Blame the Airport

Now that the absentee votes for East Hampton Town Trustee have been counted, the stunning reversal of fortune for the board’s longstanding Republican majority has become clear. Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk and a well-regarded, experienced incumbent with Republican, Conservative, and Reform endorsement, barely slipped back into office, with several Democratic newcomers polling significantly better than she did. 

When the results were made official last week, the Democrats wound up with a rare 6-to-3 majority on the board. In an ordinary election, this would not have happened.

Ms. McNally and the other Republican candidates might take solace in thinking the defeat was not their fault. Blame the airport, or, to be more precise, blame the local Republican leadership, who welcomed with open arms the more than $389,000 in aviation industry money that came their way. 

The unprecedented poor Republican showing calls for a period of self-reflection. From top to bottom, the results were a disaster for Republican candidates. It is apparent from the numbers that the party’s local turnout was suppressed. Indeed, Tom Knobel got the fewest votes in the modern era in a major-party supervisor’s contest. But the most telling evidence that dependable Republican voters stayed home is that two members of the party who had bipartisan support, Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch and Town Justice Lisa R. Rana, got about half as many votes on the Republican ballot line than they did on the Democratic.

In part, a plausible explanation for the collapse is that turnout tends to be heavier in years with hot contests, and Mr. Knobel was not generally expected to be a meaningful challenger for Supervisor Larry Cantwell. But the biggest factor was all the money that flowed to the Republicans from aviation interests.

With an entrenched and divided electorate, elections these days are less about how an individual votes than who takes the time to go to the polls. Airport money may have dampened the enthusiasm of rank-and-file Republicans, and certainly galvanized Democrats, whose turnout was roughly in line with recent norms.

We are hesitant to advise political party committees on internal leadership, but in this case it is warranted. To have viable candidates — and meaningful campaigns in the future — those who thought it was okay not to repudiate the out-of-town flood of cash should step down. It is a safe bet that some among the incumbent Republican trustees who lost this year would say exactly the same thing.