Election 2014

Rice, Blakeman battle for 4th C.D. seat

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Kathleen Rice, the Nassau County district attorney, and Bruce Blakeman, a former presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature, are locked in a spirited fight for the 4th Congressional District seat now held by U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat from Mineola.

McCarthy is retiring from Congress following a cancer diagnosis. Earlier this year she endorsed Rice, and has made a number of campaign appearances with her, including a recent news conference at Rice campaign headquarters in Garden City to tout tougher federal gun-control legislation. McCarthy was elected to Congress on a gun-control platform in 1996, three years after her husband was killed and her son seriously injured in a massacre by Colin Ferguson on the Long Island Rail Road.

Rice has called on Blakeman to detail his stance on gun control, with no response.
Meanwhile, Blakeman has called into question Rice’s role on the Moreland Commission, the state ethics panel formed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that was suddenly disbanded earlier this year amid a cloud of controversy. Blakeman has repeatedly called on Rice to explain her participation on the panel, to no avail.

Cuomo has said that he did away with the commission because the State Legislature passed meaningful ethics reform legislation. This summer, Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, launched an investigation into what transpired at the Moreland Commission, which the governor created in July 2013 and shut down in March, nine months ahead of schedule.

For her part, Rice has said she cannot comment on the commission’s work because of Bharara’s ongoing probe.

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