Photo credit – Matt Meduri
The Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association (PBA) has made their endorsements in the 2024 presidential race: former President Donald Trump (R-FL).
Although the organization is relatively apolitical at the presidential level, the PBA and its large umbrella of public safety unions are largely vocal for their support of the former president. The PBA endorsed Trump in 2020 but sat out the 2016 election and others before it.
Elected officials, party leaders, candidates for office, and public safety leadership made their endorsement clear at a Saturday evening dinner in Jericho. Accepting the endorsement on behalf of Trump was Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH-04), who chairs the powerful House Judiciary Committee and has been a staunch ally of the former president in Congress.
“This was a no-brainer,” Suffolk PBA President Lou Civello told The Messenger. “I can tell you that the rank-and-file officers overwhelmingly support Donald Trump for president. They don’t feel supported by Joe Biden (D-DE) and they certainly have zero faith in Kamala Harris (D-CA).”
Civello said that aversion to Vice President Harris’ candidacy is due to her on-the-record statements of “defunding the police” and her intention to pull away from qualified immunity, which Civello states would be “crippling.”
“They feel that they are demonized by the current administration, and they feel that Donald Trump has their backs,” said Civello.
Civello also criticized Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) for his record on public safety, primarily as it relates to his governance during the summer 2020 riots that saw upwards of $500 million in property damage.
“Tim Walz is an utter and complete failure. When you look at how he handled those riots, how police precincts were set on fire, it shows a complete lack of leadership,” said Civello. ”He could not be more of a dismal failure and it speaks to Kamala Harris’ candidacy that she would pick someone as radically left as he is. This is somebody that supported rioters and asked her followers to bail these rioters out.”
Civello added that with “no support for public safety and law enforcement, it really is a radically-left ticket.”
The program was headlined by New York Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar (C-Dyker Heights) and featured an array of speakers, concluding with Congressman Jordan himself.
“We need to change direction; we need to set the tone as we did here on Long Island, a red oasis from all the nonsense that’s going on around us,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R-Atlantic Beach) (pictured above) told attendees. Blakeman decried New York’s controversial bail reform laws, where he said “criminals have more rights than victims.” He also criticized the border policies under the current administration.
“We have a foreign invasion of our border, with millions of people coming here, and we don’t know who they are; they haven’t been vetted,” said Blakeman. “And unlike your grandparents and great-grandparents, the people who come here don’t love America. They’ve been released from prisons in Venezuela, El Salvador, and Mexico, they’re coming from China, they’re coming from Iran, and they’re all military-age males. What does that tell you? This is truly an invasion of our country.”
Blakeman added Vice President Harris has “taken progressive liberalism to a new level.”
“Can you imagine that there was a Senator who was to the left of Bernie Sanders (I-VT)? That was Kamala Harris,” said Blakeman. He also humorously referred to the Democratic ticket, with the inclusion of Governor Walz, as a “waltz with two left feet.”
Congressman Anthony D’Esposito (pictured above) (R-Island Park) spoke of his time in Congress that was predicated by perhaps one of the biggest upsets of the 2022 midterms. D’Esposito flipped NY-04, a district that covers the southern half of Nassau County where Biden won by almost fifteen points. D’Esposito defeated former Hempstead Town Supervisor Laura Gillen (D-Baldwin) by just under four points to become the first Republican to represent NY-04 since 1997.
“I represent a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 70,000, but we win these seats, and we are going to win more seats, because we are on the right side of every issue,” D’Esposito told attendees. “We want to secure our border. We want to keep our community safe. We want to be energy independent. We want to stop the weaponization of our justice system. And together, we want to elect Donald Trump President of the United States.”
D’Esposito added that the viability of the modern Republican ticket on Long Island is because the caucus has “candidates from all walks of life” and “people who have real life experience.”
“Law enforcement professionals, first responders, those who have run their own business, and those who know what it’s like to struggle,” said D’Esposito.
The Congressman also said Vice President Harris’ economic policy consists of what she intends to fix, but that it’s “all the mess that she created.”
“This is by far and away the most important election of our lifetime,” said D’Esposito. He stated that while many Republicans in Congress support the same values and ideas, it’s difficult for many of them to understand the idiosyncrasies and needs of every individual district, especially one as Democratic-leaning as his own.
However, he introduced someone who, in his words, does understand that “there are different districts with very different residents:” Congressman Jim Jordan.
Chairman Kassar (pictured above) called Jordan the “largest, loudest conservative voice in the House,” and likened the Conservative Party’s platform to that of Jordan’s House Freedom Caucus, a congressional caucus formed by conservatives and members of the Tea Party Movement in 2015. Jordan served as its first chair. The caucus has thirty-nine members in the House, all of whom are Republicans.
“Personal liberty, protection of privacy, that’s really what the Conservative movement is about,” said Kassar, lauding Jordan’s upholding of such principles during his tenure in Congress.
“This is one of those elections where we’re going to determine if the left is going to continue to take us down the crazy road they want to go, or if we’re going to get back to the values and principles that make our country the greatest nation ever,” Jordan told attendees.
Jordan called the upcoming election “so, so basic,” in that it’s an analysis of polar, obvious opposites.
“We went from a secure border to no border. We went from safe streets to record crime. We went from $2 gas to $4 gas. We went from stable prices to record inflation,” said Jordan. “We went from President Trump, who projected strength from the Oval Office, under whom we didn’t have Russia go into Ukraine, where we didn’t have Hamas and Hezbollah attack our dearest and closest friend, the State of Israel. We went from a federal government where the agencies actually tried to serve the people versus being weaponized and attacking the very people they’re supposed to serve.”
Jordan (pictured above) also invoked the words of Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) from her State of the Union response: “the divide in America today is normal versus crazy.”
“It’s crazy to defund the police. It’s crazy not to have a border. It’s crazy to think non-citizens should vote. It’s crazy to think men should compete against women in sports. It’s crazy to let a Chinese spy balloon fly clear across the country and then shoot it down.”
Jordan discussed the Trump Administration’s record of keeping promises and their methods of tracking which promises were made and kept.
“In one of the offices, they had a big whiteboard and it had every single promise that President Trump made to the American people when he ran for the job, and as they were getting them done, they were checking them off,” said Jordan. “He was doing what he said he would do and he did it with everyone in that town [Washington, D.C.] against him. Everyone in the press was against, every Democrat was against him, half the Republicans were against him. But maybe most importantly, all the bureaucracy was against him. And still, he said he would cut taxes, he did. He said he would reduce regulations, he did. He said he’d put conservatives on the court, he did. He said he would build the wall, he did. He said he would put the embassy in Jerusalem, he did.”
The moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, Jordan said, “laid the foundation” for other foreign policy achievements, such as the Abraham Accords.
Jordan also said that despite years of legal haranguing during his time in office, namely the Robert Mueller investigation and the 2019 impeachment, the FBI raid on his home at Mar-A-Lago, as well as the recent Fani Willis indictment and the Jack Smith indictment, Trump’s attitude has been “amazing throughout.”
“The best way to beat him is not letting him play,” said Jordan.
Jordan said Trump’s attitude was perhaps best on display after the attempt on his life at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“The poise, the character, the leadership literally under fire: he captured what’s great about this country. Americans fight back,” said Jordan. He highlighted American tenacity going back to the nation’s founding, as the first Pilgrims were willing to “risk it all” rather than face religious persecution, and if they were “willing to work hard,” they could “chase down” their “dreams and goals.”
“That’s what America has always offered its citizens. That’s what I think is at stake in this election,” said Jordan. “If the left continues to win, they’re going to take away that fundamental dynamic this country has always imparted on its people.”
Jordan commended all in attendance for “being off the sidelines and being in the game.” He gave an anecdote about a Jackson, Wyoming, business that held an event for congressional Republicans. In response, Patagonia Outdoor Clothing and Gear refused to continue supplying the store.
“Good things in life don’t just happen. You want to accomplish anything that matters, anything of meaning or significance, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes work,” said Jordan. “Most importantly, it takes a willingness to assume the risk associated with trying to do something worthwhile. Because if you step into the game and get in the arena, there’s the risk you’re going to get attacked.”
Suffolk PBA President Civello then addressed attendees and presented the official endorsement of Donald Trump to Congressman Jordan.
“We are the first law enforcement coalition in New York State to endorse President Donald J. Trump,” said Civello. “If you want to know what Kamala Harris’ vision is for our country, you need to look no further than here in New York. Look at any place that radical leftists have control. Here in New York, we have set free forty-two cop-killers. Not only did we set them free, but we celebrated them.”
Civello told the tale of Jalil Muntaqim, also known as Anthony Bottom, a former Black Panther who, at the age of sixteen, murdered two police officers. After serving nearly fifty years in prison, Bottom was paroled in 2020 and was invited to speak at SUNY Brockport, who advertised his attendance as “an intellectual conversation on his time with the Black Panthers and serving nearly fifty years as a political prisoner.”
Civello called the move a “slap in the face” to the deceased officers’ families and to “every single law enforcement officer in this state who has risked their lives every single day to protect the public.”
Civello also criticized New York’s bail reform laws in what he called a “revolving door of justice,” where their “paperwork isn’t even finished before they’re [criminals] back out on the street.” He specifically mentioned the April dismemberment case, where schoolchildren found a dismembered corpse in a Babylon park, which results in the suspects being ineligible for bail due to the State’s laws.
“You think you maybe should have put dismembered corpses on the list of offenses that you can hold a criminal for?” Civello asked of Albany.
Civello said that while the swing states are important, he does not intend to leave Long Island.
“I don’t damn well expect to leave my home, the place I was born and raised, or to secede to radical leftists who want to see it destroyed,” said Civello (pictured above). He said that such emphasis on New York will not be done in vain, as New York provided the path to a Republican House majority in 2022.
“We don’t care about party, we care about public safety. I care about the safety of my officers. I care about cop-killers being set free. I care about our border,” said Civello, expanding on the border issue by relating it to the fentanyl crisis currently gripping Suffolk County.
“We see the American children, the children here on Long Island, who are dying from fentanyl,” said Civello. “An open border has been a disaster for public safety, for law enforcement, and most importantly, for our children. Fentanyl is having a devastating effect, and here in New York State, in order to hold you on bail, you have to have enough fentanyl to kill a football stadium full of people. Tell me how that is a rational law.”
Civello also praised Trump’s visit to Brentwood shortly into his first term to meet with law enforcement leaders about the problems posed by MS-13.
“We may back the blue, but we need to paint this town red,” said Civello to thunderous applause.
The Messenger caught up with some of the attendees after the speeches concluded.
“Trump was a ‘bazillion’ times better than this Biden-Harris Administration,” Congressman Jordan told The Messenger. “Under President Trump, we had safer streets, now we have record levels of crime. Under President Trump, we had stable prices and a growing economy, now we have record inflation. Under President Trump, we projected leadership and strength from the Oval Office, versus what we’ve seen from Biden-Harris, where Russia came into Ukraine, and Hamas and Hezbollah attacked our closest friend, the State of Israel. That’s what this election is about.”
“It’s wonderful to be here representing Smithtown. I think Donald Trump will be very successful in Suffolk County, especially in Smithtown,” Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R-Kings Park) told The Messenger. Smithtown is the only township in Suffolk County where Trump won every precinct.
“I believe he’ll do it again,” Wehrheim added.
“Long Island is going to be the battleground for the House,” Congressman Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) told The Messenger. “We’re going to have to run hard on the Conservative and Republican lines this year to hold those seats. I think everybody realizes how important Long Island is. It’s why the Speaker of the House [Mike Johnson (R, LA-04)] has been here half-a-dozen times since he became Speaker less than a year ago.”
Garbarino also discussed the ongoing battle for State and Local Tax (SALT) Deductions. Then-Congressmen Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) and Peter King (R-Seaford) voted against Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a negative impact on Long Island’s dependency on SALT deductions, as such high property taxes aren’t experienced in many other parts of the country. Garbarino, however, says that as more Republicans are aware of the issue and have seen similar needs in their states, it might prompt a new bill that includes an increased cap for such deductions, should Trump win in November.
“The good news is we’ve already started working on ideas,” said Garbarino, stating that the Ways and Means Committee is looking at individual tax deductions, including SALT.
Elected officials in attendance from Suffolk County included County Clerk Vincent Puleo (R-Nesconset) and Suffolk County Legislator Stephanie Bontempi (R-Centerport). Candidates for office included Mike Sapraicone (R-Upper Brookville) for U.S. Senate, Mike LiPetri (R-Farmingdale) for NY-03, Joe Cardinale (R-Amityville) for the Eleventh Assembly District, and Stephen Keily (R-Mattituck) for the First Assembly District.
