Are the Salad Days Over?

At first we thought the talk of Assemblyman Joe Saladino being on the outs with party bosses and other electeds in TOBAY was just more hot air. The attached idea being that on eof the reasons he is on the outs is because he would not run against Democratic Legislator Dave Mejias. That set off the BS detector because Saladino doesn't live in the 14th LD and really wouldn't want to move.
Now we get more confirmation from better sources that yes indeed, Saladino is no longer a chosen one.
Joe is a party guy - a republican party guy. He has done what he needed to do to get ahead and get his turn to run for office. Back when he worked for TOBAY, it was remarked that Joe (while seated reading the newspaper every day) "..is going places."
Joe is a tireless self-promoter and not a photo-op goes by without Joe's smiling mug. Joe dutifully votes the way he is supposed to and as far as I can tell hasn't shown an independent streak. What could be the cause of other electeds not wanting to share a stage with him or party officials being exasperated with him?
One though is that during last years assembly race that favored Joe 3-1, Joe was too much of a pain to the party. While Joe could walk away with the race because of party registration in the district (NOTE: His vote total did go down), Joe still got needy and probably annoying.
Democrat Craig Heller put up a strong race and attended events to get his name and face out to the voters. This I'm sure didn't sit well with Joe.
In fact, at one event, Heller was ignored by the republican electeds when they were supposed to announce him presenting a citation on behalf of County Executive Suozzi. Heller was also asked not to "campaign" by republicans at an event even though Joe was doing it.
As the campaign went on, Joe asked the party for more signs (some re-painted Clavin signs) and help and had more and more signs got plastered all over the district. Joe was acting desperate when he didn't need to. That probably annoyed some people when they had their own elections to be concerned with.
Also we know that he asks other electeds or party leaders to step in on his behalf to squelch any bad talk about him. This started back when Joe ran in the special election to fill Labriola's vacancy. An elected official stepped in to get a letter to the local papers written about a picture of Joe's opponent.
Are Joe's fellow republicans fed-up with is needy-ness?
Another school of thought is that Joe wants to move up in TOBAY but that would mean cutting the line others have been standing on.
When pressed for more info, sources in the party are keeping it tight-lipped but confirm that there are problems. How bad or how mundane and insignificant they are has yet to be determined.
Will this affect next years election? Probably not unless the party really wants to throw him under a bus. And to "re-assign" an elected (he would get a no-show job somewhere) isn't something the Nassau GOP would do.
More to come as info becomes available.