Roberts Accuses Fiore of Unethically Using North Haven Email Contacts for Campaign Mailing; He Says Claim Is 'Preposterous'

Barbara Roberts, who is challenging incumbent North Haven Mayor Chris Fiore in this month’s election, has charged that Fiore improperly used the village server and masked its address list to send out an email announcing the launch of his campaign website last week.

Fiore said the charge was baseless and just “a distraction” in the weeks leading up to the June 18 vote, manufactured by Roberts and Trustee Terie Diat, his political foe, who has endorsed her candidacy.

“I’m the guy who has to call his 23-year-old niece in Brooklyn every time I have a question about my iPhone,” he said. “To think that I could manipulate and disguise emails coming from the server is, honestly, preposterous.”

Furthermore, Fiore said he did not have access to the list his opponents said he had used.

On Monday, Roberts announced that she had filed a formal complaint with North Haven Village Clerk Beth Kamper, charging that Fiore had broken state election law and acted unethically by his actions.

She initially requested that Kamper or Village Attorney Scott Middleton send out an email to the village mailing list providing contact information for her campaign in exchange for dropping her complaint. But she said she had been advised to not make that demand, because it would be asking the two village officials to break the same law she is accusing Fiore of violating.

Roberts said she was also informed that she would be able to file a Freedom of Information Law request for the village’s email addresses and put together her own list, making her initial request unnecessary.

She said she had been informed by Middleton that the matter would be investigated and said she would refrain from filing a formal complaint with the Suffolk County district attorney’s office for now.

On Tuesday, Roberts said she did not receive the mayor’s email herself but was made aware of it by other village residents. “It was forwarded to me by tons of friends who were concerned that Chris had somehow gotten their personal email addresses,” she said.

She said the village maintains a large mailing list, which is used primarily for its newsletter, and that there is a subgroup, related to deer and tick management, that goes out to a more select number of village residents. Roberts said Diat is on that secondary mailing list, and when she checked the sender information from Fiore’s announcement, it appeared to her that it had been sent from the village’s Constant Contact email list.

If that is the case, it would be “a very clear violation of election law,” Diat wrote Roberts in an email.

“We have strict election laws that need to be followed and enforced as needed,” said Diat on Tuesday. “Every candidate needs to adhere to them. The rules are the rules.”

She added that no matter how small the village, its residents deserve a fair election. “I am pleased that the village attorney is taking this investigation seriously,” she said.

Roberts said she had conferred with Larry Silverman and Tom Garry, two lawyers with expertise in election law, and they both confirmed that if Fiore had, in fact, used the village server or email list, he would be in violation of the law.

But Fiore said his opponents had jumped to a very wrong conclusion. “I have a treasure trove of emails,” he said. “My list has been collected over the last four years from all kinds of lists that I get in my email.

“I don’t have a password to the Constant Contact email list,” he continued, adding that only Kamper and two other employees have that password. “I cannot access the list. I cannot access the server, except through my own account as village mayor.”

Kamper said she could not comment on the matter because of the investigation, but Middleton confirmed that only Kamper and other Village Hall clerical staff have that password.

The mayor said that East End Computer, the village’s information technology consultants, would examine his computer to determine the source of the email.

Fiore acknowledged that he likely added addresses from the village’s deer and tick control list to his own list because they had come to his personal account and he considered them to be in the public domain. He said if Roberts had the right to file a Freedom of Information request for the list, he should also be allowed to use addresses from it.

Middleton declined to comment further on the matter, pending the conclusion of the investigation.

“Until the IT people look into things, I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “For now, we are looking at it as an allegation.” He said he had directed Fiore, Diat, and the IT personnel to not delete any messages until the investigation is completed. Roberts was left off that list, he added, because she did not get the original email.

“We’re going to do it the right way,” he said of the investigation. “Let the political chips fall where they may. That’s not my concern.”

This is not the first charge of malfeasance to appear in a recent North Haven election.

When Diat and Fiore ran against each other for mayor in 2022, Diat filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections when Fiore and Trustee Dianne Skilbred were late in filing financial disclosure forms. The Board of Elections declined to pursue the matter, saying it was a village issue.

Fiore acknowledged his error but said his form was “all zeroes” because he did not solicit any funds for his campaign.

Diat also filed a complaint with WLNG radio, where Fiore hosted a program two nights a week, successfully arguing that she should be given equal time on the airwaves under Federal Communications Commission rules. The station pulled Fiore’s show through the rest of the campaign and gave Diat 120 free one-minute spots in exchange.