Mr. Leonard is articulate and well informed, and he seems to genuinely care about not only his community of Mount Sinai but also the entire 2nd District.
Ms. Bonner, on the other hand, has also shown that she wants to do her part to ensure that the northeastern corner of Brookhaven Town is taken care of. She grabbed the torch from former Councilman Kevin McCarrick in fighting against the Planned Development District at Tallgrass in Shoreham, helping to effectively kill the project when she led the Town Board's effort to deny the developers a necessary extension for moving forward with their plans to build on the 320-acre property.
Ms. Bonner has also been an advocate for preserving open space at a time when the town hasn't done enough in that area, securing monies to buy up not only the Vassilaros property in historic Miller Place, but also smaller parcels in Wading River and Lake Panamoka.
Ms. Bonner's finest quality, however, has been in the way she serves her constituents. Her office is a full-time operation, with a councilwoman and a staff that is quick to listen to constituent concerns -- not just to dig in on the major issues, but also to help with the small stuff.
Her constituent service skills were perhaps best on display when she put bad blood from the 2007 election behind her and made sure the Shoreham-Wading River Little League got its first ball field, fulfilling a campaign promise broken last silly season by Democrats.
That's not to say Ms. Bonner's first two years in office have been without their ups and downs. In fact, these editorial pages have been used many times to find fault with Ms. Bonner.
Too often in her first term she chose to engage in petty partisan politics, although her support of the Democrats' GPS initiative was a fine example of a Town Board member reaching across the political aisle to do what's right for the residents of the town.
There were also times when Ms. Bonner seemed to be relying on the advice of others instead of stepping up and being her own voice (our editorial board can recall countless interviews where Ms. Bonner was merely repeating what a voice in the background was saying and not just answering our questions herself, which is why we weren't surprised when she wanted to take our candidate questionnaire home with her instead of filling it out on the spot. We didn't allow her to).
We also believe Ms. Bonner has been a failure in some of the areas where she promised she'd deliver last campaign season. Despite making high taxes their biggest campaign talking point, Ms. Bonner and her Republican/Conservative majority did not lower taxes when they amended former Supervisor Brian Foley's 2009 budget, even though, bizarrely, she tried to insist they did in our endorsement interview this year.
Ms. Bonner also touted getting the ball rolling on downtown revitalization as the greatest accomplishment of her tenure as Rocky Point Civic Association president when we interviewed her in 2007. But we still see a depressed downtown today, and the community is fractured over their vision for the future of the hamlet.
But we believe the primary responsibility of a councilwoman is to provide quality constituent service, to make smart land-use decisions and to protect taxpayers. Ms. Bonner has excelled in these three key areas. That's certainly enough for her to keep her job another two years.
We hope, however, that in her second term she shoves partisanship aside, shows more independence and works more on bringing people together in her district.
If you do choose to vote for John Leonard, that's not a bad decision.
But we do wish his campaign could have focused on issues more germane to the office he's seeking: Not to belittle efforts to redevelop the former power plant in Shoreham or to combat the problem of drugs on the North Shore, we're just not sure a Brookhaven councilman's going to lead those efforts.
Mr. Leonard was also too quick to align himself with people who only supported him because they dislike Ms. Bonner. (Sorry, John, but fishing lobbyists and the North Shore Beach Property Owners Association would have supported Freddy Kreuger over Jane Bonner, so why should we be impressed that they got behind you?)
Mr. Leonard also showed desperation these past few weeks with negative mailers. Our least favorite one, and the one that finally convinced us to not support Mr. Leonard, was titled "Old movies you don't want to see again, starring Jane Bonner." Set to a Hollywood motif, the flier makes the claim that Ms. Bonner fired "hard-working qualified town employees and gave their jobs to patronage politicians." It also talks about Ms. Bonner giving relatives jobs "at taxpayer expense."
What the mailer fails to mention is that those patronage employees replaced, right or wrong, the Democrats' patronage buddies. And while Ms. Bonner may have found summer work for her son, Democrat Connie Kepert secured a job right in her office for her son. And, oh, yeah, Democrat Mark Lesko hired the wife of the town's blue collar labor chief to serve as his deputy. We don't have a problem with any of these moves; we just wonder why Mr. Leonard doesn't either, if he has such a problem with what Ms. Bonner did.
That's a shame, too, because we do believe Mr. Leonard is an impressive candidate who should not have to stoop so low. If he's elected, we think he will represent the area well.
But Jane Bonner's already been doing that for two years. She's earned two more.