Terry Kelly of East Norwich is aiming to nab a seat on the Oyster Bay Town Board in the upcoming November elections. With a little luck he may just do that. On Friday, June 24, he was out with buddies on a fishing trip. “I caught a 157 lb. mako shark off Montauk,” said Mr. Kelly. “I go a few times a year around now, in June or July. We were on board the Windy, a charter out of Montauk.”
Currently Mr. Kelly is concentrating on getting his petitions signed to get on the ballot. “I need 350 signatures for the Independence Party, and 2,000 for the Democrats.”
He said, “I am one of the rare non-incumbents to get the backing of the Independence party. They usually only endorse incumbents. Since I am a registered Independent, they are running me as one of their own candidates.
“The Democrats are also backing me,” he said.
“The petitions have to be in by the 14th of July. It’s a Board of Elections formality. Then I’ll get the spots on the ballot and then I’ll get my literature ready and the campaign will kick off.”
He already has a website, electterrykelly.com. It is up and running but is still a work in progress.
Mr. Kelly grew up in Queens and has lived in East Norwich for 10 years, as of October. He attended St. John’s University and originally majored in biology but changed his focus and left to go into the New York City Police Department for five years. “I had the entrepreneurial bug and I left to start my own process server business and have been doing that since then.”
He added, “From 2006 to January of 2009 I owned and ran a tavern in East Northport, along with my other job.’’
Mr. Kelly said he was active with the East Norwich Civic Association for a while, “and then the kids came along. What got me back was the 3.5 percent tax increase in the town at a time when other municipalities were freezing taxes.”
He spoke out at a November 2010 town board meeting. “The quotes about the Town of Oyster Bay Public Safety Department made the Independence Party ask me to run. They said they were looking for some non-politicians to get involved in the election. The Democrats also asked me to run, as a result of my comments.”
Mr. Kelly and his wife Maryann have two boys, Will, 3 and Ben, 18 months old. Maryann is currently a secretary with Troutman Sanders LLC in NYC.
You may even recognize Mr. Kelly from TV. He had a recurring role on a children’s program, Zebby’s Zoo, a kids show that ran locally on Telecare TV. “That was actually before I lived in Long Island but people tell me they have seen it since then. I was the zookeeper and sometimes the mailman. It was a start-up show,” he said.
So you know, Mr. Kelly is ready to take his show on the road and speak at local civic associations and meetings as his campaign starts to take off.
