[caption id="attachment_66717" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Tim O'Neill says he is ready to be Rockland County's sheriff."]
Tim O'Neill isn't interested in Dodge or Tombstone. He wants to the Sheriff of Rockland County, a place that is, admittedly, west of the Hudson, but decidedly eastern in much of its political ways.
And this, for O'Neill, means winning a Democratic Party primary, a task that many in these parts would see as being every bit as difficult as bringing law to those fabled western towns in their Wild West days.
O'Neill, who has served in the Clarkstown Police Department for over thirty years, is standing before Democrats who will vote in the Tuesday, Sept. 13 primary.
Nobody can tell which way those voters will go, but O'Neill is fervently hopeful that many who live in a county with such a vibrant Irish cultural and social life will take note of his work over the years for Rockland's Irish American community.
"I was honored and humbled to be this year's grand marshal at the Rockland County St. Patrick's Day Parade. The crowd was estimated in our local paper at 80,000 people. It was a beautiful Sunday after a very hard winter that brought out the crowds," O'Neill recalled, perhaps dwelling on voter support next week that will match, in primary terms at least, that kind of parade turnout.
"In past years I have been parade commander and Hibernian of the year. I have traveled on numerous occasions with NYPD Detective Steve McDonald to Northern Ireland on his missions of peace and reconciliation," he told the Echo.
O'Neill has also acted as the county's police liaison when Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and other leading political figures from Ireland, have visited Rockland County.
"It seems we have a few each year," he noted wryly.
O'Neill has been endorsed by, among others, Congressman Joe Crowley, one of the top Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"I met the congressman when he was in the New York State Assembly, when he was pushing the legislation about the Great Hunger being taught in our schools. Joe didn't forget, and I am thankful to him," O'Neill said.
According to his campaign literature, O'Neill is intent on making the county's sheriff's department more efficient, this by cutting costs "without undermining public safety."
He says he plans to cut spending by a minimum of five percent, eliminate waste, and make the department live within its means.
"And he'll do it with smarter choices and better ideas," states his campaign,
But first there is the primary, an internal party contest that, like that non-meeting of minds at the OK Corral, is not for the politically meek, or faint hearted.
