A tabloid scandal bankrolled a Long Island Democrat, mostly with out-of-district money. A Hollywood-linked tycoon backed a Republican who beat him.
He won the June primary with about 63% of the vote, defeating Lukas Ventouras, a 25-year-old law student and district resident who had raised about $124,000, mostly in unitemized small-dollar donations.
Key points
- In August, Vice President JD Vance raised more than $5 million from young Republican donors at the Southampton home of Omeed Malik, president of 1789 Capital and a prominent Trump donor.
- A district with a summer address NY-1 runs from Suffolk County’s North Shore villages to the East End, with vineyards and farms on the North Fork and the Hamptons on the South Fork.
- 14 found that in-district donors accounted for about 16% of LaLota’s money from named individuals and just over a third of Gallant’s.
Both campaigns were bankrolled mostly by donors outside the district, including major Wall Street, Hollywood and tech names.
Even the men on the ballot live beyond its lines: both reside near Amityville, on Long Island’s South Shore, which means neither could vote for himself.
Additional details
- LaLota won a third term in New York’s 1st Congressional District last Tuesday, 51.1% to 48.9%, a margin of nearly 7,000 votes with 560 of 561 election districts reporting.
- Two candidates, one shrinking margin LaLota, a Navy veteran and former Suffolk County elections commissioner, was first elected in 2022 to succeed Lee Zeldin and was re-elected in 2024, defeating former CNN anchor John Avlon by about 11 points.
- After the New York Post published archived images of the Democrat modeling bondage gear for a San Francisco leather retailer, his fundraising took off.
- That makes the district one of the country’s busiest political ATMs, where financiers and industry titans host fundraisers for both parties.
- In between lie Smithtown and Brookhaven, where suburban neighborhoods give way to woods and residents are largely commuters, law enforcement and small-business owners.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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