Incumbent Suffolk County Democratic Party Chairman Rich Schaffer was returned to his seat running the county party Tuesday evening, after facing a grassroots challenge from Southold Town Democratic Party Chair Kathryn Casey Quigley.
Mr. Schaffer won 57.2 percent of committee members’ weighted votes after 12 rounds of voting, which took place at the county Democratic Committee’s biannual organizational meeting at the Huntington Hilton.
Mr. Schaffer won 113,010 weighted votes from the committee members’ districts, tabulated based on the number of votes cast in the members’ district in the most recent gubernatorial election, while Ms. Casey Quigley won 84,234.
Pictured Above: A post Tuesday evening during an early round of voting from the Democrats for Brookhaven Facebook page.
Ms. Casey Quigley, who in her role as Southold party chair has been credited with organizing a sustained blue wave, transforming Southold Town government, launched her bid for the party chair position in December of 2025. She pledged to bring her grassroots organizing skills to a role she says has stagnated under Mr. Schaffer, who has served as County Chair since 2000 while also serving as Babylon Town Supervisor.
She ran an extensive ground campaign to challenge county committee seats in this year’s June Democratic primaries, when 73 of the candidates she recruited for 81 contested seats won their races, despite attempts by the party leadership to disqualify many from the ballot.
The race has also played out extensively on social media — Ms. Casey Quigley frequently posted updates on her campaign on Instagram.
“I think our country, our county, our communities, our neighbors, our friendships and our people are worth the fight, and we’re going to keep fighting,” said Ms. Casey Quigley in an Instagram post Wednesday morning, adding that she plans for fight for Democratic candidates in this fall’s elections and “after that to have more transparent, trustworthy party and a more transparent, effective government at all levels. That’s worth fighting for… I’m pretty excited to see how much we’re able to build and going to do.”
Mr. Schaffer rolled out a bevy of endorsements on his campaign’s Facebook page over the past several months, including from Governor Kathy Hochul, retired State Assemblyman Fred Thiele and State Attorney General Letitia James.
The campaign turned heated in recent weeks, with Ms. Casey Quigley’s camp alleging Mr. Schaffer had offered money to a committee member to leave work to attend the vote, and that the county Democratic election commissioner had asked employees of the Board of Elections to vote for Mr. Schaffer.
North Fork Suffolk County Legislator Greg Doroski, who endorsed Ms. Quigley in August, said in an Instagram post Tuesday that he had seen the text message exchange between Mr. Schaffer and a committee member “asking if they could pay his father to miss work so he could show up and vote for him,” and that he had also seen video from inside the Suffolk County Board of Elections in which “a man who sounds like Commissioner Alberts tells employees it is imperative they show up to vote for Rich ‘to keep him chairman so you still have jobs.'”
“Before going public with the endorsement, and after learning about the backroom deal to remove our our candidates from the ballot, I told Rich Schaffer directly that he should resign. I believe that more strongly today,” said Mr. Doroski. “Our politics are broken, and too many of us are looking in the wrong direction to explain why. Blaming the GOP is easy, and also warranted. But if we stop there, it’s only half the story. Us Democrats also need to look inward. I believe this now more than ever.”
The Schaffer camp, on its Team Schaffer Facebook page, has denied the allegations and accused Ms. Casey Quigley and her supporters, who call themselves Team KCQ, of spreading misinformation and threats.
“At the same time they have supporters threatening Democratic elected officials and workers, the Quigley camp is falsely reporting facts and desperately trying to malign Rich Schaffer,” according to the Team Schaffer page. “The allegations that Mr. Schaffer is bribing and threatening members of his committee is pathetic and ridiculous.”
On Monday, Mr. Schaffer’s campaign posted screenshots of several strongly worded posts from Ms. Casey Quigley’s supporters calling them “examples of vile and threatening online comments from Quigley supporters which she has never disavowed and which have been echoed in countless conversations,” and claimed Ms. Casey Quigley had been spreading misinformation when she said that registered New York Democrats could attend Tuesday’s meeting.
“The convention hall is at capacity,” read the post. “Nearly 1,400 elected members of the Suffolk County Democratic Committee are entitled to participate, and the Hilton ballroom can accommodate only those Committee members and the personnel needed to conduct the meeting. For that reason—and that reason alone—credentials will be required for entry.”
Some grassroots organizers pledged on social media Tuesday to continue her fight.
“Rich Schaffer won. We said this to Newsday and we said it last year on the Alt Dems substack before a challenge ever happened: sitting chairs don’t lose. It’s a tightly controlled internal process, not a democratic one,” said the Facebook page ‘Alternative Democratic Committee.’ “With that said, Kathryn Casey Quigley should be commended for coming closer than anyone thought possible. She pushed boundaries, her team worked their asses off. The Suffolk County Democratic Committee is dead, but Democrats are very much alive. Let that s*%t die, and build outside their reach. It can be done, and it must. Because the Suffolk Dem Committee is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican and Conservative Parties.”
“Rich Schaffer barely retained his title of Chair but the new leader of the Democratic Party is KCQ and the Reformers,” said another post, including an editorial cartoon, on Democrats for Brookhaven’s Facebook page. “It is time to focus on attacking Lalota and Garbarino and the Conservative Party.”
— Beth Young
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