Letters

Jose Reyes has a dilemma. He wants to criticize the Southampton Democratic leadership and its chairman, Gordon Herr, but when he predicts what they’ll do, they wind up doing the opposite [“House of Cards,” Letters, April 10].

Worse yet for the criticism game, he lambastes Gordon Herr but is forced to admit, in the same letter, that not only did Herr do the right thing, but he, Reyes, is going to vote for Herr’s candidate.

Serious dilemma, this. In a letter to this newspaper [“We Are Watching,” Letters, March 27], Reyes gloats over John Leonard’s defeat in the March 18 special election for Town Council, unloading a chain of vituperation and finally saying, “I suspect the party knows they made a mistake but they’ll never admit it. I predict many good candidates will fall on the sword with him (Leonard) this November.”

Bad call, Jose. It fell out just the opposite of what you foretold. Shortly after you wrote, the Democratic Party replaced John Leonard on the November ballot with Tom Neely, and if any of their candidates fall then it won’t be with Leonard.

Undeterred, Mr. Reyes returns to the fray two weeks later, writing this time that Democratic Chair Gordon Herr and an unnamed “henchwoman” moved fast to find a ballot replacement for John Leonard, coming up with a candidate of “integrity,” Tom Neely, whom Reyes declines to name, though he clearly respects the man.

Directly contrary to his previous prediction, Mr. Reyes admits that Democrats “have had enough of John Leonard, and mounting pressure to have him decline the nomination appears to have been successful.”

But Reyes is unhappy with Gordon Herr regardless. He says Herr “has gone quite dark” and says the leadership “lies, deceives, hides from the public, denies and makes unconscionable deals to trade lines.”

But apart from the absence of any evidence for these charges, there’s a serious problem. In the very next paragraph, Reyes categorically states that the new candidate, the unnamed Tom Neely, the end product of all these activities, “is an honorable man and will have my vote.”

Come on, Jose, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t excoriate a party leader for his mode of candidate selection and in the same breath say you’re voting for the leader’s candidate because he’s a good one. It just doesn’t work.

The old expression was that someone was “caught on the horns of a dilemma.” In Reyes’s case, given all the vitriol he’s spewed in these columns, it’s a pleasant vision to contemplate.

George Lynch

Quiogue

Lynch is communications director for the Southampton Democratic Committee — Ed.