The New York Times reported in September that U.S. Rep Anthony D’Esposito hired his longtime fiancée’s daughter shortly after taking office in January 2023 to work as a special assistant in his district office, eventually bumping her salary to about $3,800 a month.

In April 2023, The Times reported, D’Esposito added a woman with whom he was having an affair for a part-time job in the same district office at a salary of $2,000 a month.

Payments to both women stopped in July 2023, around the time that D’Esposito’s fiancée briefly broke off their engagement, the paper reported.

D’Esposito, who is running for re-election in District 4 against Democrat Laura Gillen, blasted The Times story in a statement to Schneps Media LI as partisan and not relevant to his job as a congressman.

“My personal life has never interfered with my ability to deliver results for New York’s Fourth District, and I have upheld the highest ethical standards of personal conduct. Voters deserve better than The Times’ gutter politics,” D’Espositio said.

We are hard-pressed to understand how having an affair while engaged to another woman and then hiring your mistress to work in the same congressional office as your fiancee’s daughter upholds the “highest ethical” standards.

But as serious as the questions raised by D’Esposito’s conduct are, there is a larger issue here – how Nassau County runs.

D’Esposito’s hiring practices—though possibly violating the House Code of Conduct—are not unusual for Republicans or Democrats in Nassau County.

In fact, they are the rule.

Nassau County’s Republican power brokers have routinely filled town, village, and county offices with friends, supporters, and relatives for decades, helping create one of the last political machines in the United States. 

Those who owe their taxpayer-funded jobs to county Republican leaders have served as foot soldiers in races across the county.

“In Nassau County, patronage is part of the political religion,” Hank Sheinkopf, a political adviser and commentator, recently told Newsday. “It is required.”

D’Esposito is just another, though extreme, example.

Every member of D’Esposito’s family has held a town or county job, and as a local official, he routinely helped friends find spots on the government payroll, The Times and Newsday reported.

At least three more people with ties to prominent figures in Nassau County Republican politics were paid through his congressional office, Newsday reported

Joe Cairo, chairman of the Nassau County Republican Party, defended D’Esposito’s congressional hiring practices and the use of patronage in general.

“Is there patronage? Of course, there is,” Cairo told Newsday.

“That’s how you do business,” Cairo said. “I think, like in any career, government officials seek to employ people with whom they are familiar, but they have to have the talent to do the job.”

This is not surprising given the success the Republican Party has had.

In recent years, Republicans have used patronage and nepotism to capture all four countywide offices, all three towns—Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay—and a 12-7 advantage in the county Legislature.

This is in a county where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by 100,000.

Oddly, Nassau County Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs essentially said the same thing as Cairo.

There is “no hard-and-fast rule” on what’s appropriate in hiring relatives and friends, Jacobs said, though he did call D’Esposito’s congressional hires “egregious.”

This may be a practical response, given that Nassau Democrats have done the same thing in the few instances in which they actually held power.

But one might think that Jacobs, who is also the state Democratic chairman, might side with good government groups that support a strong civil service and the hiring of people based on their qualifications rather than who they know.

Especially after New York Democrats led by Jacobs underperformed the party nationally in 2022, giving Republicans control of the House.

Especially when Democrats in 2024 are campaigning nationally against Project 2025, a plan by Republicans to eliminate Civil Service protections if former President Trump is elected.

The two occasions that Democrats have been elected county executive in the past 25 years followed notable governance failures by Republicans. The first was the county’s near bankruptcy in 2000, and the second was the indictments of County Executive Ed Mangano in 2017 and state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos in 2015. Both were later convicted.

An ethics complaint against D’Esposito was filed last week with the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent, nonpartisan group created by the House to review allegations of misconduct by its members.

But it will be up to Nassau voters who haven’t gotten town, village and county jobs thanks to connections to choose leaders who want local government employees selected based on merit.