Letters

I’d like to thank the thousands of people who voted to keep John Leonard out of office last week. The man proved to us that he knows how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This was John Leonard’s special election to lose, and lose it he did.

He should have followed the proven formula for successful Democratic candidates for Southampton office. You let Andi, Mike Anthony, George, Barbara, David, Andreas and Joy throw their name on a couple of Letters to the Editor rehashing your resume. Let them drone on about how lucky we are that they plucked you from obscurity to lead us. Sit back and let this go unchallenged, attend a fundraiser or two, then let the mailers and email blasts do your work.

Rather than trust the Southampton Democratic machine to carry John Leonard to victory, he committed a cardinal mistake: John Leonard let the voters get to know him.

We watched as he unraveled on Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara’s Facebook page. We watched him regularly implode on the Nextdoor app, fighting with residents head to head. We watched him vilify voters in his own Letters to the Editor. We watched him lose his composure on the debate stage when questioned by Marion Boden in Hampton Bays. We watched him contradict the top of his ticket’s position on a multitude of issues.

We watched for a litany of endorsements from electeds in his own party that never materialized. We watched him not tell voters that his law license had been suspended twice until he was forced to. We watched him excruciate a respected wildlife rehabilitation expert and attack her life’s work and legacy. We watched him disrespectfully talk over everyone at networking meetings.

My personal favorite is that we got to watch him lose his cool with his party chair at his own defeat party in front of a reporter. John, you were not the victim of a smear campaign. You let the voters get to know the real you — that’s why you lost. We are watching.

So where do we go from here? John Leonard does have the power to drop out of the race, but doing the right thing has always, and will always, elude John Leonard. John does what is best for John.

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 this November.

I have never seen a rotten blueberry turn good, no matter how many wonderful berries are in the pint. The rotten one always seems to spoil the bunch.

Voters tried to remove this rotten berry once — will the Democratic leadership hear us?

Jose Reyes

Hampton Bays