The Steve Levy Revolution
Tea Party. Anti-Incumbent Rage. Democratic Turmoil. Why the Suffolk County executive believes this really is his moment.
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:01:00
I lost my job over a year ago,” said Al Giuliano. “My wife has had to take a second, part-time job. I was the bread-winner, and now I’m depending basically on her to survive.”
Giuliano, an unemployed construction worker and father of two from Middle Island, was standing in a conference room in Hauppauge, addressing the scattered reporters and local politicians who had gathered to see Steve Levy present Giuliano and his wife with a $500 check.
The money was part of a signature Levy initiative to help middle-class families pay for heating oil. The Giulianos had resorted to using a wood-burning stove to heat their home.
“It’s baffling,” Al continued. “Now they’re asking for money in Washington for more social programs—up in Albany for social programs—but, you know, they’ve still got their hands in my pocket, to take my money, and they don’t want to help me!”
Levy nodded.
If there are enough Al Giulianos in New York this year—if people continue to lose their jobs and their homes, if property taxes continue to skyrocket, if Wall Street bonuses continue to swell, if nuisance fees continue to rise, if politicians continue to dispense billions in bank bailouts and stimulus funds, if desperation takes hold—then, come November, there could be a lot of people nodding with him. And theirs, says the proudly contrarian Suffolk County executive, are the votes that could make him the next governor.
“These are the folks who are trying to get by with two jobs, they’re trying to send their kids to state universities so that they can get a leg up, and they’re having a real hard time,” Levy said after the press conference, eating a slice of cherry pie at a diner down the street from his office. “People are looking for someone, not from the Beltway, to turn this state upside down and inside out.”
Last time around, in 2006, there was another attorney general who had been anointed the next governor. And there was another suburban county executive in the race, billing himself as a fiscal conservative and crusader for the forgotten middle class. There was a lot of noise, a lot of expectations.
But come September, Tom Suozzi got just 19 percent of the vote.
This year, Levy argues, will be different—and not just because there is an incumbent governor in the race who will make a split in the Democratic primary inevitable. The Giulianos of the world are the X factor. In Massachusetts, they elected a virtually unknown state senator in a pick-up truck to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. In Westchester, they toppled a three-term county executive by double digits. And across the river in New Jersey, they put another average guy in the governor’s mansion. Levy believes he could be next.
“Four years ago, a county executive saying he’s got a good record was a ‘blah’ story,” Levy said. “This year, when the state is on the verge of fiscal collapse, there is a longing for someone to come in on a white horse and save the day.”
Levy is the prototypical anti-politician. He rails against “the media elite,” “academia” and the “Blame America First crowd.” He slams municipal unions and illegal immigration. At the Conservative Party convention in January, he was still hitting hard against Rudy Giuliani’s squeegee men.
He has been fighting the fight from the beginning, when he kicked off his political career as a 26-year-old law student running against a party-backed candidate for county legislature. He was dismissed as “not a true Democrat” for his views on government spending by Dominic Baranello, the iron-fisted county boss at the time. He knocked on every door in the district, he said.
He won.
And he won again, and again, appealing directly to the white ethnic voters of Huntington Station and Babylon. He developed a talent for pushing voters’ emotional buttons, appealing to them through acute self-interest rather than broad-brush philosophical values.
They sent him to the Assembly in 2000, but he only served a term and a half before returning to Suffolk in 2003 to run for county executive.
He slammed a proposal to spend taxpayer money on a “hiring hall” for Latino day laborers, and his primary opponent tried to use it against him. Levy’s incredulous reaction: “You want me to tax people to build a hall, so that a contractor can come up and pick up an illegal alien to obviously do something illegal?” he said at the time. “Are you kidding me?”
He won by a two-to-one margin.
As county executive, Levy continued to stir Suffolk’s simmering racial tensions, introducing bills to deputize local officers to enforce immigration law and penalize government contractors that hired undocumented workers. His critics in the State Legislature threatened to bottle up a crucial sales tax extension unless he moderated his hard-line stances. Even his advisers suggested that he back down, fearing the issue would destroy his career.
“Here’s an elected official who has made his career on race-baiting,” said Suffolk Assembly Member Phil Ramos, a Democrat and one of Levy’s most vocal critics. “Steve Levy comes out and demonizes one segment of the community, blaming it for all the ills of society.”
And yet, when Levy ran for re-election in 2007, he appeared on all five major parties’ lines—Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative and Working Families. He cruised to re-election with a Castro-like 96 percent of the vote.
Even his appearance has helped him relate to the middle-class, middle-aged property owners that make up the bulk of Suffolk’s electorate. Levy looks nothing like the typical politician. At best, his moustache is a Magnum P.I. throwback. His ties are longer than his frame. And his height (or lack of it) can make him seem more like the awkward dad of a Little Leaguer than the CEO of a county bigger than 11 states.
In any other year, Levy’s inflammatory views on illegal immigration, his passé looks might be disqualifying. But in 2010, if the Generation Y voters who catapulted Obama into the White House stay home, if the Tea Party brigade stages a revolt, if suburban voters once again banish anyone who looks or talks like an incumbent, Steve Levy’s routine might just work.
“There has been nobody in the history of the county who is more in tune with the attitudes of the voter,” said David Bishop, a former colleague of Levy’s in the county legislature. “He’s a wild card.”
On a Monday morning in late January, Levy addressed the annual meeting of the New York Water Environment Association in midtown Manhattan. He was there to accept the Frank E. Van Lare Award for his “exceptional support of environmental projects, programs and initiatives.” Surrounded by a mellow crowd of aging naturalists, civil engineers and water treatment enthusiasts, he gave a subdued speech about preserving open spaces and sewer infrastructure.
Then he hit the road, driving up to the Conservative Party convention at the Holiday Inn near the Albany International Airport. Addressing a few dozen Tea Party diehards in the Phoenix Ballroom, he took a more fiery tone. Forget about “political correctness,” he said, tearing up a piece of paper to illustrate his point: “This is what it’s going to look like if I’m ever in Albany again, I’ll tell you that!”
On his way out, an aging Conservative activist approached him.
“Are you the loneliest guy in the Democrat Party?” the man asked, clearly a little star struck.
Later, surrounded by reporters in a hallway outside the ballroom, Levy was asked if he would consider breaking with the major parties and running on his own ballot line.
“The Steve Levy Party?” he joked, nearly doing a spit-take with his Diet Coke.
Then he paused, letting the idea leap to life in his head.
“You know, I often think about that,” he said.
Levy could scramble the Democratic primary, serving as anything from dark horse to spoiler. Or he could go after the Republican nomination, which State Chairman Ed Cox has encouraged him to do. Even without Cox’s help, Levy’s advisers imagine a scenario in which Rick Lazio fails to raise money and gain traction by the May convention, prompting rank-and-file delegates skeptical about his prospects to stage a revolt. Party leaders could ease him out, turning to Levy, with his vast war chest, as a replacement.
As Levy and his advisers note, Bill Weld thought he had the Republican line sewn up in 2006, before it slipped away from him at the convention and an uprising among party leaders vaulted John Faso to the nomination. Cox and Levy’s key political adviser, veteran GOP consultant Mike Dawidziak, have reminded Republican county chairs of that scenario in recent weeks in an attempt to keep them from endorsing Lazio.
Or, perhaps, Levy could cobble together some multi-party, September-and-November Strategy. As controversial as he has been, Levy has often managed to be many things to many people.
Exciting liberals, he signed an executive order extending health benefits to same-sex partners of county employees. And he has said he supports prevailing wage legislation.
Exciting conservatives, he won unprecedented concessions from municipal unions by threatening thousands of layoffs, and balanced the county budget for eight years without a single tax increase.
Even his own advisers are not sure where Levy falls on the political spectrum.
“People see him as extremely fiscally conservative,” said Lou D’Amaro, a county legislator and close ally.
“He’s got a lot of liberal in him,” said Brian Beedenbender, a former aide and protégé.
The ideological alchemy has led Levy’s critics to accuse him of picking and choosing his positions out of political expediency.
“Steve has been known to take advantage of public sentiment and come out on the side that seems to be most popular,” said Frank Tantone, the Republican chair in Levy’s hometown of Islip.
But for every ally Levy has won in his anti-establishment crusades, he has made multiple enemies. And the optics of his most quixotic fights have not always been in his favor. Take, for instance, his protracted war with the local Police Athletic League over what he claimed were inflated salaries for youth sports coaches. Hundreds of adolescents in football helmets surrounded his office in protest, accusing him of neglecting children and endangering a sacred pastime.
“Other people might have backed down,” Levy said. “I stuck to my guns.”
He won.
Levy takes pride in these battles. He has a deeper, more intimate connection to his politics than most professional politicians. Everything gets filtered through an us-versus-them mentality, every question framed as a confrontation. He has told legislators that bills undercutting his authority “emasculate” him. Former colleagues have said he “enjoys” draconian cuts. He holds grudges for every slight, from an implied criticism in a press release to a perceived lack of credit for something he did.
“With Steve, there’s really no clear line between the personal and the political,” said one Suffolk lawmaker who has a good relationship with Levy. “And that’s probably his single biggest shortfall.”
When he was in the county legislature in the 1990s, Levy carried a small black notebook and took “copious notes,” as one former colleague put it, on anything anyone ever did or said to him. Not that they forgot what he did, either: Old colleagues still make a point of noting that when they went out for beers after caucus meetings, Levy always left less money than he owed.
His no-holds-barred style would offer a stark contrast with either Andrew Cuomo (cautious and calculating) or David Paterson (amiable and bumbling), both creatures of Albany who will somehow have to run against the culture of the town where they have both spent most of the last two and a half decades. That will not be a problem for Levy, nor will getting his message out to voters, with his already $4 million war chest dwarfing both Paterson’s and Lazio’s. With that kind of cash behind him, Levy could draw attention to his firebrand views on everything from health care to education aid.
Like it or not, Cuomo and Paterson could be forced to respond, drawing the kind of attention and sound bites that will frustrate and enrage the party bosses and labor leaders even more. But as Levy points out, he has little to lose—a fact which makes him even more threatening.
“We’re playing with house money,” he said. “You can say what you really believe, and not be constrained that every comment you make is going to tick off some special interest group. People like that. They resonate towards that.”
He added: “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
After a 25-year career battling pretty much everyone he has encountered and having even the most casual remarks become fodder for his critics, Levy has grown highly protective of his image. His cluttered desk is off limits to photographs. Walking to his car, he refuses to be pictured with a scarf on, even in below-freezing weather. Chatting in the diner in Hauppauge, Levy asks the commander of a local American legion post to shift, so that his profile is not on display.
Turns of phrase and off-the-cuff remarks that might earn other politicians a slap on the wrist take on outsize significance when Levy is the source. After an Ecuadorian immigrant was brutally murdered by a gang of white high school students in Patchogue, Levy dismissed it as a “one-day story.” His spokesman said later that the remark “haunts us every day.”
Under Levy, Suffolk has been a tinderbox for racial tensions. A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year found that the county had become a breeding ground for ethnic hatred, and claimed Levy’s comments had exacerbated the situation. But his base of white, middle class property owners has only hardened in its outrage. In 2007, a county legislator from one of Suffolk’s more conservative towns said that if day laborers were to gather in his neighborhood, he would “load my gun and start shooting, period.”
“Because it’s such a hot-button, controversial issue, that’s what gets in the New York Times,” Levy said. “The public is with me overwhelmingly. Not necessarily the academia and the media elite … but the vast public is with me, nine-to-one. It’s not even close.”
Fairly or not, the tensions have come to define Levy’s image outside of Suffolk. And he is painfully aware of that reality. In interviews, he stresses that he wants the chance to fully respond to his critics. When he hears other people have been talking about him, he calls unprompted, explaining that he wants to know “what other people are saying.”
On the day that he posed for photographs in his Hauppauge office, Levy was being battered by critics for what many perceived as yet another racially insensitive comment.
Championing a bill he had signed banning housing discrimination to an audience at a Martin Luther King Day event, Levy referred generically to the name “Shaniqua” to explain that African-Americans could now get housing in Suffolk.
His rivals immediately pounced. Aides to Cuomo called up Levy’s usual critics, including Ramos and Cuomo’s 2002 running mate, Charlie King, to drum up public indignation at the “Shaniqua” comment.
To those in the Levy camp, the Cuomo effort is as sure a sign as any that, for all their dismissive talk, there are people taking Levy seriously. He may not have much support among the Upper West Side liberals, but he has an unquestionable knack for connecting viscerally with the voters who are likely to matter this year. They see him as one of their own—the “real deal,” as Albany Republican chairman John Graziano put it.
Levy’s politics emanate directly from his personal story: a second-generation New Yorker whose father owned an appliance store in Bushwick and moved the family out to Suffolk in search of safer streets and better schools, Levy saw his father—who had only a high school education—struggle under the crushing burden of property taxes, while others somehow managed to game the system. All along, taxes continued to skyrocket, while the county deficit—which reached $230 million by the time Levy was elected county executive—spiraled out of control.
Now, the pattern is playing itself out again. White, suburban voters, fairly or not, have made a connection between the federal government’s trillion-dollar debt and the 10 percent unemployment rate. They see the numbers of illegal immigrants growing, bank bailouts swelling and politicians trying to spend another $800 billion on government-run health care. In a healthy economy, those trends may be uncontroversial, even acceptable. But in places like Wyandanch, Amityville and Middle Island, they are an outrage.
And Steve Levy gets it.
As governor, he said, he would pursue a radical overhaul of the state’s economic development agenda. He would waive capital gains taxes entirely for firms investing in New York, and revive the much-maligned Empire Zone program, which Paterson has said should be scrapped. He would declare a “fiscal emergency” in the state, empaneling a commission of budget experts to eliminate government programs at will. He would seek the power to unilaterally impound as much as 10 percent of the state’s revenues, and change the law so that his executive budget would automatically take effect on April 1, denying lawmakers the opportunity to stall and stave off budget cuts.
And he would urge New York’s congressional delegation to dump its advocacy of federal health care legislation, saying the bill would impose too many burndensome mandates on New York.
“We should be doing this state by state. Let’s try one aspect of this in one state and see how it works. Try another aspect in another state and give it two years,” he said of the health care bill. “This way you’re not locked into having totally revolutionized a system that might be better, but it might be a disaster.”
Those views, Levy says, are why his candidacy has generated so much curiosity in recent weeks.
In the Hauppauge diner, in between making the rounds and chatting with the waitress (“Now they’re going to have a picture of me with a cherry pie on my face,” he says), Levy explained why this might be his moment.
“Two years ago, I don’t think people would be talking about me like this. Two years from now, they might not talk like this again,” he said. “People have seen me in action. I go head-on in front of any obstacle to get where we have to get, because that’s needed to help the county and state. They really believe me when I say it, because they can see I’ve done it. I’ve taken on the municipal unions. … I’ll take on a politically correct group. I’ll take on a party leader. I’m not fazed by it.”
He paused to finish his pie.
“We need a revolution in this state,” he said, taking a bite. “So, we’re going to get attention.”
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Levy Ally And Fellow Agitator Weighs Owen Johnson Challenge
Senate Democrats may have another agitator on their hands.
Lou D’Amaro, a Suffolk county legislator and close ally of County Executive Steve Levy, said he is strongly considering a challenge to Republican State Sen. Owen Johnson. Johnson has held the seat, which runs along Suffolk’s affluent South Shore, since 1972, but the district has grown to now have more registered Democrats than Republicans.
Local Democratic leaders, including Suffolk Chairman Rich Schaffer, have encouraged D’Amaro to run, hoping he will draw some Republican fire away from vulnerable Democratic incumbents. And with his conservative streak and appeal to white ethnic voters, many feel D’Amaro could pull off a win.
“I think I would bring some fresh ideas and a reform mindset,” D’Amaro said. “Clearly, if I run, it would be a competitive race.”
D’Amaro, a Levy protégé, vowed to run as an insurgent candidate, slamming Democratic leaders in Albany for their votes on property taxes and the MTA bailout.
“If I did run, it would be independent of what’s happened in the past and, frankly, independent of the leadership and the direction they’ve taken us in the state so far,” he said.
But D’Amaro’s close connection to Levy has made leaders of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee nervous, and some say the Senate leadership is unlikely to support a candidate who could upset the Democrats’ fragile unity if he wins.
“At the moment, there’s no appetite for a Levy guy to be in the State Senate,” said one Senate Democratic source. “Can you imagine what a pain in the ass [Levy] would be if we had somebody carrying his water?”
Senate Democrats have attempted to lure other candidates into the race instead, including Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone and David Bishop, a former county legislator. But Bellone is said to have his eye on the county executive’s office, and Bishop said in an interview that he was unlikely to run unless Johnson retires.
Democratic leaders are angry at Levy for his very public feuds with Foley over the MTA payroll tax, which is widely unpopular in Suffolk. Republicans in the county have made the vote a centerpiece of their campaigns, and local Democrats have begun to distance themselves from Foley.
“There would be quite the contrast between a State Senator Lou D’Amaro and a State Senator Anybody Else from Long Island who may share his party,” said Brian Beedenbender, a former county legislator and Levy aide who lost his bid for re-election last year.
As for whether he would tout his connection to Levy in the campaign, D’Amaro said: “I would count on his support.”
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Photos by Andrew Schwartz
Giuliano, an unemployed construction worker and father of two from Middle Island, was standing in a conference room in Hauppauge, addressing the scattered reporters and local politicians who had gathered to see Steve Levy present Giuliano and his wife with a $500 check.
The money was part of a signature Levy initiative to help middle-class families pay for heating oil. The Giulianos had resorted to using a wood-burning stove to heat their home.“It’s baffling,” Al continued. “Now they’re asking for money in Washington for more social programs—up in Albany for social programs—but, you know, they’ve still got their hands in my pocket, to take my money, and they don’t want to help me!”
Levy nodded.
If there are enough Al Giulianos in New York this year—if people continue to lose their jobs and their homes, if property taxes continue to skyrocket, if Wall Street bonuses continue to swell, if nuisance fees continue to rise, if politicians continue to dispense billions in bank bailouts and stimulus funds, if desperation takes hold—then, come November, there could be a lot of people nodding with him. And theirs, says the proudly contrarian Suffolk County executive, are the votes that could make him the next governor.
“These are the folks who are trying to get by with two jobs, they’re trying to send their kids to state universities so that they can get a leg up, and they’re having a real hard time,” Levy said after the press conference, eating a slice of cherry pie at a diner down the street from his office. “People are looking for someone, not from the Beltway, to turn this state upside down and inside out.”
Last time around, in 2006, there was another attorney general who had been anointed the next governor. And there was another suburban county executive in the race, billing himself as a fiscal conservative and crusader for the forgotten middle class. There was a lot of noise, a lot of expectations.
But come September, Tom Suozzi got just 19 percent of the vote.
This year, Levy argues, will be different—and not just because there is an incumbent governor in the race who will make a split in the Democratic primary inevitable. The Giulianos of the world are the X factor. In Massachusetts, they elected a virtually unknown state senator in a pick-up truck to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. In Westchester, they toppled a three-term county executive by double digits. And across the river in New Jersey, they put another average guy in the governor’s mansion. Levy believes he could be next.
“Four years ago, a county executive saying he’s got a good record was a ‘blah’ story,” Levy said. “This year, when the state is on the verge of fiscal collapse, there is a longing for someone to come in on a white horse and save the day.”
Levy is the prototypical anti-politician. He rails against “the media elite,” “academia” and the “Blame America First crowd.” He slams municipal unions and illegal immigration. At the Conservative Party convention in January, he was still hitting hard against Rudy Giuliani’s squeegee men.
He has been fighting the fight from the beginning, when he kicked off his political career as a 26-year-old law student running against a party-backed candidate for county legislature. He was dismissed as “not a true Democrat” for his views on government spending by Dominic Baranello, the iron-fisted county boss at the time. He knocked on every door in the district, he said.
He won.
And he won again, and again, appealing directly to the white ethnic voters of Huntington Station and Babylon. He developed a talent for pushing voters’ emotional buttons, appealing to them through acute self-interest rather than broad-brush philosophical values.
They sent him to the Assembly in 2000, but he only served a term and a half before returning to Suffolk in 2003 to run for county executive.
He slammed a proposal to spend taxpayer money on a “hiring hall” for Latino day laborers, and his primary opponent tried to use it against him. Levy’s incredulous reaction: “You want me to tax people to build a hall, so that a contractor can come up and pick up an illegal alien to obviously do something illegal?” he said at the time. “Are you kidding me?”
He won by a two-to-one margin.
As county executive, Levy continued to stir Suffolk’s simmering racial tensions, introducing bills to deputize local officers to enforce immigration law and penalize government contractors that hired undocumented workers. His critics in the State Legislature threatened to bottle up a crucial sales tax extension unless he moderated his hard-line stances. Even his advisers suggested that he back down, fearing the issue would destroy his career.
“Here’s an elected official who has made his career on race-baiting,” said Suffolk Assembly Member Phil Ramos, a Democrat and one of Levy’s most vocal critics. “Steve Levy comes out and demonizes one segment of the community, blaming it for all the ills of society.”And yet, when Levy ran for re-election in 2007, he appeared on all five major parties’ lines—Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative and Working Families. He cruised to re-election with a Castro-like 96 percent of the vote.
Even his appearance has helped him relate to the middle-class, middle-aged property owners that make up the bulk of Suffolk’s electorate. Levy looks nothing like the typical politician. At best, his moustache is a Magnum P.I. throwback. His ties are longer than his frame. And his height (or lack of it) can make him seem more like the awkward dad of a Little Leaguer than the CEO of a county bigger than 11 states.
In any other year, Levy’s inflammatory views on illegal immigration, his passé looks might be disqualifying. But in 2010, if the Generation Y voters who catapulted Obama into the White House stay home, if the Tea Party brigade stages a revolt, if suburban voters once again banish anyone who looks or talks like an incumbent, Steve Levy’s routine might just work.
“There has been nobody in the history of the county who is more in tune with the attitudes of the voter,” said David Bishop, a former colleague of Levy’s in the county legislature. “He’s a wild card.”
On a Monday morning in late January, Levy addressed the annual meeting of the New York Water Environment Association in midtown Manhattan. He was there to accept the Frank E. Van Lare Award for his “exceptional support of environmental projects, programs and initiatives.” Surrounded by a mellow crowd of aging naturalists, civil engineers and water treatment enthusiasts, he gave a subdued speech about preserving open spaces and sewer infrastructure.
Then he hit the road, driving up to the Conservative Party convention at the Holiday Inn near the Albany International Airport. Addressing a few dozen Tea Party diehards in the Phoenix Ballroom, he took a more fiery tone. Forget about “political correctness,” he said, tearing up a piece of paper to illustrate his point: “This is what it’s going to look like if I’m ever in Albany again, I’ll tell you that!”
On his way out, an aging Conservative activist approached him.
“Are you the loneliest guy in the Democrat Party?” the man asked, clearly a little star struck.
Later, surrounded by reporters in a hallway outside the ballroom, Levy was asked if he would consider breaking with the major parties and running on his own ballot line.
“The Steve Levy Party?” he joked, nearly doing a spit-take with his Diet Coke.
Then he paused, letting the idea leap to life in his head.
“You know, I often think about that,” he said.
Levy could scramble the Democratic primary, serving as anything from dark horse to spoiler. Or he could go after the Republican nomination, which State Chairman Ed Cox has encouraged him to do. Even without Cox’s help, Levy’s advisers imagine a scenario in which Rick Lazio fails to raise money and gain traction by the May convention, prompting rank-and-file delegates skeptical about his prospects to stage a revolt. Party leaders could ease him out, turning to Levy, with his vast war chest, as a replacement.
As Levy and his advisers note, Bill Weld thought he had the Republican line sewn up in 2006, before it slipped away from him at the convention and an uprising among party leaders vaulted John Faso to the nomination. Cox and Levy’s key political adviser, veteran GOP consultant Mike Dawidziak, have reminded Republican county chairs of that scenario in recent weeks in an attempt to keep them from endorsing Lazio.
Or, perhaps, Levy could cobble together some multi-party, September-and-November Strategy. As controversial as he has been, Levy has often managed to be many things to many people.
Exciting liberals, he signed an executive order extending health benefits to same-sex partners of county employees. And he has said he supports prevailing wage legislation.
Exciting conservatives, he won unprecedented concessions from municipal unions by threatening thousands of layoffs, and balanced the county budget for eight years without a single tax increase.
Even his own advisers are not sure where Levy falls on the political spectrum.
“People see him as extremely fiscally conservative,” said Lou D’Amaro, a county legislator and close ally.
“He’s got a lot of liberal in him,” said Brian Beedenbender, a former aide and protégé.
The ideological alchemy has led Levy’s critics to accuse him of picking and choosing his positions out of political expediency.
“Steve has been known to take advantage of public sentiment and come out on the side that seems to be most popular,” said Frank Tantone, the Republican chair in Levy’s hometown of Islip.
But for every ally Levy has won in his anti-establishment crusades, he has made multiple enemies. And the optics of his most quixotic fights have not always been in his favor. Take, for instance, his protracted war with the local Police Athletic League over what he claimed were inflated salaries for youth sports coaches. Hundreds of adolescents in football helmets surrounded his office in protest, accusing him of neglecting children and endangering a sacred pastime.
“Other people might have backed down,” Levy said. “I stuck to my guns.”
He won.
Levy takes pride in these battles. He has a deeper, more intimate connection to his politics than most professional politicians. Everything gets filtered through an us-versus-them mentality, every question framed as a confrontation. He has told legislators that bills undercutting his authority “emasculate” him. Former colleagues have said he “enjoys” draconian cuts. He holds grudges for every slight, from an implied criticism in a press release to a perceived lack of credit for something he did.
“With Steve, there’s really no clear line between the personal and the political,” said one Suffolk lawmaker who has a good relationship with Levy. “And that’s probably his single biggest shortfall.”When he was in the county legislature in the 1990s, Levy carried a small black notebook and took “copious notes,” as one former colleague put it, on anything anyone ever did or said to him. Not that they forgot what he did, either: Old colleagues still make a point of noting that when they went out for beers after caucus meetings, Levy always left less money than he owed.
His no-holds-barred style would offer a stark contrast with either Andrew Cuomo (cautious and calculating) or David Paterson (amiable and bumbling), both creatures of Albany who will somehow have to run against the culture of the town where they have both spent most of the last two and a half decades. That will not be a problem for Levy, nor will getting his message out to voters, with his already $4 million war chest dwarfing both Paterson’s and Lazio’s. With that kind of cash behind him, Levy could draw attention to his firebrand views on everything from health care to education aid.
Like it or not, Cuomo and Paterson could be forced to respond, drawing the kind of attention and sound bites that will frustrate and enrage the party bosses and labor leaders even more. But as Levy points out, he has little to lose—a fact which makes him even more threatening.
“We’re playing with house money,” he said. “You can say what you really believe, and not be constrained that every comment you make is going to tick off some special interest group. People like that. They resonate towards that.”
He added: “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
After a 25-year career battling pretty much everyone he has encountered and having even the most casual remarks become fodder for his critics, Levy has grown highly protective of his image. His cluttered desk is off limits to photographs. Walking to his car, he refuses to be pictured with a scarf on, even in below-freezing weather. Chatting in the diner in Hauppauge, Levy asks the commander of a local American legion post to shift, so that his profile is not on display.
Turns of phrase and off-the-cuff remarks that might earn other politicians a slap on the wrist take on outsize significance when Levy is the source. After an Ecuadorian immigrant was brutally murdered by a gang of white high school students in Patchogue, Levy dismissed it as a “one-day story.” His spokesman said later that the remark “haunts us every day.”
Under Levy, Suffolk has been a tinderbox for racial tensions. A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year found that the county had become a breeding ground for ethnic hatred, and claimed Levy’s comments had exacerbated the situation. But his base of white, middle class property owners has only hardened in its outrage. In 2007, a county legislator from one of Suffolk’s more conservative towns said that if day laborers were to gather in his neighborhood, he would “load my gun and start shooting, period.”
“Because it’s such a hot-button, controversial issue, that’s what gets in the New York Times,” Levy said. “The public is with me overwhelmingly. Not necessarily the academia and the media elite … but the vast public is with me, nine-to-one. It’s not even close.”
Fairly or not, the tensions have come to define Levy’s image outside of Suffolk. And he is painfully aware of that reality. In interviews, he stresses that he wants the chance to fully respond to his critics. When he hears other people have been talking about him, he calls unprompted, explaining that he wants to know “what other people are saying.”
On the day that he posed for photographs in his Hauppauge office, Levy was being battered by critics for what many perceived as yet another racially insensitive comment.
Championing a bill he had signed banning housing discrimination to an audience at a Martin Luther King Day event, Levy referred generically to the name “Shaniqua” to explain that African-Americans could now get housing in Suffolk.
His rivals immediately pounced. Aides to Cuomo called up Levy’s usual critics, including Ramos and Cuomo’s 2002 running mate, Charlie King, to drum up public indignation at the “Shaniqua” comment.To those in the Levy camp, the Cuomo effort is as sure a sign as any that, for all their dismissive talk, there are people taking Levy seriously. He may not have much support among the Upper West Side liberals, but he has an unquestionable knack for connecting viscerally with the voters who are likely to matter this year. They see him as one of their own—the “real deal,” as Albany Republican chairman John Graziano put it.
Levy’s politics emanate directly from his personal story: a second-generation New Yorker whose father owned an appliance store in Bushwick and moved the family out to Suffolk in search of safer streets and better schools, Levy saw his father—who had only a high school education—struggle under the crushing burden of property taxes, while others somehow managed to game the system. All along, taxes continued to skyrocket, while the county deficit—which reached $230 million by the time Levy was elected county executive—spiraled out of control.
Now, the pattern is playing itself out again. White, suburban voters, fairly or not, have made a connection between the federal government’s trillion-dollar debt and the 10 percent unemployment rate. They see the numbers of illegal immigrants growing, bank bailouts swelling and politicians trying to spend another $800 billion on government-run health care. In a healthy economy, those trends may be uncontroversial, even acceptable. But in places like Wyandanch, Amityville and Middle Island, they are an outrage.
And Steve Levy gets it.
As governor, he said, he would pursue a radical overhaul of the state’s economic development agenda. He would waive capital gains taxes entirely for firms investing in New York, and revive the much-maligned Empire Zone program, which Paterson has said should be scrapped. He would declare a “fiscal emergency” in the state, empaneling a commission of budget experts to eliminate government programs at will. He would seek the power to unilaterally impound as much as 10 percent of the state’s revenues, and change the law so that his executive budget would automatically take effect on April 1, denying lawmakers the opportunity to stall and stave off budget cuts.
And he would urge New York’s congressional delegation to dump its advocacy of federal health care legislation, saying the bill would impose too many burndensome mandates on New York.
“We should be doing this state by state. Let’s try one aspect of this in one state and see how it works. Try another aspect in another state and give it two years,” he said of the health care bill. “This way you’re not locked into having totally revolutionized a system that might be better, but it might be a disaster.”
Those views, Levy says, are why his candidacy has generated so much curiosity in recent weeks.
In the Hauppauge diner, in between making the rounds and chatting with the waitress (“Now they’re going to have a picture of me with a cherry pie on my face,” he says), Levy explained why this might be his moment.
“Two years ago, I don’t think people would be talking about me like this. Two years from now, they might not talk like this again,” he said. “People have seen me in action. I go head-on in front of any obstacle to get where we have to get, because that’s needed to help the county and state. They really believe me when I say it, because they can see I’ve done it. I’ve taken on the municipal unions. … I’ll take on a politically correct group. I’ll take on a party leader. I’m not fazed by it.”
He paused to finish his pie.
“We need a revolution in this state,” he said, taking a bite. “So, we’re going to get attention.”
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Levy Ally And Fellow Agitator Weighs Owen Johnson ChallengeSenate Democrats may have another agitator on their hands.
Lou D’Amaro, a Suffolk county legislator and close ally of County Executive Steve Levy, said he is strongly considering a challenge to Republican State Sen. Owen Johnson. Johnson has held the seat, which runs along Suffolk’s affluent South Shore, since 1972, but the district has grown to now have more registered Democrats than Republicans.
Local Democratic leaders, including Suffolk Chairman Rich Schaffer, have encouraged D’Amaro to run, hoping he will draw some Republican fire away from vulnerable Democratic incumbents. And with his conservative streak and appeal to white ethnic voters, many feel D’Amaro could pull off a win.
“I think I would bring some fresh ideas and a reform mindset,” D’Amaro said. “Clearly, if I run, it would be a competitive race.”
D’Amaro, a Levy protégé, vowed to run as an insurgent candidate, slamming Democratic leaders in Albany for their votes on property taxes and the MTA bailout.
“If I did run, it would be independent of what’s happened in the past and, frankly, independent of the leadership and the direction they’ve taken us in the state so far,” he said.
But D’Amaro’s close connection to Levy has made leaders of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee nervous, and some say the Senate leadership is unlikely to support a candidate who could upset the Democrats’ fragile unity if he wins.
“At the moment, there’s no appetite for a Levy guy to be in the State Senate,” said one Senate Democratic source. “Can you imagine what a pain in the ass [Levy] would be if we had somebody carrying his water?”
Senate Democrats have attempted to lure other candidates into the race instead, including Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone and David Bishop, a former county legislator. But Bellone is said to have his eye on the county executive’s office, and Bishop said in an interview that he was unlikely to run unless Johnson retires.
Democratic leaders are angry at Levy for his very public feuds with Foley over the MTA payroll tax, which is widely unpopular in Suffolk. Republicans in the county have made the vote a centerpiece of their campaigns, and local Democrats have begun to distance themselves from Foley.
“There would be quite the contrast between a State Senator Lou D’Amaro and a State Senator Anybody Else from Long Island who may share his party,” said Brian Beedenbender, a former county legislator and Levy aide who lost his bid for re-election last year.
As for whether he would tout his connection to Levy in the campaign, D’Amaro said: “I would count on his support.”
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Photos by Andrew Schwartz
