{"id":37985,"date":"2025-11-04T20:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/37985\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T20:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:09:09","slug":"candidate-who-seemingly-vanished-at-sea-could-win-seat-in-new-york-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/37985\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidate who seemingly vanished at sea could win seat in New York elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

A phone, clothes and a towel belonging to a political candidate in the New York City suburbs were found on the sand of a Long Island beach in April.<\/p>\n

Petros Krommidas is believed to have gone for a night swim to train for a triathlon.<\/p>\n

It has been five months, and there is still no sign of the 29-year-old former Ivy League rower.<\/p>\n

Despite being a missing person, a state judge recently ordered that Mr Krommidas’s name remain on the ballot for local office in Nassau County.<\/p>\n

When voting opened in the New York general elections on Tuesday, Long Beach and other South Shore communities were faced with a curious choice: re-elect the Republican incumbent or the Democrat who seemingly vanished at sea.<\/p>\n

Candidate’s final moments<\/p>\n

The last post on the Petros Krommidas for Nassau County Legislator Facebook page<\/a> was on April 23.<\/p>\n

Mr Krommidas had attended a monthly meeting for young Democrats and thanked them for being “such a thoughtful, engaged group committed to making a difference in our community”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Petros Krommidas was posting campaign photos to social media in the lead up to his disappearance. (Facebook: Petros Krommidas for Nassau County Legislator)<\/p>\n

At about 10:30pm that night, he would be seen for the last time, according to his family.<\/p>\n

He had parked his car at Long Beach, where he frequently went to exercise after work.<\/p>\n

“He has always been in great shape and was training for a triathlon,” his mother, Maria, wrote in a Facebook post at the time.<\/p>\n

“He was not a stranger to cold water training.”<\/p>\n

His family reported him missing the following day, saying it was “completely out of character for him not to respond”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Petros Krommidas’s family reported him missing on April 24. (Supplied: Nassau County Police Department)<\/p>\n

In the days after his disappearance, family and friends joined first responders in scouring Long Beach’s broad, a more than 4.8-kilometre-long swath of sand.<\/p>\n

The beach is located just east of the New York City borough of Queens.<\/p>\n

After months of gruelling search operations by police and divers, Mr Krommidas has not been found and is presumed dead.<\/p>\n

Missing person flyers with images of his youthful, smiling face are tattered and faded but still visible on telephone poles around Long Beach.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, campaign signs for his opponent, Patrick Mullaney, are displayed on fences along the main thoroughfares and on tidy residential lawns.<\/p>\n

\"Posters<\/p>\n

Posters for Nassau County Republican candidate Patrick Mullaney. (Facebook: Long Beach Republican Committee)<\/p>\n

Bids for new candidate denied<\/p>\n

Local Democrats attempted to field a replacement to run for the seat in the Nassau County Legislature.<\/p>\n

But two Republican voters took them to court and won.<\/p>\n

Why a ‘radical’ Democrat socialist is causing waves in the US<\/a><\/p>\n

Donald Trump has thrust the Democrats into the political wilderness but an uprising in the gritty streets of New York may be their future.<\/p>\n

“A ‘missing person’ status does not qualify as a vacancy,” Judge Gary Knobel said in a September ruling.<\/p>\n

He noted that someone needed to be missing for at least three years to be legally declared dead.<\/p>\n

And because Mr Krommidas had already been selected as the party’s nominee, he was required by law to be the candidate.<\/p>\n

Initially, some Democrats accused their rivals of trying to keep him there for political advantage.<\/p>\n

Nassau County Young Democrats wrote in a Facebook post that forcing their “missing friend to stay on the ballot is frankly ghoulish”.<\/p>\n

But Mr Krommidas’s family and supporters have since been encouraging voters to cast their ballot for the young candidate to honour his memory.<\/p>\n

\"American<\/p>\n

Petros Krommidas could still win his seat despite being missing. (AP: Frank Franklin II)<\/p>\n

“If you’re in District 4, vote for my amazing brother, Petros Krommidas, who was and would have continued to be an incredible leader for our community,” his sister, Eleni-Lemonia Krommidas, wrote on Facebook this week.<\/p>\n

“This isn’t just about honoring the amazing person he was, but it’s also about ensuring a fair election.”<\/p>\n

James Hodge, a Long Beach resident who worked with Mr Krommidas at the Nassau County Board of Elections, had been tapped by Democrats to run in his place.<\/p>\n

He hoped that a win for Mr Krommidas would trigger a special election in which the Democrats could put forward another candidate.<\/p>\n

“We need to stand by and honour his name and memory,” Mr Hodge told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

“Let’s give him that victory. It’s the right thing to do.”<\/p>\n

Mr Krommidas’s situation is not entirely unfamiliar.<\/p>\n

Dennis Hof, owner of the Nevada brothel featured on HBO’s Cathouse documentary series, died weeks before the 2018 election, but still captured a seat in the state legislature.<\/p>\n

In 2020, North Dakota legislative candidate David Andahl died from COVID-19 the month before the election and still won.<\/p>\n

And in 2022, Pennsylvania state representative Anthony DeLuca won re-election after dying from lymphoma the month prior.<\/p>\n

ABC\/AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A phone, clothes and a towel belonging to a political candidate in the New York City suburbs were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[26332,989,26330,131,133,132,2890,2887,4694,26331,14039],"class_list":{"0":"post-37985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-candidate-missing","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-general-elections","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-long-island","15":"tag-nassau-county","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-petros-krommidas","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}