Major Cost For Minor Party Primaries

Three primary elections for town office in Southampton on Tuesday, June 22, are expected to cost taxpayers $118,000, even though it is likely that only a few hundred voters will cast ballots.

The races involve the Working Families Party, where Sean McArdle, a former Conservative, and his wife, Miranda Schultz, who was formerly registered as a Republican, changed their party affiliation in January and will challenge the Working Families nominees, Robin Long and Tommy John Schiavoni, who are both Democrats. A third race pits Marc Braeger, who was formerly a Conservative, against Democrat Thomas Neely for the party’s nominee for highway superintendent.

There are also town justice primaries on the Working Families, Democratic, and Conservative lines. Bryan Browns and Southampton Town and Village Justice Barbara Wilson are challenging two Democrats, Adam Grossman and Shari P. Oster, for the Working Families nod, and Justice Wilson is also challenging Mr. Grossman and Ms. Oster for a place on the Democratic line and Mr. Browns and Patrick J. Gunn for a spot on the Conservative line.

Members of both the Working Families and Democratic parties have cried foul over the move by former Republicans and Conservatives to wage primaries on their lines, calling them raiders, who do not share the parties’ political philosophies and are only running to deny those parties’ preferred candidates a place on the ballot. The move is also expensive, they say.

Suffolk County Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner Anita Katz said the primaries will cost taxpayers about $118,000 to run. It costs approximately $2,000 to rent and staff each of the 42 election districts in the town, she said. In addition, it costs the BOE another $10,000 to rent voting machines. Finally, there is another $2,000 in costs for each of the 12 countywide early voting sites, where party members have been allowed to cast votes as of last week, regardless of their place of residency. For example, a voter registered in Southampton who works in Babylon, is allowed to cast an early ballot for a Southampton Town election there.

“Basically, these are the people who always complain about us as big spenders,” said Southampton Democratic Committee Chairman Gordon Herr of the Republicans and Conservatives. “It’s not that they even want to win. They are simply spoilers. They are trying to do all they can to make sure we don’t have this line on the ballot.”

“Look at what this little ego game is costing taxpayers,” added Ms. Long, the Democratic Town Board candidate.

To counter the effort, the Democrats have established the Clean Water Party, which is cross-endorsing Democratic candidates and will try to appeal to third-party voters interested in water-quality issues in November’s election.

Charles McArdle, a Conservative Party leader who is running for highway superintendent, waged a successful primary challenge on the Working Families Party line against Democrat Craig Catalanotto in the 2019 Town Board race, when only 38 Working Families members cast votes in the primary. He is Sean McArdle’s father.

Both Mr. McArdle and Southampton Town Republican Chairman David Betts declined to comment for this article.

So far in early voting through the weekend, 20 people had cast ballots in the Working Families primary while 123 Democrats had cast ballots in their party’s primary, according to Ms. Katz. Having been burned once before, Democrats say they have been urging party members to turn out to vote on Tuesday and expect the Working Families Party to do the same.

“We have never done this to another party,” Ms. Long said of the Democrats. “We have never raided, we have never challenged, but we have been cross-endorsed.”

She likened the practice to another form of voter suppression. “From making it illegal to hand out bottles of water in voting lines to searching for bamboo shoots in ballots, now it has come home to roost in Suffolk County and Southampton Town,” she said. “It’s not the loss of the line. It’s what this represents.”

Ms. Long said she was particularly upset with Justice Wilson, who screened for the Democratic nomination and was not chosen as one of the party’s candidates.

“She went through the same screening as Democrats did,” Ms. Long said, “and she was found not qualified to carry our banner.”

But Justice Wilson said she wanted to give voters in all parties an opportunity to nominate her.

“I’m not representing a party, I’m representing justice,” she said. “I say let the people have their choice as to who they want their candidates to be. Why give it to David Betts or Gordon Herr and whoever else is in their inner circle to decide.”