For more than a century, the Republican Party has ruled the town, and Democrats had never considered spending money on television ads for town elections.
"In these local county and town elections going on now, a lot of the Republicans are piling on this issue as we speak," Mr. Dawidziak said.
In such places, the least hopeless course may be to ensure as wide a measure of democracy as possible at the lowest local level (for instance, in last weekend's Bosnian town elections, whose results are not yet clear).
Proponents say that the district system, which will create six election districts in time for town elections next year, will mean better representation for far-flung areas of the town.
The dispute is threatening to land the two sides in federal court, affect the town elections in November, and even lead to more of the town's disappearing farmland being developed -- the opposite of what both sides wanted to achieve.
And the reason for the two parties' laser focus on the town elections is simple: the fate of the Nassau County Republican Party, perhaps the nation's last great party machine, hinges on the outcome.
The state Superior Court will have to untangle the case quickly, or the issue will be moot since the recall question must be submitted by March 15 to appear on the ballot in time for town elections in May.
When his friends who were police officers asked the elder Mr. Dobratz, who was active in Local 777 of the plumbers' and pipe fitters' union, to represent them in one of the seven seats on the Old Saybrook Police Commission, he did that, too, winning and keeping a seat in town elections.
But last year, in the backlash against Nassau County's Republican leadership and the fiscal crisis it had wrought, voters gave control of the county Legislature to the Democrats for the first time in 83 years, and their anger spilled over into the town elections.
One theory has it that Mr. Mondello will rise or fall with Mr. Bent, but a competing theory holds that Mr. Mondello's future is tied to the county Legislature and major town elections, and that a victory by Mr. Bent, a party outsider, could actually harm the career of a man who embodies party politics.
