It’s been one year since the dream of a woman becoming our nation’s first female president had been heartbreakingly shattered on election night.
Moreover, during the last year, hard-fought progress on the front of women’s equality and civil rights has been significantly challenged.
Nevertheless, with all of the disappointment that many of us have felt over the last year, Nov. 7 has seemed to restore much hope for so many of us.
This year, Election Day on Long Island was astonishingly historic. We broke a glass ceiling right here on Long Island, with Laura Curran becoming our first female Nassau County executive.
Similarly, Laura Gillen’s victory as town supervisor in Hempstead was historic. Gillen’s win marks the first Democratic town supervisor in the Town of Hempstead in over a century.
Across the nation, electoral wins this year mark many historic “firsts,” in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere.
There are certainly many factors that have led to Laura Curran’s electoral success.
Curran led a campaign of inclusiveness. Her campaign strategy clearly represented the idea that, in this post-Trumpian environment, political strength comes from the bottom-up.
Laura Curran’s campaign continually asked volunteers to help get out her message, even up until the final hours of the campaign.
On Facebook, Curran’s campaign messages invited any and all residents to join the campaign effort.
It was clear that the campaign was garnering grassroots involvement.
The voice of the campaign was not delegated to an exclusive club; it was instead comprised of the activism of each and every motivated citizen.
The resistance to a federal administration that has promoted racial hostility, the denigration of women, and the assault of progress on many other fronts, has essentially become a movement in which diverse groups of people have begun to feel empowered in their own communities.
All politics may be local, but it has also become clear that all politics is also personal.
The idea that local politics is not issue-driven has seemingly become a notion of the past.
A large number of constituents now vote for local candidates that will best fight for equality and all those democratic values that we hold so dear, so that our local communities will not only be fiscally sound, but also grounded in the progressive ideals that many of us have been striving to achieve.
People are still immensely concerned with the economy, rising taxes, and similar issues.
However, just like Laura Curran campaigned on the idea that all of us in Nassau County are paying the “corruption tax,” many voters are also mindful of the ramifications of the “inequality tax.”
Anyone that has witnessed or experienced sexism, hate, racism, or any other kind of inequality, knows how very detrimental the “inequality tax” is for both individuals and our communities.
Jack Martins’ recent campaign mailer depicting gang-members with tattoo-laden shirtless bodies, sent the message that he and his campaign were not beneath fear-mongering and racism.
As we have witnessed in the last year, when candidates are willing to embrace political opportunism while sinking low, as this mailer showed, similar behavior often follows in office, after campaign season ends.
It’s become a red-flag and voters no longer want to pay the inequality-tax.
Many may argue that Laura Curran’s victory was a vote against corruption, as it was.
Yet, her win was also a referendum on equality. This is not to say that she won because she was female.
However, Long Islanders also didn’t not vote for her because she was female. This is the true essence of equality — the judgment of a person not based on their gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or other such factors. In regard to a candidate, equal treatment is the right to a formation of judgment and decision-making based on more significant variables such as, but not limited to, perseverance, ideals, values, knowledge, mindset, goals, empathy, and strength of character.
Nevertheless, perhaps the more we have an equal representation of gender, race, culture, etc., in politics, the higher the propensity of both local and national government to uphold essential democratic values.
Once we judge candidates on non-biased factors, our group of elected officials will naturally become more diverse, more representative of the strength of our nation, which is derived from inclusion and individuality.
Many of the significant electoral victories this past election day, is not only a result of the local issues, or the vast disapproval of our executive, but also the collective inspiration and motivation that occurred in the form of grassroots movements, most notably, the Women’s March.
Curran campaigned at a time in which many more women are finding their voices and realizing that when citizens remain quiet or silent, they are effectively constraining their own sense of empowerment and strength.
Men, too, have begun to stand alongside women, as vocal partners in the fight for equality and empowerment.
The movement is diverse and varied, with the common goal of upholding the rights of an individual, equality, and a more just and progressive democratic society.
We can celebrate Laura Curran’s win as a culmination of a new progressive grassroots movement, citizen empowerment, and a mandate against an “inequality tax.”
Trends within the political environment often wax and wane. However, these factors and sentiments, thankfully, do not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Diana Poulos-Lutz
Mineola
