When the Suffolk County Democratic Committee holds its 2026 convention this month, committee members will vote on who will lead the committee going forward: its longstanding chairman, or a challenger who pledges to end what she calls a culture of patronage and corruption.
The committee will meet on Sept. 22 at 6 p.m. at the Hilton Long Island in Melville. Despite the distance from East Hampton Town, Perry Gershon of the town’s Democratic Committee, the party’s 2018 nominee to represent New York’s First Congressional District, said this week, “I will be at that meeting, and will offer to take any qualified voter who wants to go.”
Such is Mr. Gershon’s disdain for Rich Schaffer’s reign as the Suffolk Democratic Committee chairman. He said he will vote for Mr. Schaffer’s challenger, Kathryn Casey Quigley, the chairwoman of the Southold Town Democratic Committee.
A report in Newsday last month scrutinized Mr. Schaffer’s leadership of the committee, including an allegation by the Democratic candidate for county comptroller that party leadership had pressured him to withdraw from the race, which he rebuffed, and committee members alleging that the candidate for county clerk, who abandoned his campaign last month, did so after similar pressure from Mr. Schaffer.
According to published reports, Anthony Portesy, the now-former candidate for county clerk, was offered a Conservative line nomination for a judgeship. Committee members, according to Newsday, allege that Mr. Schaffer has a longstanding practice “to make deals with the opposing party.”
“He does nothing to facilitate the election of candidates countywide,” Mr. Gershon said of Mr. Schaffer, who is also the Babylon Town supervisor. When Mr. Gershon was the Democrats’ candidate for the House of Representatives, Mr. Schaffer “had no interest in helping my campaign.” And despite losing to Lee Zeldin, the incumbent representative, by just 4 percentage points, Mr. Schaffer “did nothing to clear the field so I could run again.” Mr. Gershon sought but did not receive his party’s nomination in 2022, with former Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming winning the nomination before losing to the Republican candidate, Nick LaLota, by 11 percentage points.
While some members of the East Hampton Democratic Committee support Mr. Schaffer, others, like Mr. Gershon, are behind Ms. Casey Quigley. The convention is usually a formality, said Anna Skrenta, the East Hampton Democrats’ chairwoman. “Coming from the East End, we probably wouldn’t have attended in the past,” she said on Monday, but she is strongly encouraging the entire committee to attend the Sept. 22 convention.
Ms. Skrenta noted Suffolk Democrats’ multiple losses in recent years. The Legislature flipped from a Democratic to a Republican majority following the 2021 election, with Republicans taking control for the first time since 2005. The county executive seat flipped Republican in 2023, when Ed Romaine defeated David Calone, as did the county district attorney’s office in 2021, when Ray Tierney defeated the incumbent, Tim Sini.
Following those losses, Ms. Casey Quigley and George Hoffman, a former committee member and the Democratic candidate for Brookhaven Town supervisor in 2019, “held a forum and brought all kind of stakeholders -- democracy and progressive organizations -- who provided feedback about their experiences and what kind of support they need more of from the county,” Ms. Skrenta said. “Kathryn and George put together a proposal with suggestions about what the county party could do for us to turn things around. None of it happened.”
“I’ve worked with Kathryn Casey Quigley for years,” Ms. Skrenta said, “and had a really great experience working with her. What she’s done in Southold is impressive -- a Republican town, and she turned it around through organization building, all the things you’d hope a party chair would do.”
When she became Southold’s Democratic chairwoman in 2017, Ms. Casey Quigley told The Star, there was one Democratic incumbent in the town. By 2025, there were 14.
“Part of the intention of my campaign has been to pull back the curtain and expose it more,” Ms. Casey Quigley said of what she called a “party-boss model, versus a party-of-the-people model.” Not enough people are paying attention to “the inner workings of county politics,” which she said is characterized by “patronage employees [who] benefit from the system staying as it is. Their only job is to protect the chair. It’s a mutually reinforcing circle of support, and until somebody breaks through, which I feel we’ve been able to do, it will continue this way, to the disservice of the people.”
She blamed Mr. Schaffer for Mr. Portesy’s withdrawal from the campaign for county clerk, noting that the Republican incumbent, Vincent Puleo, is now unopposed despite the revelation that he owns a St. James strip mall housing a foot spa that came under scrutiny for allegedly offering illicit sex acts. “He handed that election to the incumbent,” she said. “That’s handing our power over to the other side, preventing us from growing, stretching our candidates. We have an obligation to do the work of organizing and delivering a message to voters. It’s how we build the party.”
“You’re supposed to get funding for the candidate,” Mr. Gershon said. Mr. Schaffer “is supposed to be organizing, trying to raise money for the party, organizing Democratic voters, building a stable of younger candidates so when someone retires, you have someone younger to take their job. There’s none of that.” Instead, he charged, “There’s so much pay-to-play going on, it turns my stomach.”
Ms. Casey Quigley said that if Christopher Gallant, the Democrats’ nominee in the First Congressional District, does not defeat Mr. LaLota, “I hold the county accountable. Every two years, candidates come in there and have to start from zero,” she said, echoing Mr. Gershon. “They should be starting 10 miles down the line with everything all plugged in and handed to them.”
Mr. Gallant, Mr. Gershon said, “has no money.” According to the Federal Elections Commission, Mr. LaLota had more than $3.3 million on hand as of June 30 to Mr. Gallant’s $172,217.
Calls to the Suffolk Democratic Committee headquarters and to Babylon Town Hall seeking comment from Mr. Schaffer had not been returned as of yesterday.
Ms. Casey Quigley said she is “pushing for as fair and transparent a meeting as possible” at the Sept. 22 convention. She has asked that the vote for chair be taken by secret ballot. “I don’t expect to get that,” she said.
Mr. Gershon thinks Ms. Casey Quigley can win. “It’s hard to handicap because you don’t know who’s going to show up to the meeting,” he said, but “if everyone who can vote shows up, I think she wins.”
