The Third District contains Bellport, Brookhaven hamlet, Mastic, Mastic Beach, North Bellport, Shirley, South Haven, and Yaphank, and parts of East Patchogue, Farmingville, Holtsville, Medford, Middle Island, North Patchogue, Ridge, and Upton.
If you’re in the Third Assembly District and have any sort of issue, “go to Joe!”
At least, that’s what people in his district say.
Assemblyman Joe DeStefano, a Medford Republican, is running for a fifth term in this central-south Brookhaven district. DeStefano comes from a labor and first responder background. A 47-year volunteer with the Medford F.D., he still takes calls today.
DeStefano has granular knowledge of the district and is a verifiable presence in the area’s community and civic groups. He’s been able to secure hundreds of thousands in funds for historic preservation – the Avery Homestead in East Patchogue and the Manor of St. George in Shirley come to mind – as well for the area’s school districts, libraries, and nonprofits.
He also understands the district’s “unique challenges,” as he put it in our interview. He’s been on top of an initiative to expand Sunrise Highway to three lanes out to the Moriches and has been lobbying the State agencies to address the rail crossings that gridlock the Tri-Hamlet Peninsula.
DeStefano says his 2019 vote in favor of the CLCPA, Albany’s overly-ambitious green energy policies whose timelines were rolled back this year, was due to his expectation that it would help Long Island’s drinking water. He says he and other legislators were “misled,” and that he still believes in renewable energy. We appreciate his candidness on a previous miscalculation.
DeStefano also turned some heads with his vote against an AI data center moratorium. That vote, he says, was not a blanket endorsement of AI or the data centers; rather, an opportunity for the Upstate localities to find a possible use for them.
“One size does not fit all,” DeStefano told us, adding that in addition to representing the Third District, he also represents the State to a degree, as all legislators do.
DeStefano faces labor leader Josh Slaughter, a Shirley Democrat, who certainly knows the ins and outs of government. He worked for former Suffolk Legislator Kate Browning, who was an institution in this part of town, and then ran for her seat in 2017 but came up just short. His lobbying work in Albany not only affords him intimate knowledge of the process, but has also made way for several labor achievements. Securing PLAs for SUNY campuses and expanding the trades’ presence and viability in the public schools are laudable achievements.
Slaughter is the Political Director for Laborers Local 66 and also has granular knowledge of the district and their problems. He asserts that DeStefano and local officials aren’t doing enough to address congestion and rail crossings. In fact, he says they’re only jumping on this issue because of Slaughter’s candidacy this year. He says, in the majority, he’ll be more effective in advocating for those issues and getting them across the finish line.
That’s where we disagree with Slaughter. While DeStefano has been in the minority, that’s not prevented him from developing working relationships with other legislators for commonsense proposals. We attribute the State’s indifference to Long Island’s problems to Long Island simply being the “red-headed stepchild,” so to say, in Albany’s eyes.
We don’t think Slaughter will be any more well-positioned to make progress on these issues. If anything, he’ll be another mouth for the Assembly Majority to feed. He attributes problems with one-party rule as “fear tactics” spread by the GOP.
In that case, we assume if every single Assembly seat were held by Democrats, everything would be accomplished.
To Slaughter’s credit, he does acknowledge that the Democratic Party needs to get back to representing working-class people, correctly says bail reform rollbacks need to go further, and calls for an all-of-the-above approach to energy. He’s one of the few Democrats we interviewed this year who approved of the Governor getting the NESE Pipeline going.
But we think he’s burying the lede on the obvious spending problems in Albany. He says increased taxation on higher earners is what’s needed, but can’t speak to exactly how that would work. We appreciate his willingness to buck his party, and we believe he’s genuine in that regard, but he’ll have to choose between bucking his party and getting those ambitious initiatives through. We can’t blame him for how Albany works, even to the detriment of their own members, but he would be a freshman – members of the Legislature who typically have to wait their turns.
Voters have two good, impassioned candidates who both know their districts well. But we think that DeStefano should have the opportunity to finish what he’s started and with navigating internal politics, it seems less complicated this way.
The Messenger endorses DeStefano.
