Democratically elected local boards resisted Moses’s Jones Beach plan by referendum

Evidence

The five board members just stared at him. They had been elected, placed in their seats at the board table, by the votes of the baymen, and they knew that one way to make sure they would not be re-elected would be to demonstrate anything less than complete vigilance over the priceless heritage of the sacred bay bottoms. … Within two months after Moses’ request for a referendum, not only the Babylon Town Board but the governing board of every village on the South Shore of Suffolk County—as well as the villages’ chambers of commerce, boards of trade and civic associations—were lined up against the proposal, and Judge James B. Cooper, editor and owner of the Leader, could proclaim with satisfaction that “the project at present has as much chance of carrying as a Great South Bay clam has of growing teeth.” When Moses turned to Oyster Bay, furious Oyster Bay citizens formed a “Save Our Beaches” committee that within days had a membership of thousands. In desperation, Moses turned to Hempstead, although he knew that votes in Hempstead Town, as, indeed, in all of Nassau County, went whichever way the county’s iron-fisted Republican boss, G. Wilbur Doughty, wanted, and he had been unable to convince Doughty to want Jones Beach development. Doughty allowed the proposition to be placed on the ballot in the November 1925 election, and the vote was 12,106 to 4,200 against it. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 899