Primary choice Tuesday

Two Democrats will face-off on Tuesday in a primary election for the seat vacated by Todd Kaminsky’s elevation to the state Senate.

The primary winner — Long Beach City Councilman An-thony P. Eramo, 42, or former Nassau County legislator Jeffrey M. Toback, 56 — will face the Republican nominee, Atlantic Beach resident Missy Miller, on Nov. 8.

At a forum hosted by the Long Beach League of Women Voters last Wednesday night, Tobak and Eramo clashed over a signature Kaminsky issue: Albany reform.

Eramo endorsed Kaminsky’s view that legislators should not hold outside jobs while Toback said that such a restriction was not a corruption-busting magic bullet. He favors term limits instead.

Both expressed dissstisfaction with reform legislation passed in the legislature’s last session.

Toback said that awarding hefty pay raises to members of a scandal-scared legislature - -— part of the reform package — was “bad government and the optics of it is horrible.”

“Right now,” said Eramo, “most people have lost faith in Albany.”

Referring to himself as “in the middle,” Toback said that “there’s enough liberal Democrats in the state Assembly — we don’t need one more,” a reference to Eramo who is endorsed by the Working Families Party.

Eramo spoke indecisively on the question of marijuana legalization, saying he was “not for it, not against it,” but then adding, “right now, I would say no.”

Toback, asserting that states which legalized pot found the financial rewards “overwhelming,” “would seriously consider” approving it in New York.

Both said they were opposed to convening a constitutional convention and agreed that the minimum wage should be increased.

“Fifteen-dollars is a good place to srart,” Toback said. The timetable for implementing a $15 wage is “way too slow,” Eramo said.

They each pledged to fight for affordable housing in a rising Long Beach real-estate market and clashed over whether or not Eramo supported a government subsidy to developers of the iStar “superblock” project.

The evening before the Long Beach forum, the candidates met in the Hewlett Woodmere Public Library for a discussion sponsored by the Southwest Nassau League of Women Voters, fielding 18 questions.

The 20th district covers Cedarhurst, Hewlett, Inwood, Lawrence, Woodmere, Oceanside, Island Park, Point Lookout, Atlantic Beach, Long Beach and Lido Beach, and parts of East Rockaway.