Steve Baranello, star witness in the ongoing criminal trial of ex-Suffolk lawmaker Wayne Prospect, dissed several party cohorts in phone calls that turned out to be wiretapped, Newsday's Rick Brand reports.
On tape, Baranello, son of a legendary Democratic county leader, is heard promoting Ginny Fields, at the time a county legislator, for county parks commissioner in the new administration of Steve Levy.
Baranello told an undercover detective posing as a contractor: “I’m hoping she becomes our parks commissioner. I think she can be helpful because, I mean, it’s scary — if I told her to jump off a building she’d do it.”
In a wiretapped call with Prospect in March 2004, Baranello expresses impatience with Brookhaven Democratic chairwoman Marsha Laufer, saying: “I can’t deal with her.” He adds: “She’s a crazy woman.”
He gripes about Laufer’s plan to introduce him as the town party’s new executive director. “I think a new title will give you another level of a degree of support within the town committee that is unprecedented,” said Baranello, quoting Laufer. “I say, ‘Fantastic, if they don’t know me by now, I’m quitting.”
He also mocked her mania for “color coded charts and all the organizations and pins.”