Amos Goodman to Lead G.O.P.
With a pledge to revitalize his party and end single-party rule, Amos Goodman was elected chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee on Feb. 7. Mr. Goodman, who lives in Springs, succeeds Reg Cornelia, who stepped down from the position last week.
Mr. Goodman, who is 34 and runs a corporate advisory firm focused on aerospace and defense industries, takes the helm of the Republican Committee after a disappointing campaign in which its candidates for supervisor and town board were defeated by wide margins and just two of its nine candidates for town trustee prevailed in the November election. He pledged to lead an aggressive and sustained strategy to revitalize the party, hold elected officials accountable, and provide voters and taxpayers with alternatives to what a press release described as “the increasingly rudderless single-party control of the town.”
The Republicans will have an opportunity to field such an alternative in November, when David Lys, who was appointed to the town board last month to fill the seat vacated by Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who was elected supervisor, will stand for election. Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican serving New York’s First Congressional District, is also up for re-election this year, as is Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat.
“It’s critical that we keep the focus local,” Mr. Goodman, who ran unsuccessfully for Suffolk County legislator in 2015 and for the Republican Committee’s chairmanship the following year, said on Monday. “In the national political climate, passions are certainly high on both sides, and there’s a real risk that there isn’t accountability at the local level.”
His goal over the next year, he said, is to “rebuild the infrastructure of the committee, moving forward on that at a pretty aggressive clip, and to figure out how are we going to get people, especially if all the predictions and polling about a huge Democratic wave this November come to pass, to support our candidate for town board.”
If the Republicans are to succeed, voters who will not cast a ballot for Mr. Zeldin must nonetheless vote for the party’s candidate for town board, he said. “Certainly, it’s going to be challenging,” he said, predicting that East Hampton’s Democrats will make the campaign a referendum on President Trump. “An effort to make everything national is cynical,” he said. “We have issues at home. This is not the local offshoot of the Trump campaign.”
“I’m trying to create a certain discipline and focus that people may have a variety of opinions,” he said. “I know that on our committee, even in the executive ranks, people have very different views. Some voted for Trump, some didn’t. Some like the guy, some would espouse opinions that’d sound like anybody from the other party. That’s good, that’s the symptom of a big-tent, inclusive party that I think is the party of youth, innovation — at least it should and could be, and I think it will be.”
Mr. Goodman acknowledged the uphill climb he and the Republicans face in a town in which voter registration heavily favors Democrats. “One of the, maybe, perverse benefits of taking over now is that there’s really not that much further we can fall,” he said. “It’s all up from here. . . . The fundamental independent spirit of most of the electorate is still there. We welcome a variety of people, and will be pulling into the committee people from all sorts of backgrounds and political views. We may not always see eye to eye . . . but if we can keep the focus on things we’re supposed to be focused on, namely the Town of East Hampton, I think there’s a chance we can do some interesting stuff. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have taken this on.”
Mr. Cornelia praised his successor in a release last week. “Amos is smart and savvy, and I’m confident he will lead us ably and effectively,” he said. “His passion and energy are exactly what we need going forward.”