John Mangelli

Mangelli said he “would make the Bethpage water plume my No. 1 priority.” The toxic plumes emanating from a Bethpage site where the Navy and the company now known as Northrop Grumman operated for decades are a “catastrophe,” and Mangelli said he would set up a special department to conduct further research on the plume. “I’m not going to worry so much on how to pay for it. I’ll get the funding to pay for it . . . The Town of Oyster Bay must do everything possible to make sure the drinking water is safe for us to drink and that Bethpage is safe to live in.” Mangelli said incumbent Joseph Saladino, appointed in January, “is not practicing what he preaches” in asserting he’s increasing transparency. He pointed to taxpayer-funded material that he said promotes Saladino and his campaign. “While claiming it’s a new day, it’s the same exact day because his administration is 100 percent controlled by the Republican power brokers,” he said. Mangelli, who works on debt consolidation cases as a lawyer, said the town’s debt needs to be restructured, and “we need to cut the waste, the fraud, the fat” out of the budget.

Mangelli, 51, of Bayville, is running on the Reform Party line. He was the Democratic candidate for supervisor in 2015, losing by 99 votes to then-incumbent John Venditto, who resigned in January after his arrest on corruption charges. Mangelli, an attorney, has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Maryland and a law degree from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He grew up in Commack and is married and has three children.