The Village of Great Neck’s incumbent candidates survived a surprise write-in campaign organized by community activist Rebecca Rosenblatt Gilliar, with hundreds of residents waiting in long lines at the polls late into Tuesday night’s voting.
Mayor Ralph Kreitzman defeated challenger Pedram Bral 325 to 232. Deputy Mayor Mitchell Beckerman took 316 votes and Trustee Jeffrey Bass won 320 votes, with opposition trustee candidates Christine Campbell and Anne Mendelson receiving 226 votes each. And Trustee Mark Birnbaum won his race for village justice, with 321 votes to candidate Kambiz “Eli” Akhavan’s 225 votes.
The hotly contested race, which saw lines stretching out the door of a tightly packed Great Neck House, a voting machine malfunction that required the village to provide paper ballots and a vote count that stretched until 1:30 a.m. according to eyewitnesses, initially blindsided Kreitzman and his fellow Better Government Party incumbents.
“You’re always concerned about a write in, but we didn’t know about this write in until the election started,” Kreitzman said in an interview.
Kreitzman and his ticket mates mobilized supporters and eventually carried the day, but Gilliar, who termed the campaign a “protest vote,” said she was pleased with the result.
“We were all thrilled,” Gilliar said. “As far as we’re concerned we won.”
Birnbaum, who with his victory will leave his trustee post to become the village justice in July, said the polling site was a “mad scene.”
“People couldn’t even get into the parking lot,” Birnbaum said.
Birnbaum also criticized the write-in candidates, both for their tactics and the negative effects he said an inexperienced board would have on the village.
“They were trying to get in through the back door instead of doing it an open government, open forum,” Birnbaum said. “I believe our board has always tried to be as open as possible.”
Gilliar said she began recruiting candidates to run less than a month ago, in response to a village government that she said levies harsh fines against residents for minor code violations and has been unresponsive to complaints from her and like-minded residents.
“For years, people have been going to the village government – the mayor and the trustees – and saying it’s a punitive village. It’s a harsh place to live,” Gilliar said. ““Every facet of the community was ignored. The Jews, the Christians, the Orthodox, the non-Orthodox.”
Kreitzman, who said he had never met his challenger Bral prior to election day, said he was disappointed with the non-public campaign by his opponents.
“Obviously I’m happy and thankful for all the support we got, and I’m disappointed that our opponents ran a secret write in. They deprived our residents of an opportunity to focus on their issues,” Kreitzman said. “I had no opportunity to even know what their issues were.”
When asked about the campaign’s tactics, Gilliar disputed that it was secret, saying that she and others had publicly expressed their concerns to the board many times. But she also indicated that the campaign was designed to avoid giving an easy path to victory for the Better Government candidates.
“They can raise what I call a red herring and say we should have discussed that before. I have discussed that before,” Gilliar said. “They only way you speak truth to power is by not doing what makes it easy for them.”
The campaign began when Gilliar approached Bral, an obstetrician/gynecologist, to challenge Kreitzman for mayor. Bral did not have much experience with government, Gilliar said, but they shared concerns about the village fines that, according to Gilliar, are levied for issues ranging from improper lawn care to hanging clothes out to dry in a front lawn.
“I said at this point, I’d vote for a kitchen sink,” said Gilliar, a long-time resident who often voices concerns at village meetings.
Gilliar then helped recruit three other candidates to fill out the slate, a process that was not finished until Friday, she said.
Bral, Mendelson, Campbell and Akhavan were chosen in part to represent the diversity of Great Neck’s population, Gilliar said – men, women, Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews and Christians.
Campbell, a Village of Great Neck native, is a nursery school teacher who has helped organize events for the Alert Fire Company, Gilliar said. Mendelson is a teacher at Great Neck North High School, and Akhavan is an attorney. All the candidates were in their 30s and 40s, according to Gilliar.
And though the opposition lost, the race may yet bring attention to their complaints.
Kreitzman said he had spoken with Bral, and the two had agreed to meet in the near future.
In an uncontested election in Kings Point, Trustees Ron Horowitz and Hooshang Nematzadeh were elected with 190 and 189 votes respectively. Gary Granoff was elected village justice with 177 votes.
And in Lake Success, another uncontested election saw incumbent trustees Adam Hoffman, Gene Kaplan and David Milner win re-election. Hoffman took 35 votes, Kaplan 38 and Milner 32.
