Radio Show Host John Gomez and Andrew Merola Blast Berland for Taking Away Voters Choice

Andrew Merola

Below is the clip from the John Gomez Show today with Andrew Merola.

Andrew Merola was a guest on the John Gomez show on Tuesday, August 11, 2015.

John Gomez opened the segment by stating, “Sad to say, Susan Berland and her political hack attorney husband, Sandy, took it upon themselves to circumvent the will of the people.”

Gomez accused Susan Berland’s husband Sandy of wanting to insulate her. He asked rhetorical questions of Sandy Berland when he stated, “Do you want to throw her in a bubble Sandy?  Don’t you have any confidence in your wife?  Do you think she is she not bright enough? Does she not have a spine? Can she not speak for herself Sandy?”

Gomez accused Sandy Berland of wanting to protect his wife from having to debate and engage in thoughtful conversation about what’s going on in the town.

He introduced Andrew Merola by stating, “He is one of us.”  He clarified this by saying, “I’m talking about the civilians, I’m talking about the private sector, I’m talking about the people who are supposed to be represented by the elected, but as we know the elected is a special class.”

Gomez explained to his listeners, “Andrew made the decision to run for town board.  There are two positions that are up this year on the democrat line.”

Andrew Merola stated, “I’m not a politically connected person, I don’t have $100,000 in the bank.  I am a hard working guy that wants to be there for his family.  I’ve lived in Huntington my entire life and I decided to run after I saw family after family being forced out of their homes just because taxes were going up and they had to choose between quality of life and their retirement.  I ran because when I went to High School at Walt Whitman, we didn’t have cops getting shot at, we didn’t have kids getting killed at the rate that it is happening today.”

Merola continued, “It’s been driving me nuts watching the same people on the same board making the same decisions but expecting different results.  I decided to run to give the people an actual choice.”

Merola stated, “We put together a team of friends and family and we knocked on thousands of doors.   We submitted 1100 + signatures, Bill Naughton submitted more than 1500 + signatures.  We were both filed with a lawsuit to challenge every single one of them. About 765 of my 1100 were said to be invalid for frivolous reasons.”

Gomez asked, “so then you are dragged into court and they are basically saying that you are a fraud?” Gomez stated, they are trying to claim that the people who signed on the petition sheets are lying?” Gomez continued, “I would take that personally.”  Merola responded, “I do take that personally.  Integrity is the most important thing that you have to offer.”

Merola continued, “Things were disqualified for reasons such as a witness signed her name with her last name but on her voter registration card there is a hyphen on her name and she didn’t put the hyphen on the petition. In this case over 100 of her signatures were disqualified.”

Merola stated, “We worked extremely hard, we spent a lot of money and time in order to collect these signatures and to give the people a voice and a choice.  We should have had 4 options on September 10.  Mr. and Mrs. Berland decided that they know better than you and that they can make that choice for you.  Now instead of having 4 options, we won’t even have a vote.  In my mind, that is not how democracy works.”

Merola continued, “If you have been in office for 4 terms going for a 5^th, you shouldn’t be afraid to answer some of the basic questions.  You should be able to defend the points on your website that states that you’ve held the line on taxes.”

Gomez stated, “Bill Naughton is a well respected individual,  well respected in the Democrat party and well respected in the Town of Huntington and they are basically calling him a fraud too now.” Gomez stated to Merola, “It’s a shame.  You live in the land of Berland.  It should be called the Town of Berland and Petrone.”

Merola concluded, “I want to be really clear here. This is not about Democrats are bad and Republicans are good. This is about control, this is about power.  If the Republicans were in power for the last 20 years, the same things would be happening.  This is all about the people in control doing anything to keep it. “Merola continued, “Keep in mind, Petrone used to be a Republican, he saw the tides turn so he went with it.  This is about people over party.  The labels that the parties bring to us these days, allow people to vote mindlessly without actually examining the candidates to see what they stand for and what they’ve done.  We need to get money out of politics and enact term limits so we will actually have some real change from the town of Huntington to across the country.”

Merola stated, “We are considering moving forward with a write-in candidacy just to continue to remind the leaders who they do work for and that their jobs are not guaranteed. Aside from that unfortunately our names will not be on the ballot this year.