By Jeanine Poggi
The University will host the New York State GOP nominating convention this spring, party officials announced last week.
At the convention, which will be held on May 31 and June 1, the Republicans will announce their candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, controller and the U.S. Senate.
The 400 delegates will also hold meetings at the Garden City Hotel, officials said.
“Long Island is a very important piece to the Republican Party,” said Ryan Moses, executive director of New York’s Republican State Committee.
“When we have candidates that run well, they usually run well on the island.”
Long Island is home to nearly 20 percent of New York’s Republican State Committee members, and Nassau and Suffolk provided the party its highest vote totals in the 1994, 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial elections.
The last time the convention was held on Long Island was in 1974, and Moses said the return was “long overdue.”
While Republicans still refer to Long Island as their “base,” in recent years the GOP has been overshadowed by the Democrats, who hold the county executive jobs in Nassau and Suffolk. The district attorneys in both counties are also Democrats.
“You know the Republican Party is in trouble if it considers a place where it lost both legislatures and county executives its ‘base,'” Blake Zeff, a Democratic spokesman said.
“Holding a convention in Long Island will not make up for the years of GOP corruption and mismanagement that Democrats have had to undo on Long Island.”