Ed Day Wins Rockland County Executive Race

ROCKLAND COUNTY, N.Y.

St. Lawrence Reelected Ramapo Town Supervisor

Election day brought mixed results for the Orthodox Jewish community in Rockland County. Christopher St. Lawrence, who received strong support from the Jewish community easily won re-election to the position of Ramapo town Supervisor, while David Fried, who had been the community’s choice for Rockland County Executive was defeated by county Legislator Ed Day.

St. Lawrence, who has a very close working relationship with the Orthodox Community in Monsey and New Square, and ran on the Democratic, Conservative, Working Families and Green party lines, won by his largest margin to date, with 15,580 votes, compared to only 8,896 votes for Preserve Ramapo candidate Michael Parietti. Another 3,859 cast their ballots for Republican Michael Koplen.

Preserve Ramapo is a group vehemently opposed to what it considers the overdevelopment of Town of Ramapo, and has consistently been at loggerheads with the frum community.

One local askan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, was extremely pleased with the local numbers.

“People in the town of Ramapo gave resounding statement by voting more than 2 to 1 against the agenda of Preserve Ramapo,” he said.

About 12,000 Orthodox voters concerned by Day’s controversial positions voted for Fried, but he only garnered 46 percent of the vote, compared with Day’s 52 percent.

On the county level, Preserve Ramapo strongly supported Day, a retired New York City police detective commander, who also served as chief of detectives in Baltimore. The group even created a new party on the county-wide level party named Preserve Rockland to promote Day’s candidacy.

However, the majority of Day’s support came on the GOP line, and not on Preserve Rockland, and Fried proved to be a very ineffective campaigner.

“This election was not a referendum on the Chassidic community,” the askan stressed. “Ed Day was a very disciplined campaigner who stumped for two years, and faced no opposition in the primary while Fried was badly battered in the primary fight.”

Day will succeed Scott Vanderhoef, who decided not to seek re-election after almost two decades in office.

“Now that the elections are over we have to move on,” Yitzy Ullman, who was overwhelmingly re-elected on Tuesday to his seat on the Ramapo Town Board, told Hamodia. “All of us have the same interest —  to work on behalf for the common good of all the residents.” County Legislator Aron Wieder, expressed the same sentiment.

“I have known Ed for close to two years, I am looking forward — alongside all my colleagues in the county legislature — to be working him to fix the county’s financial status. Now the rhetoric of the campaign is behind us, we need to bring communities together find common ground.”

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