Southold Democratic Party Chair Kathryn Casey Quigley’s bid to unseat Suffolk County Democratic Party Chairman Rich Schaffer got a boost in the June 23 Democratic primaries, as 73 of the candidates she recruited for 81 contested seats won election to the county Democratic Committee.
In all, she said, about 400 candidates she has recruited, many for seats that had been empty, are now members of the county committee, which now has about 1,200 members.
Ms. Casey Quigley has been credited with organizing a sustained blue wave that has transformed Southold Town government since 2018. Long a Republican stronghold, the Southold Town Board is now comprised of five Democrats and one Republican, while Democrats also hold four of five seats on the Southold Town Trustees.
Pictured Above: Kathryn Casey Quigley at a 2025 Women’s March in Greenport’s Mitchell Park
She launched her bid for the Suffolk County Democratic Party Chair seat in December of 2025, pledging to bring her grassroots organizing skills to a role that she says has stagnated under Mr. Schaffer, who has served as County Chair since 2000 while also serving as Babylon Town Supervisor.
The County Committee, whose membership can include up to two representatives from each election district in the county, will vote to elect a new party chair at its biannual organizational meeting at an as-yet-to-be-determined date in September or early October.
Ms. Casey Quigley has focused to date on recruiting candidates to fill vacant seats on the committee and to run primaries for seats with incumbents, many of whom were backed by Mr. Schaffer.
“We started recruitment in early January,” said Ms. Casey Quigley in a mid-July interview with The Beacon. “It was a lot of work to collect signatures on petitions, which you do in winter when it’s cold, and then knocking on doors to get Democrats to vote for them in the primary.”
Ms. Casey Quigley said the county committee can have up to just over 2,000 members, but when she started her campaign, “the committee was 60 percent empty.”
While representation from East End towns “is in pretty good shape,” she said, her campaign managed to recruit 400 people, mostly from the five western Suffolk towns, to seek positions on the county committee, most of which they were appointed to without a contest. The 81 contested seats went to a primary in each individual election district, where races were decided in geographic terrain that often covers just a couple hundred Democratic voters.
“They turned out their districts — that’s the way it’s supposed to work,” she said of the candidates she recruited. “They’re doing the work to elect themselves, and learning how to elect more Democrats. That’s what we need — to run better campaigns and turn out more Democrats.”
She said her campaign had support from town Democratic committees, except for Babylon, where Mr. Schaffer is Town Supervisor and where her candidates picked up six seats on the committee, and Huntington, where a 2024 ballot scandal involving an unknown Working Families Party candidate, Maria Delgado, is still rocking local politics.
Ms. Casey Quigley says the organizational meeting legally has to happen between Sept. 17 and Oct. 6, after the New York State party holds its organizational meeting.
The vote for party chair is required to be a public roll call vote, she said, which is consequential when “the majority of his [Schaffer’s] supporters on the committee are his staffers or employees.”
“I’m really trying to pull the curtains back on all this, so people understand how this is done,” she said.
Mr. Schaffer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
If elected chair of the party, Ms. Casey Quigley said she plans to “immediately tackle the bylaws so the committee is less incentivized for loyalty toward the leader than loyalty toward the mission. We need to figure out how to run this committee in a way that eliminates conflicts of interest and protects the mission, and get to work building a strong, ethical and transparent Democratic party. The party is not an institution that people trust right now, and that’s actually for a good reason. There are a lot of problems with it. We have to fix the party.”
In the meantime, Ms. Casey Quigley said she’s focused this election cycle on helping regional Democratic candidates get elected this fall, including candidates for Congress, the New York State Legislature, town races in Smithtown and Riverhead Town Supervisor Jerry Halpin, who faces a re-election campaign against Councilman Ken Rothwell less than one year after taking office due to the phase-in of New York’s new even year election law.
“We have to build an organization that attracts great candidates,” she said.
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