The federal corruption arrests of Nassau's highest ranking official and the Oyster Bay supervisor have led Democrats to believe that they can make significant gains on Election Day.
All of the seats in the state Senate will be up for grabs on Nov. 8. The county executive and the members of the County Legislature will be up for re-election in 2017.
The Nassau County Republican Party was on cruise control after Ed Mangano won a second term as county executive in 2013. The Republicans controlled the Legislature, the Town of Hempstead, the Town of Oyster Bay and the state Senate.
Three years later, the once united and vaunted Nassau GOP barely resembles the well-oiled machine that has dominated county politics for the better part of the last century. On Thursday, just hours after the arrests of Mangano and Supervisor John Venditto, a group of Republican state senators and candidates called on their fellow Republicans to resign. Mangano fired back Friday in an exclusive interview with News 12 Long Island.
"That's just political nonsense. Some of these guys ought to get themselves a mirror and ask themselves the same question," said Mangano.
The Republican in-fighting is not entirely new. Last year, wiretapped phone calls, presented as evidence in the corruption trial of former Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, showed that the tension had been building for some time:
Carl L. Marcellino (5th Senate District): Mondello keeps talking about unity, unity, and all this s***.
Skelos: Yeah, I mean we, we try to do whatever we can to help the county. Most of it turns into s*** because they don't know what the f*** they're doing there.
Longtime Nassau County Republican Chairman Joseph Mondello declined to comment for this story.
Nassau Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs says Republican and Independent voters are "going to the polls angry and disappointed."
"There will be some reaction. I don't know exactly what it will be, but it could mean a stormy night for Republicans on Election Day," Jacobs told News 12.