Nassau GOP chair intends to collect fat paychecks for 3 jobs
On the heels of pay-to-play corruption scandals that have tarnished the Long Island GOP, the Nassau County Republic Party has elected a one-time disbarred lawyer to be its new leader — and the retirement-age politico intends to collect fat paychecks from three different jobs simultaneously.
Joseph Cairo, 72, the new chairman of the Nassau County Republican Party, is also head of the Nassau County Off-Track Betting Corporation. He’s paid $198,000 at OTB.
The long-time No. 2 to former Nassau GOP boss Joe Mondello had his law license yanked in the 1990s for misusing client funds. His license was reinstated and the politically-connected lawyer now has an established law practice, GOP sources said.
He also has not ruled out collecting a third paycheck from the Nassau GOP.
Mondello, his predecessor, made more than $250,000 last year as GOP boss, and pulled in $1.5 million from his private law practice and real estate investments, records filed with the government show.
At one time, Mondello also simultaneously headed the Nassau GOP and OTB.
Cairo’s law office is in Valley Stream, his OTB’s corporate office is in Mineola and Nassau GOP headquarters is in Westbury.
A Post reporter found him at GOP headquarters.
Cairo said he was not relinquishing his OTB executive job or suspending his law practice after taking the reins of the GOP.
“I’ve been at OTB. This is a crucial time at OTB with possibly sports gambling coming so we’re deeply involved with that there now,” Cairo said.
“This is a political position. My attorneys tell me there is no conflict and I think having a position in a political party is such that it’s been done in the past by people on both sides of the aisle. And I think it’s currently done, too, in some other counties — their elected officials are also party chairmen,” he said.
But watchdogs have long complained that allowing people to simultaneously hold top positions in government and party leadership opens the door to conflicts of interests and potential corruption.
“It’s business as usual. This is an example of the rotten political system in Nassau County,” said George Marlin, who formerly served on the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority, a state agency set up to monitor the county’s shaky finances.
Marlin said the multiple paid gigs for Cairo is remarkable, especially after the Nassau Republicans lost the county executive’s race and the Town of Hempstead supervisor’s race last year amid concerns over corruption.
“They’ve learned nothing,” Marlin said. “They don’t care.”
Cairo chalked up the suspension of his law license to a mistake from the distant past.
“I think that’s something that happened — it was earlier than ‘95, that’s 25 years ago, and I think people who know me know the type of person I am,” he said.
With that, Cairo grabbed a suit jacket from a parked black Cadillac before jumping into the passenger seat of a Jaguar driven by a friend.
Cairo is right about one thing. On Long Island particularly, politicians simultaneously collecting hefty paychecks from top government and political party posts is a time-honored tradition.
The Post reported last week that Rich Schaffer is drawing down a combined $350,000 from three paychecks as head of the Suffolk County Democratic Party, as the full-time Town of Babylon Supervisor and from a law practice that includes representing plumbing contractors.
But Long Island Democrats have their scandals, too.
Gerard Terry, the former North Hempstead Democratic Party chairman, was convicted of tax evasion for failing to report his income that included payments from legal services provided to eight different local government agencies.
New Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat who won the election on anti-corruption platform last year, passed executive orders barring county government officials from holding party positions or from accepting gifts.
New York City has a law that bars top government officials from serving as party bosses, following the municipal corruption scandals of the 1980s.
Brown: Wait, what?! Joseph Cairo wants VOTERS to pick Hempstead board replacement
Nassau County Republican Committee Chair Joseph Cairo speaks to media in Westbury on Nov. 6, 2018. Photo Credit: Danielle Silverman
Erin King Sweeney, who is soon to leave Hempstead's Town Board, and soon to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, was back on Long Island last week.
She returned for, among other things, her Social Security card.
Because without it — or more specifically, without U.S.-government-issued proof of her full name — King Sweeney can't get a North Carolina driver's license.
She'd tried, but a government-issued ID with her middle initial — instead of her fully spelled-out middle name — didn't cut it at North Carolina's DMV.
"I had a photo of my Social Security card," she said last Friday, "but that wasn't going to work, either."
The last few weeks have been a rush for King Sweeney — daughter of Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), and, for a time, generation-next in a nascent King political dynasty — and her family.
They've found a house, along with a place to board the family's horse, she said.
Still, all the while, King Sweeney said, she kept the plan to follow her husband to a new job in North Carolina mostly to herself.
That changed last week, with word that, because of the move, King Sweeney, leader of Hempstead's majority-Repubican council, would not seek election to a second term.
That made her a short-timer mere weeks before the Nov. 2 general election, which instantly raised the question of whether King Sweeney would serve out the remainder of her term.
"I am going to resign on Monday," King Sweeney said.
With that — bam! — the race to find King Sweeney's replacement in Hempstead, where the majority-Republican board and Democratic Supervisor Laura Gillen have been at odds, over almost everything, for almost two years, was blown wide open.
But get this:
Joseph Cairo, Nassau's Republican Party chairman, believes the GOP should leave King Sweeney's post vacant until voters choose her replacement.
Wait, what?!?!
Cairo, breaking with decades of GOP practice in Hempstead, the party's longtime stronghold, does not believe the board should appoint King Sweeney's successor before the election.
"I haven't discussed this with the [GOP majority on the] town board," Cairo said in an interview last Friday. "But from a political point of view, I think that it is too short a period of time to appoint somebody."
Traditionally, on matters such as filling vacancies on boards or other elected bodies, the recommendations from the county party chair — Republican and Democrat — carry the day.
Cairo's position, however, breaks with the Nassau GOP's history of moving elected officials through "the chairs" — that is, appointing party members to vacancies, which in turn gifts them the ability to run for the positions as incumbents.
King Sweeney, who was considered one of the party's rising stars, was appointed to her post in January 2015 to replace Angie Cullin, who had retired after 28 years on the board.
King Sweeney went on to win a full term in the November election.
This November, King Sweeney was one of two board members up for election.
The other — who will be seeking his first full term — is Thomas Muscarella, a Republican appointed in April to fill the seat of former board member Edward Ambrosino, who resigned after pleading guilty to federal tax evasion charges.
Cairo acknowledged that King Sweeney's move has left the GOP scrambling to find a new candidate in a district that increasingly leans Democratic — so much so, that reaching out to Democratic neighborhoods, such as Baldwin, became one cornerstone of King Sweeney's tenure.
"We're reaching out, to community groups, to political groups and we will find a good candidate and we will run a good seven-and-a-half week campaign," Cairo said.
Earlier last Friday, Jay Jacobs, Nassau's Democratic Party chair, said he believed there could be enough time — depending on when King Sweeney actually moves out of the county — for the GOP to appoint her successor. Under state law, there comes a point at which it's so close to the election that the candidate's name cannot be removed from the ballot.
"I think they could do it, although I don't think they should," he said.
But Cairo said just because he wants to keep a seat vacant this time around, it doesn't mean that the GOP won't make appointments down the road.
"If it was next year, it would be a different story," Cairo said.
As for Long Island born-and-bred King Sweeney, a move South won't cause the culture shock other Northerners might experience.
"It's not as far fetched as it sounds," she said, because her mom is from Atlanta.
She laughed, remembering her grandmother's warning as her mom went off to college: "Don't bring me back no damn Yankees."
Her mom, however, ended up marrying New Yorker Peter King.
"I'll be back, a lot, to see my parents," on Long Island, King Sweeney said.
Will she miss politics?
Never say never, said King Sweeney, who will continue working as an attorney.
But for now, she said, "I'm excited about having more time with my family."
By Joye Brown
Joye Brown has been a columnist for Newsday since 2006. She joined the newspaper in 1983 and has worked as a reporter, an editor, newsroom administrator and editorial writer.
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