Former CNN anchor John Avlon won the 1st Congressional District Democratic primary by 40 points on Tuesday, buoyed by higher turnout and after emphasizing that he was more likely to flip the seat than chemist Nancy Goroff, political analysts said Wednesday.

In mailings, commercials and stump speechs, Avlon repeatedly asserted that he was better poised than Goroff to win in a general matchup with freshman Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville).

Goroff won the 1st District primary in 2020, but lost the general election that November to then-Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) by a margin of nearly 10 percentage points, a gap of 37,000 votes.

Avlon, of Sag Harbor, defeated Goroff, of Stony Brook, by a margin of 70%-29% on Tuesday, according...| read more ››

New congressional district lines drawn by New York Democrats are already shaking up one race on Long Island.

Former State Sen. James Gaughran, who previously said that he would drop out if he lost his base of support in Huntington Town, announced Tuesday afternoon that he would not seek the Democratic nomination in the First Congressional District.

While the new map only moved a few of Huntington’s election districts west to CD3 and kept Gaughran’s East Northport residence in CD1, he told The Point, “They gutted my support.” Gaughran urged the remaining prime Democrats, Nancy Goroff and John Avlon, to rally around one person. “I was hoping they could work something out. The district is now more Republican, all the...| read more ››

In a recent letter Leg. Stephanie Bontempi asserts that the Legislators are keeping the water quality referendum off the ballot because they want to “do their homework” before bringing the water quality initiative to the people to vote on.

Anyone with any knowledge of the proposed water quality project knows that this plan, which has wide bipartisan support, has been years in the making at the state and county level with ample opportunity to have raised concerns, proposed changes and “do their homework “ rather than waiting until the eleventh hour to do so as they have.

It was in fact their responsibility as legislators to do their homework long before they claimed they needed time for further exploration. Interestingly,...| read more ››

The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students in higher education.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, saying the Harvard and University of North Carolina admissions programs violated the Equal Protection Clause because they failed to offer “measurable” objectives to justify the use of race.

He said the programs involve racial stereotyping and had no specific endpoint.

The opinion claims the court was not expressly overturning prior cases authorizing race-based affirmative action, and suggested that how race has affected an applicant’s life can still be part of how their...| read more ››