Shelter Island Town Attorney Stephen Kiely Wins Republican Nomination for 1st District Assembly Race

Shelter Island Town Attorney Stephen F. Kiely, 48, has been nominated by the Suffolk County Republican Party as the GOP candidate for the 1st District State Assembly seat that will open with the retirement of longtime incumbent Fred W. Thiele Jr.

Kiely, a Mattituck resident who has an extensive background as a town attorney, having also served as an assistant town attorney in both Brookhaven and Southampton, likely will face off against Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, a Democrat, in November.

Kiely, who said he was expecting to win the Conservative Party nomination as well, said, if elected, he would serve as “the loudmouth for the East End,” speaking out against what he described as the overreach of Governor Kathy Hochul.

“It hurts me to my core whenever a governmental entity tries to tread on smaller municipalities,” Kiely said of Hochul’s effort last year to override local zoning laws to develop affordable housing across the state. “I’m a big ‘home rule’ guy. And when they wanted to shove housing down our throats, that really got me involved politically.”

Although Hochul has withdrawn that proposal, which would have required Southold to build 473 houses a year, Kiely said she had a similar idea that would create a state housing authority that could condemn property and supersede local zoning laws.

Last fall, Kiely ran unsuccessfully for Southold Town Board, but he said if he had the Conservative line, he likely would have been the highest vote-getter in the race. He previously ran an unsuccessful race for State Supreme Court justice.

If elected to the Assembly, Kiely said he would be a “countervailing voice” against being just another Democrat who would “go lockstep with whatever ‘High-Density’ Hochul wants.”

Among the issues Kiely said he would work on are bail reform, which he said has gone too far in removing judicial discretion, and overturning the governor’s executive order making New York “a sanctuary state.”

“We can’t afford to take care of migrants if we have to take money away from school districts,” he said.

Kiely said he would also work for a moratorium on the placement of battery storage facilities on the East End, which he said pose a dangerous threat to an area that does not need them.

Finally, Kiely said he would sponsor a bill making it a felony to sell drugs laced with fentanyl that leads to the user’s death.

Kiely was born and raised in Selden, but he said he spent a good portion of every year at his grandparents’ home in the Bay Point subdivision outside Sag Harbor and North Haven. “I spent my youth on Long Beach and that little body of water across from my grandparents’ house, where I’d go clamming,” he said.

After getting his law degree, Kiely went to work for the Brookhaven Town attorney’s office before moving on to Southampton, where he lived in Noyac. During his time in Southampton, Kiely said he was most proud of drafting the town’s rental law, which requires that homeowners obtain permits that certify their houses are safe, and imposes other limits on how a private property can be rented.

Kiely moved with his family about 18 years ago to Mattituck after, he said, it became too expensive to remain in Southampton. “I wanted to find the most rural place I could find on Long Island,” he said.

Kiely has served as Shelter Island Town attorney for the past two and a half years. Before that, he said his law practice was “a bit of a hybrid” because he did some private work along with municipal work, serving as a prosecutor for Riverhead Town and as senior deputy county clerk for court actions.