACs had poured $16.5 million into the race through Friday, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Ads attacking Pilip funded by the Democratic House Majority PAC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accounted for the bulk of that spending.

The candidates themselves raised a total of about $6 million through late January, with Suozzi outpacing Pilip by a 2-to-1 margin.

Suozzi appeared to have outperformed public opinion polls that predicted a very close race. Last week, a Newsday/Siena College poll had Suozzi leading Pilip 48% to 44%, within the survey’s 4.2% margin of error, and a PIX11/Emerson College poll showed Suozzi up by 50% to 47%, within the survey’s 3.5% margin of error.

Border emerges as top issue

Suozzi and Pilip plied different strategies on the campaign trail.

With more than 30 years in local politics and government, Suozzi still sometimes resembled a newcomer. He was ubiquitous on the campaign trail and accepted numerous invitations for candidate forums that Pilip declined.

Pilip had far less name recognition but limited her appearances with Suozzi and hewed closely to GOP talking points as her party expressed confidence that they’d continue the success that has seen them win most offices in Nassau since 2021.

They debated only once, at News 12 Long Island studios last week.

Suozzi argued Pilip lacked the experience and policy knowledge to serve the district effectively. Pilip pilloried Democrats and Suozzi on the border.

At the start of the special election campaign, issues such as support for Israel and restoring the federal state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, were prominent. But in the final weeks, nearly all the focus moved to the border.

Suozzi in the final days flipped the script on Pilip, labeling her as an extremist for opposing a bipartisan U.S. Senate border bill that drew opposition from former GOP President Donald Trump and House Republicans. The measure would have allocated $118 billion to bolster border security and send wartime aid to Israel and Ukraine.

Pilip supported a House Republican bill, H.R. 2, that lacked Democratic support. The legislation would force asylum-seekers to stay in detention centers on the other side of the border.

“This race was fought amidst a closely divided electorate, much like our whole country,” Suozzi said in his victory speech.

Late last night, the White House said Biden and first lady Jill Biden called Suozzi to congratulate him on his victory.

Trump, in a post last night on his social media platform “Truth Social,” said “Republicans just don’t learn … I have an almost 99% Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections, as well, but just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me … ”

High stakes

Democrat Tom Suozzi will serve the remainder of the term of expelled former GOP Rep. George Santos, through Dec. 31.

Suozzi also must run again in November for a full two-year term.

The outcome of the race could have a significant impact on party-line votes in the House of Representatives. There are 431 House members — 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats and four vacancies after Santos’ expulsion and the resignations of two Republicans and one Democrat. With Suozzi’s victory, the GOP majority stays at 219 while the number of Democrats rises to 213 — and Republicans can lose the votes only two of their members in a party-line vote with Democrats.

House members earn $174,000 a year.

Also, during Tuesday’s lengthy meeting, the Town Board heard comments on a proposed 12-month pause for large home permits; read our separate coverage at “Objections to and support for large home moratorium.”

Supervisor Gerry Siller and Councilwomen BJ Ianfolla and Meg Larsen supported shifting wetlands administration to the Planning Board. Deputy Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams voted no, saying she objected to “piecemealing legislation.”

Over two sessions of a public hearing since March and in written comments, many Islanders said they wanted the Town’s elected officials to retain the responsibility for vetting wetlands permit applications.

Speakers also encouraged the Town Board to forego altering the wetlands code, expressing concerns the proposed changes might weaken protections.

Town Attorney Stephen F. Kiely advised the Town Board it could handle separately the issues of who should manage wetlands permitting and whether to adopt wetlands code changes.

Councilman Jim Colligan wasn’t present Tuesday but wrote in to say he supported giving the Planning Board primary responsibility for wetlands permitting.

Currently, the Town Board relies on the Planning Board and Citizens Advisory Council to review wetlands applications and usually follows their recommendations closely.

Siller said he was persuaded by arguments made by Larsen, Kiely, and the Town Board’s legislative aide, Kristina Madjisova Martin, that the Planning Board had the time and expertise to manage wetlands permitting.

Find details in our post, “Town Board: Planning Board wetlands oversight would be more effective.”

Brach-Williams, an accountant who had to miss one of the public hearings due to tax season obligations, said she’d caught up by listening to meeting recordings.

“I think we have a lot of opposition where the public does not want us turning this over to the Planning Board,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting. While specific proposed changes were removed from the final resolution, she said the Town Board does intend, at some point, to review proposed code changes.

“I do not like piecemealing legislation,” she said. “I feel like we should get it all fixed in one fell swoop.”

Ianfolla noted that by turning over authority to the Planning Board, the Town Board frees up time to examine any legislative changes. And, while some people have spoken out against the move, others may support it or be indifferent, she said.

Rather than weakening protections, Larsen said that by moving the process to the Planning Board, the Town Board would strengthen wetlands governance because, among other reasons, “there will be more consistent oversight.

The board also adopted proposed Town Code changes clarifying activities in Town-owned rights of way. The purpose is “to protect the health, safety, and welfare of those who traverse Shelter Island roads by prohibiting obstructions within the shoulders.”

Notably, the amendment allows the Town to remove obstructions if a property owner fails to do so. To read the complete text, follow this link to the meeting agenda and scroll to page 42.

The board also granted a waterways permit to Serena Dugan, 37 Tuthill Drive, to install a mooring at latitude 41.073692° N and longitude 72.285299° W.