The East End: A Big Winner

The East End was the biggest winner of all on Election Day. Voters in all five towns - East Hampton, Southampton, Southold, Shelter Island, and Riverhead - sent a powerful message to those who would pave over what remains of this "last great place": Not here, not now, not ever.

The Community Preservation Fund, the fourth ballot proposal here, had been given its best chance of passage in East Hampton, which has been in the forefront on environmental issues. Elsewhere on the North and South Forks, in the face of a highly misleading publicity blitz in the month leading up to the vote, mounted by what was largely believed to be the state and national Board of Realtors (working through something called New Options for Open Space) supporters were on tenterhooks.

The fact that voters in all five towns embraced the transfer tax proposal is cause for great rejoicing, as is the approval by voters countywide of a $62 million bond issue for open space, farmland development rights, active parkland, and a natural history center.

On the national level, the election was highly satisfactory. Alfonse D'Amato did what he could to help beat himself with his ill-placed remarks and nasty and misleading attacks. Voters, who may have forgotten the Senator's 18-year-long string of ethical departures and corporate cozying, were having none of it. The issues-oriented Representative Charles E. Schumer will far more accurately represent the Empire State.