Nassau County executive candidate went ballistic over fishing boat, according to local official
A boat parked off a swanky swath of the Long Island shore prompted a candidate for Nassau County executive to explode in an obscenity-filled rage, according to the local official targeted by his fit of anger.
Hempstead Councilman Bruce Blakeman lost his temper at the local commissioner of waterways over the sight of a fishing boat in Reynold’s Channel opposite the politician’s stately townhouse in a May 2017 incident, according to a memo written by the commissioner at the time.
Blakeman, a Republican now running for Nassau County executive, shouted: “Are you f--king with me?” at the commissioner, Thomas Doheny.
As the flabbergasted official tried to determine if the boat was violating any laws, Blakeman fumed: “I don’t need to be f--king lectured about the law.”
Blakeman complained that the boat could be the scene of a party, with “young ladies in bathing suits,” and left in anger, in Doheny’s words, saying: “I don’t need your f--king nonsense.”
Blakeman later got a bill passed barring boats from docking within about 100 yards of residences on Hempstead shores.
He claimed on Sunday that he couldn’t remember the 2017 incident.
“We have nothing against fishing boats or party boats,” Blakeman told the Daily News. “Just, they shouldn’t be too close to shore that they’re in somebody’s backyard.”
A perennial candidate for higher office, he unsuccessfully ran for New York City mayor in 2010, for U.S. Senate in 2010 and for Congress in 2014.
He was first elected to the Hempstead Town Council in 1993, and he was in the news when his ex-wife Nancy Shevell married former Beatle Paul McCartney in 2011.
This year, Blakeman is running against incumbent Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat, on an anti-property-tax platform.
