Brookhaven Republican’s supervisor candidate Robert DiCarlo today launched his first radio attack against Democratic Supervisor Brian Foley for “out of control" spending and giving town residents “an unbearable tax increase.”
The 60-second spot criticizes Foley for giving residents the “biggest property tax increase in town history” and says he “even tried to use our tax dollars to support illegal aliens,” a reference to Foley’s proposal as a county lawmaker to spend $80,000 to create a hiring hall for day laborers, a measure that was never adopted.
Rick Brand
DiCarlo also assailed Foley for thinking “it’s okay for government cars to be used for personal vacations,” alluding to a Foley aide’s defense of Democratic Highway Superintendent John Rouse’s use of his town car on a trip near Northampton, Mass., where he owns property. The aide said Rouse abided by rules that had been set up by Republicans earlier.
The $25,000 radio blitz will run on a half dozen stations about 20 times a day for the next four weeks, with an ad change midway through. The ad comes a day after Republicans attacked Foley for taking a corporate campaign donation that was more than twice the $5,000 limit.
Democrats said they returned the illegal portion of the donation even before the GOP raised the issue. Town Democrats have not begun their own radio or TV ads, and declined to say when they will start. But two years ago, Foley did not go on radio until Ocotober.
Anna Deknatal, Brookhaven Democrats’ executive director, called the GOP commercial a “desperate Hail Mary” that “distorts...Foley’s...reform record,” but said Democrats would expect nothing else from a “morally and financially bankrupt” Republican Party which has made “Brooklyn’s castoff” their supervisor candidate. DiCarlo is a former state senator and GOP county leader from Brooklyn, who now resides in Stony Brook.
“It’s the same playbook they used for Italo Zanzi,” said one Democrat operative, referring to a Major League Baseball vice president who ran a losing race for Congress last year. “He started light, stayed light and ended up short, with only 37 percent of the vote.”