President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney weren't the only two candidates facing off for the first time this past week.
At a "Meet the Candidates" event hosted by the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, Brookhaven's two candidates to fill Mark Lesko's shoes made their first public appearance for the first time as well.
Suffolk County Legis. Ed Romaine, R-Center Moriches, and Lesko's former Chief of Staff Brian Beedenbender, D-Centereach, each were given time to answer questions asked by the civic group.
Topics included land use, the town budget, and their op priority as supervisor. Read their full answers here.
In the race for New York's First Congressional District, sides continued to square off in the race between Tim Bishop and Randy Altschuler.
The two faced off in a debate in Smithtown on Monday night, though before the two met, Bishop's campaign reacted to recent news that House Speaker John Boehner is coming to the district for a Republican fundraiser.
“For all of Altschuler’s ‘outsider’ rhetoric, he certainly has powerful friends in Washington,” Bishop's Campaign Communications Director Robert Pierce said. "It seems that Altschuler has no problem criticizing the Republican Congress at night and cashing their checks by day.”
Meanwhile Republicans continued to paint Bishop as corrupt, seizing on a story picked up in August centered around a Bishop staffer asking a constituent for funds after the Congressman helped him gain fireworks permits. The National Republican Campaign Committee released a statement Thursday, calling Bishop "this week's most corrupt Democrat."
Pierce told the New York Daily News: "The NRCC is in a tough spot. They can't cut an ad praising Altschuler's business experience, because his business is outsourcing American jobs."
The plays from out-of-state groups are nothing new to the race and will likely continue over the next month.
Altschuler defended himself in a blog post on Patch this week, saying, "Bishop’s campaign is predictably getting more and more desperate with their personal attacks against me. In short, he’s just going to make things up and hope to fool you."
Meanwhile in the race for the Second State Senate District, Democratic candidate Errol Toulon took a job offer from Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone to get a county Traffic Violation Bureau up and running, effectively paving the road back to Albany for incumbent John Flanagan, R-East Northport. We asked readers their thoughts on one-person races; join the conversation here.
