Days before Tuesday's midterm elections, Democrats were sanguine, if cautiously so, about their prospects when they met for a get-out-the-vote event at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.
The elections, in which Democrats are widely predicted to win a majority in the United States House of Representatives and possibly in the Senate, represent "a test of who we are as a people," New York State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, a former member of the Southampton Town Board who is seeking a second term representing the Assembly's First District, told the gathering on Friday. Two years into the second Trump administration, "I truly believe that we are better than this," he said. "We are better than what we are seeing in Washington."
Along with Mr. Schiavoni, Friday's event brought candidates including Chris Gallant, who is facing Representative Nick LaLota in New York's First Congressional District; Chris Murray, the Democratic candidate for State Senate in the First District; Abigail Field, a Cutchogue attorney who is waging a write-in campaign for Suffolk County clerk; Stephen Ukeiley, a candidate for State Supreme Court Justice; Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who does not have a Republican opponent but faces in a write-in campaign for East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen, who lost in a Democratic Party primary election in June, and Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker.
Other members of the town board, all Democrats, were on hand, with the notable exception of Councilman Tom Flight, who had endorsed Mr. Larsen for supervisor in the primary contest. Michael Hansen, who was elected town clerk last year, was also in attendance.
On Tuesday morning, an email from the East Hampton Town Republican Committee suggested Mr. Larsen as an alternative to Ms. Burke-Gonzalez.
"That's not an endorsement," texted Manny Villar, the chairman of the town Republicans, when asked about the email.
"They probably waited until after early voting was finished," Michael Koegler, the new chairman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee, said in a phone call on Tuesday morning.
Mr. Larsen, who hasn't really participated in a write-in campaign that was waged by his supporters (he did post a thank-you video to Instagram last week), urged voters to get past the national political divide when asked about the email from the town Republicans.
"As village mayor, I represent everyone in the village, Democrats and Republicans alike," he said. "I'd do the same as town supervisor. I represent the people of East Hampton. We have to stop focusing on national politics and fix our broken town government."
On Friday night, Mr. Koegler pointed to early-voting statistics as encouraging for his party's electoral prospects. "From the 2022 midterm elections to these midterm elections, the total voter turnout so far for the first six days is up 59 percent," he said to cheers. Early votes cast by registered Democrats was up 65 percent from the 2022 midterm elections, he said, 67 percent among unaffiliated voters, and 34 percent among registered Republicans.
By Tuesday morning, he said that over 4,000 votes had been cast in early voting. "This is going to blow away any other midterm election by a long shot," he said. "We might even surpass 2024 numbers."
"In an election like this, people are fired up to vote for Democrats. They're going to vote across the board. Regardless of how well an individual candidate's campaign has been, they might be able to ride the coattails of the entire slate. Last time Governor Hochul ran, she underperformed in Suffolk County. The reverse is going to happen this time around. Polls are showing she's outperforming in Suffolk."
"The last few days for me has been about hope," Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said. "I look at my Instagram feed and I see former President Barack Obama at campaign stops all over the country, and it gives me hope. When people in government treated each other with respect, there was kindness, there was love for one another. And I have to tell you, every time I look at that, it's cathartic, right? It just soothes the soul to see someone treating people with that kind of respect and that kind of fighting humor."
"But there's a lot of other things that have been giving me hope these last few days," the supervisor continued. "The early-voting numbers are giving me hope. The energy in this room and on the street when we're campaigning. . . . And what else is giving me hope are these competent and compassionate people that are on Row A that we're going to elect on Tuesday."
Mr. Gallant, a political newcomer who is a Black Hawk pilot in the Army National Guard and a volunteer firefighter, garnered the most attention at the gathering. "Are we ready to change and flip this seat and get rid of Nick LaLota?" he asked. On the campaign trail, "we see Republicans and independents wanting a change," he said, adding that many of these voters have told him that they would vote for him.
"There is something fundamentally wrong with not only this [Trump] administration, but Nick LaLota himself," the candidate said. "He doesn't show up in our district. He doesn't talk to his constituents. . . . He has been asleep at the wheel and it's time for him to go, and this is our year to make that change. And we are going to do it."
This year's campaign, he said, "is about a new generation and a new wave. When we talk about how dark times have been, I see brightness on our future, because this is our moment. . . . It is so close and we have come so far."
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report continues to list the race in its "Solid Republican" column, and the nonpartisan Sabato's Crystal Ball calls the district "Likely Republican," but on Tuesday the Poliwave website, which describes itself as "a small group of hobbyists and engineers trying to make elections easier to understand," predicted Mr. LaLota winning by barely 2 percentage points, 51.1 percent to Mr. Gallant's 48.9 percent.
Mr. Schiavoni repeatedly aimed to connect local and state contests with national-level politics and policy, pointing out what he called myriad failures of the Trump administration and their impact on New York. He was elected to the Assembly in 2024, when Mr. Trump was once again elected president. "I ran for the New York State Assembly on a platform of saving the environment and public education and transportation — really great things — but it became, pretty quickly, a fight for the soul of this country," he said.
Republicans, he charged, "really don't say what they're going to do. In 2024, did you ever hear them say, 'We are going to cut Medicaid'? You don't hear it. Or in 2024, did you ever hear them say, 'We are going to attack public education'? 'We are going to gut research in this country'? 'We are going to piss off the Canadians'?"
Canada is the state's top trading partner, Mr. Schiavoni said. Due to the president's tariffs and regular taunts that Canada should become the 51st state, the assemblyman said, "We had to allocate $30 million for farmers in New York State just to backfill what they're not getting from Canada. . . . We are the third-largest dairy-producing state in the country, and the Canadians are not buying our stuff because we got them angry, because we put tariffs on our closest friends. This is what's happening in Washington."
"By the way, that's not just a Washington thing," he said, "because when we're not selling Chobani yogurt in Toronto, that means that that money isn't coming into the State of New York. That's our tax dollars that we need for roads and schools and everything that we do."
Tourism from Canada is also down by almost 30 percent in New York, Mr. Schiavoni said. "Again, when they come into hotel rooms, when they go into restaurants, that's money that comes into the state coffers. That's money that comes into the local districts in upstate New York. They need this. . . . I don't think anybody here heard that we were going to do that to our closest ally, to our closest friends, to the people who landed on the beaches of Normandy with us."
Moreover, he said, the Canadian government is "making deals with China. They're making deals with India, and our other allies are doing the same thing."
Mr. LaLota, who has aimed ample criticism at Gov. Kathy Hochul, "has done nothing," the assemblyman said. "When he runs, he's Mr. Moderate, but then when he gets to Washington, he is the absolute lackey for the president of the United States and the ill-fated decisions. That is why we need Chris Gallant. . . ."
Ms. Hochul faces Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in her own re-election campaign. Polls suggest that she is likely to win by a double-digit margin.
"Some of us think this is a dark chapter in American history," Mr. Schiavoni concluded, "but you know what? This chapter is not over. . . . The end has not been written, and we have the opportunity on Tuesday to end this chapter in American history in a good way. . . . It is our responsibility to save this republic for our children and for our posterity so that we continue to make this a more perfect union."
With Reporting by Christopher Gangemi
