Election Guide for Long Beach Voters

Election Day is Tuesday and Long Beach residents will head to the polls to vote in local races for City Council, City Court judge, Nassau County executive and Nassau County 4th Legislative District. City Hall, at 1 W. Chester St., will be closed Tuesday. 

City Council

Three seats are open on the Long Beach City Council in Tuesday’s at-large election, in which the top two vote-getters will win four-year terms and the third candidate with the most votes wins a two-year term. Democrats presently hold a 4-1 majority on the council.

The six men and women running for City Council are three Democrats, incumbents Scott Mandel and Eileen Goggin and newcomer Anthony Eramo, and three Republican-backed Clean Slate Independents, Michael Franceschini, Janna Jachniewicz and Damian Walsh, all first-time candidates.

Democrats

Scott Mandel, the council president for the past 10 months, has served a two-year term on the council. He is a commercial litigator and an adjunct professor at Saint Johns Law School. A 10-year resident of Long Beach, Mandel lives in the Presidents Streets neighborhood with his wife and six-month-old daughter.

Eileen Goggin was appointed to the council in February to fill out the four-year term of Councilman Michael Fagen, who resigned. She works as legal advisor to a judge at Nassau County Court and handles felony cases. A single mother of an school-aged daughter, Goggin has lived in Long Beach for 11 years.

Anthony Eramo is a newcomer who is also a candidate for the Working Families Party. He works as a field technician for Verizon and is studying to earn his masters degree. Still displaced from his Hurricane Sandy-damaged West End home, Eramo has lived in Long Beach with his wife and two school-aged children for the past 10 years.

Clean Slate Independents

Michael Franceschini is a first-time candidate who works as a forensic accountant for a private firm. He retired in 2012 as a special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Criminal Investigation Division, where for 25 years he investigated public corruption and financial fraud, and other crimes. Franceschini has lived in Long Beach since 1991 and, with his wife, raised two daughters, now college-age students.

Janna Jachniewicz is a first-time candidate. She is an attorney who runs a contract department for a major financial institution, performing budgeting, auditing and compliance functions for the North American region of the firm.

Damian Walsh is a newcomer who is a fifth-grade schoolteacher in Far Rockaway and owner of Ribeye Brothers Cheesesteaks in Island Park. His a resident of Long Beach for 12 years. Still displaced from their storm-damaged West End home, Walsh and his wife have a one-year-old daughter and are expecting another child.

City Court Judge

In the race for City Court Judge, Theodore Hommel, a Republican-back challenger, faces incumbent Judge Roy Tepper, a Democrat. The City Court has two judges who hold 10-year terms, but, if elected, neither candidate could serve a full term since in New York the mandatory retirement age for judges is 70.

Roy Tepper, 69, was appointed a full-time City Court judge in 1987. He is a lifelong Long Beach resident and former two-term president of the Long Beach City Council. Tepper is a graduate of Long Beach High School and received a B.A. from Michigan State University and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School.

Theodore Hommel, 61, is an attorney in private practice who has 35 years of legal experience. A lifelong Long Beach resident, he has served as a deputy Nassau County attorney and assistant corporation counsel in Long Beach. Hommel is a graduate of Long Beach High, Oberlin College and Fordham University’s School of Law.

Nassau County 4th Legislative District

Nassau County Legis. Denise Ford (R-Long Beach) is an incumbent legislator who is running unchallenged in the Nov. 5 election. The GOP holds a 10-9 majority on the legislature.