Joe Mondello's Nassau County

If I could have one graphic appear in the background of every discussion speculating about Joe Mondello's ascendancy to the chairmanship of the NYGOP, it would be this one:

That's the % of enrolled Republicans and enrolled Democrats in Nassau County over the past ten years (only about half of Mondello's time as chairman). What was once one of the strongest Republican machines in the country has imploded under Mondello's watch. This post is hardly the first documentation of the decay that the Nassau GOP has experienced. In its coverage of the 2005 supervisors race in Hempstead, Newsday titled their piece about the Nassau Tragedy "The Incredible Shrinking Elephant". The GOP was single-handedly responsible for a$200 million deficit and a costly, expansive patronage mechanism, which lives on in the few offices that Republicans have retained. True, there's only so much that can be expected of the county chairman, but when you're auditioning for the role of last hope to the state party, we have every right to set that bar high. Recall Mr. Mondello's performance in the Hofstra gymnasium last June: at a time when the NYGOP needed to be decisive in its selection of a gubernatorial candidate, Joe Mondello split his delegation 50/50, making for an anti-climatic conclusion of a vote which John Faso had otherwise won by a landslide. What indication has Mr. Mondello given the state that he'd be able to provide decisive leadership when necessary? If he couldn't pick sides in the gubernatorial race, can he be counted on pick sides when it comes time to force state legislators and their county chairs to cooperate? (I'm looking in your direction, Broome County!) We need a skull knocker, not a backrubber.

If Joe Mondello couldn't get the handful of Republican offices in Nassau County to get their acts together, how will he lead 62 counties, six Congressmen, 34 state senators and 42 assemblymen to victory?

Here are some other facts about Joe Mondello's Nassau County:

• The Republicans lost their majority on the County Legislature in 1999 after one hundred years of control; the afore mentioned patronage and associated budget deficit were amongst the issues that swept the Democrats into power.
• Even after being kicked out of power at the county level, excessive Republican patronage remains out of control at the city and town level as Mondello's fiscal conservative nature has found itself sequestered in the chairman's office.
• Projections by NYCR staffers reveal that by the end of 2009, the Republican enrollment advantage in Nassau County will have disappeared entirely.
• The party allowed the candidacy of an ambulance-chasing county legislator to metastasize into a credible threat against Peter King, whose re-election shouldn't have been of concern.

In short, Joe Mondello has presided over a county organization that's lost the trust of the people, just as George Pataki and Steve Minarik have. His election to the chairmanship will not be conducive with the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the NYGOP.