For the past eight years, Tom Suozzi roamed these halls as Nassau County Executive. In about four weeks from today - January 1 to be exact - he will carry what remains of his personal belongings out of the West St. offices, out of public-life and out of politics for the foreseeable future. His latest political defeat culminated in a concession late Tuesday afternoon, ending three weeks of recounts in Nassau County’s closest election in recent memory. Wednesday he will have begun the first of many meetings with the man that will become the County’s eighth Executive, Republican Legislator Ed Mangano, who was considered an underdog in the election.

Following the first returns on election night, Suozzi led the race by a slim 237 votes, and talk of a recounts was immediate. Suozzi was quick to blame the results on school taxes - over which he protested he has no control - only to then propose in a November 8 op-ed piece that the County Executive should control all schools in Nassau. Meanwhile voting machines were being examined, checked, and rechecked before being sent back for further testing in the basement of the old Board of Elections building in Mineola while over 8,000 absentee ballots piled on top of tables sat waiting to be sliced open one by one. Suozzi trailed by as few as 122 votes last week only to see Mangano pull ahead by 377 during the recount of several heavily Republican districts and the tallying of absentee ballots.

In his concession speech, Suozzi spoke about wanting a smooth transition and allowing Mangano and his team enough time to form a new administration, saying that he “didn’t think it was fair... to prolong” the recount. Instead of trying to “Fix Albany” as Suozzi so feverishly campaigned during his failed bid against former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) in 2006, voters chose to fix Mineola, selecting a former janitor to do the job. As a sophomore in Bethpage high school, a then-16-year-old Mangano held the unenviable position at a local print shop, cleaning out black ink from the company bathroom every day after school.

A sea of red-ink now greets the seven-term Legislator as he inherits a Nassau County strikingly similar to when Suozzi first stepped into Nassau’s top job in 2001. But the Executive-elect painted an even gloomier picture during some of the debates than the reality faced following the $105 million bailout given to Nassau by New York State in order to save it from bankruptcy.

Mangano has cited looming debt service on about $1 billion in bonds caused by assessment settlements, an approximate $220-million budget deficit that is growing, and come 2011, many deferred raises and contractual salary increases. Running primarily on a platform of lowering taxes, Mangano proposed freezing property assessments for two years while corrections are made and using the new roll to calculate taxes for four years, and repealing the County’s 2.5-percent home energy tax.

While Suozzi’s concession cements Republican control of the County in both the Legislature and the Executive office, it throws many previous plans for the County up in the air - including the highly controversial Lighthouse project at Nassau Coliseum. Suozzi heavily backed Islanders owner Charles Wang in an effort to develop the 77-acre area of County-owned land surrounding the aging Coliseum, only to be rebuffed by concerns and unanswered questions by Supervisor Kate Murray and the Hempstead Town Board. Mangano has said he wants a sustainable Lighthouse project and that he favors smaller projects rather than large ones such as the Nassau Hub and Lighthouse project.