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Losquadro wins Brookhaven highway race

JENNIFER GUSTAVSON FILE PHOTO | Assemblyman Dan Losquadro at his former office in Calverton in 2011.

Get ready for another election.

If preliminary results from the Suffolk County Board of Elections hold up, North Fork State Assemblyman Dan Losquadro will be the next Brookhaven Town Highway Superintendent. The likely victory means a special election will be held in late spring to serve out the remaining 18 months of his current term in Albany.

BOE results show Mr. Losquadro (R-Shoreham) defeating Kathleen Walsh (D-Centereach) by nearly 800 votes, with more than 51 percent of the nearly 23,500 votes. Just one election district had not reported as of 10:40 p.m.

The post opened up in November after previous Highway Superintendent John Rouse won a county judge’s seat. Mr. Rouse, a Democrat, had held the job since 2004.

Ms. Walsh is a Brookhaven Town Councilwoman, first elected in 2005, who also served as deputy supervisor under Democrat Mark Lesko. Endorsed by Democrats in her two most recent elections, she is a registered Republican. She is the wife of  Brookhaven blue collar union president Bill Walsh.

Mr. Losquadro, 40, had won re-election to his Assembly post in November after first being elected to the job in 2010, when he defeated incumbent Marc Alessi. A County Legislature from 2004 to 2010, Mr. Losquadro has never lost an election.

Tuesday’s special election was already the second of the year on the North Fork. Al Krupski (D-Cutchogue) won a special election for County Legislature over Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter in January.

A race for the 1st District Assembly seat — which spans west from Southold Town, through Riverhead and into part of Northeastern Brookhaven Town — could muddy the picture for the November local elections in which town and county seats are up across the North Fork.

Mr. Losquadro is a native of Wading River and a 1990 graduate of Shoreham-Wading River High School. He lives in Shoreham with his wife, Lynn, a teacher in the SWR district, and their son, Joseph.