In a unanimous voice vote, the Suffolk County Republican Committee re-elected hard-charging Chairman Jesse Garcia to lead the party in the crucial 2023 local elections and for another two-year term. Garcia has been at the helm for the GOP’s series of successful campaigns since 2019, when he was elected as the first Hispanic GOP leader in New York State.
Garcia was nominated from the floor by Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches), also the Republican candidate for this year’s crucial contest for Suffolk County Executive.
“With Jesse’s re-election as Chairman,” Romaine added, “I know victory will follow!”
Huntington Town Republican Chairman Tom McNally, serving as temporary for the re-organizational meeting, called for a vote on the nomination after making procedural appointments of a parliamentarian, sergeants-at-arms, and member of the tellers and credentials committee for the meeting.
Garcia’s nomination received seconds from GOP representatives of each of Suffolk’s ten townships. There were no other nominations.
Taking the podium at the Committee’s biennial reorganizational meeting in Bay Shore on Wednesday, Garcia spoke from his heart in thanking not only his fellow committee leaders, but his wife Diane, his headquarters staff and “all of you, my fellow committee members…because we have grown and fought together as a family.”
Legislator Anthony Piccirillo (R-Holtsville) in 2017 started the current run of knocking off incumbent Democrats, Garcia said.
We filled the seats of retiring State Senator John Flanagan, Congressman Peter King, and of State Senator Ken LaValle, he noted. “We filled those seats with Republicans!”
“People have said the mother lode came in 2021…and you made history…for the first time since 1972 we took back the Seventh Legislative District when we elected Dominick Thorne…We defeated for the first time a sitting Presiding Officer [in the Suffolk legislature]. In Huntington, we took back two seats. And for the first time in sixteen years a Democrat does not hold the gavel of Presiding Officer – it is our own Kevin McCaffrey.”
“This is just a precursor to what Ed Romaine will be doing in 2023.”
Elected to serve with Garcia in leading the GOP efforts were: Vice-Chairman Bill Ellis, also the Smithtown Republican Chair; Secretary Tammy Robinkoff, also the Riverhead Republican Chair; and Treasurer William Garbarino, also the Islip Republican Chair.
“We have just 48 more days [until the election],” Garcia reminded an enthusiastic and optimistic crowd.
