Election 2021

The Suffolk County Board of Elections issued the official results of the Nov. 3 election on Monday, adding the count of absentee ballots to the certified totals. The nearly six-week delay between the elections and their certification was due to a hand count of ballots in Southampton, Southold, and Shelter Island Towns, officials said last week.

"I was guardedly optimistic," East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said Wednesday after an apparent landslide victory for the Democratic Party. He pointed to a record of sound financial management, guiding the town through the Covid-19 pandemic while maintaining a functioning government, and forward movement on renewable energy and said, "I think the public responded resoundingly." 

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, an incumbent candidate, was one of only a few Democrats re-elected to their posts on Tuesday as Republicans earned victories in key races in county government.

Voters across Suffolk County flunked three of the five statewide propositions on Tuesday's ballot. The only successful measure that will impact the East End was an amendment to the state constitution to establish the "right to clean air, clean water, and a healthful environment for all."

The polls had been closed for more than two hours when word was conveyed that there would be no further update to the Suffolk County Board of Elections' vote tally of East Hampton Town's 19 election districts, but the early vote totals indicated a clean sweep for Democrats. At nearly 1 a.m., when the board of elections website finally populated with all of East Hampton Town's unofficial numbers, those results held: The Democrats' candidates had won every contested town race from supervisor to town trustee.

There will be one new face among the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage many of the town's beaches, waterways, and bottomlands on behalf of the public, when the nine-member body is sworn in in January. All nine candidates running on the Democratic ticket were elected.

With less than two weeks before the 2021 election was to be settled, the East Hampton Town Democrats had outspent their opponents by almost double and still had plenty left for a final push.

The Republican and Conservative Party candidates for East Hampton Town supervisor and two council member posts held a forum for voters on Sunday at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett, where they made a case for their candidacies and leveled a broad critique of the present administration.

Errol Toulon Jr., a Democrat who was elected to his first term as Suffolk County sheriff in 2017 cross-endorsed by the Conservative Party, says he is seeking re-election this year because he has some “unfinished business” to take care of.

There is little daylight between the three candidates for East Hampton Town Board who participated in last Thursday's debate hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork.

The race for the office of Suffolk district attorney pits the incumbent, Tim Sini, against Ray Tierney, a veteran prosecutor who is making his first run for elected office.

Bridget Fleming, a Democratic incumbent Suffolk legislator and former Southampton Town councilwoman, is seeking a fourth term, challenged this year by Robert J. Carpenter, a Republican making his first bid for public office.