Yves here. We are highlighting an important local race as a possible canary-in-the-coal-mine of voter rebellion against corrupt duopoly politics. As candidate and friend of the site back to Occupy Wall Street days, Abigail Field, explains, Suffolk County is a particularly important district. Not only is it large (1.5 million residents, more than in states like Wyoming, Idaho, and Maine), but it is also a bastion of great wealth. The fact that Abigail has a shot at winning is a testament to voters’ disgust with the status quo.
Please be sure to circulate this post to friends and family in Suffolk County.
By Abigail Field, candidate for Suffolk County Clerk
If you’re like me, part of your righteous rage at the corruption everywhere is at our powerlessness, our sense that we, personally, cannot do anything that will actually have an impact on the problem. If you’re lucky enough to live in Suffolk County, NY, this election you have real power against corruption.
Hundreds of Suffolk County voters have already been galvanized by their chance to demand fundamental change in a corrupt culture of backroom deals and self-interested government. They’ve volunteered to help my ever-more-plausible write-in campaign for Suffolk County Clerk.
Normally a write-in candidacy is preposterous, a fringe effort to try to make a point. But not this year. The situation corrupt party politics has forced on voters is so untenable, a movement to elect me is growing. We’re just racing time.
As soon as a Suffolk County voter understands how party bosses corrupted their ballot, they agree to write me in. No real persuasion is needed; one good contact locks in the vote. More, my name is easy to remember and to spell: Abigail Field. Last, the new voting machines make writing me in easier and less prone to error (though voting for me by mail is easy too.) My only hurdle is making sure people understand the situation before they vote. One voter apologized to me because they voted by mail before they knew.
Volunteer canvassers across the county have distributed my literature to nearly 20,000 people already; my digital ads are reaching many more, and my incredible, all-volunteer social media team is enabling me to serve up great content. Yesterday the Visibility Brigade and the LMN Singers donated me a performance to teach people my name that is going viral. Local news is covering me, as are local podcasters. Candidates and elected officials across the county have included me in their events and endorsed my candidacy—I’m even listed as an official candidate on the Suffolk County Democratic Committee Candidate page. People are writing postcards for me without asking me for postage; they’re texting my digital literature to their contacts; I was added to a candidate billboard for free too. Community groups invite me to their candidate forums, most recently the NAACP Huntington Branch. In the one month my campaign has been going, I’ve crisscrossed the county doing some 25 events and more every day. Now we’re getting ready for yard-sign based bit of political performance art.
We take delivery of 2,000 yard signs Monday, and aim to get about 1600 of them up by Tuesday night across the county, with people posting pics of the signs on social media and tagging the campaign. The other 400 we’ll put outside early voting locations and regular polling places (early voting starts in a week, Saturday October 24.) Anyone who wants a sign has been asked to email campaign@writeinabigailfield.com or tell us in a social media comment. Going from essentially no signs to signs everywhere should be visually jarring enough to drive notice and conversation, which is what I need most. This grassroots movement is real, and it is fueling a potential victory against overwhelming odds.
The Ballot Rigging Fueling Voter Rage and My Campaign
So why are Suffolk County voters so outraged?
Well, a bit of context: each of the 19 years I’ve voted in Suffolk County, one or more races on my ballot was decided by party bosses before I received my ballot. One ballot rigging method is called “cross-endorsing”, a practice legal in NY that allows different political parties to choose the same candidate. Most years every judicial race was decided before I got my ballot—only one name was endorsed by the Democratic, Republican, and Conservative Parties, and my only option as a voter to not vote or to ratify the party bosses’ allocation of patronage jobs among themselves. (This year, because the backroom deal blew up when the Democratic candidate for Comptroller refused to leave the race the way the Clerk did, Suffolk voters will actually have choices for judge.)
The other method of ballot rigging is running a “paper” candidate, someone who doesn’t campaign, is destined to lose, but appears on the ballot to give the party faithful someone to vote for. Almost everyone has noticed the rigging of the judicial races; the politically savvy understand about paper candidates. But the bottom line is nearly all Suffolk voters know deals are made to control election outcomes on our ballots; we don’t have to be convinced. We all hate it.
This year, Mike Torres, head of the Suffolk County Conservative Party, drove a ballot rigging stunt so extreme it’s fueling my campaign: he drove the Democratic candidate off the ballot to set up the incumbent Clerk, a Conservative named Vincent Puleo, for re-election by default. The Democratic candidate told Newsday when he left the race in August that if he didn’t leave the race he and other people would be fired from Jake’s 58/OTB. Party bosses control a lot of those jobs, so the threat was credible. The Democratic Party announced it wouldn’t run anyone else, and the window to add a new name to the ballot closed quickly.
I was endorsed as a write-in candidate by the dissident faction of the Suffolk County Democratic Party on September 13; a friend made my website on the 14th as I worked to design literature with incredible volunteers who stepped up immediately; and we went public on the 15th. The past month has been a whirlwind. But voters are clear: People want a choice.
Why would Torres care so much that he publicly drives the candidate off the ballot? Well, Puleo gives him the top Deputy Clerk job for $147k/year, and word on the street is Torres doesn’t show. Even if he does, the Clerk’s Office is so badly managed neither of them is trying. (To be fair, the Clerk’s office mismanagement predates Puleo, he just made it worse.) In any case, Torres feared Puleo would lose because of the potential Democratic wave—last year two paper candidates the County Democrats ran almost won. Puleo loses, Torres loses.
But we voters are upset not just because Puleo is incompetent and gifts his party boss lots of tax dollars; he’s also not trustworthy. Puleo owns a strip mall and in 2020 rented a slot in it to his friends of 30 years for their “K&T Foot Spa”. Newsday outed the foot spa as an illegal sex parlor by Googling and staking it out for one day. And yet Puleo, who insists he’s at the strip mall “all the time”, somehow didn’t know. That’s not credible.
So that’s who the party bosses are trying to force Suffolk County voters to pay $220,000+/year for four more years: a guy who does the job badly, gives his political party boss such a sweet gig the ballot was rigged to re-elect him, and surely knowingly profited from sex trafficking. That’s most of why a grassroots movement formed instantly to support my candidacy. The other reason is I’m legitimately a good candidate, with lots of relevant experience, and most of all, a real commitment to being a public servant.
Don’t think that just because this is a county race, the stakes are small; Suffolk is home to 1.5 million people, more than several states. You probably heard of Suffolk County even if unknowingly because it’s home to The Hamptons. They’re a high-profile, atypical slice of the County; most of Suffolk’s population lives in dense suburbia, with plenty of pockets of poverty, working-class places, and wealth that’s not on the Hamptons scale. We’re quite diverse racially and ethnically, though you wouldn’t know it driving around residential neighborhoods. Centuries of racism have left Suffolk highly segregated.
If I lose this race, it’s purely because I ran out of time to tell people. I’ve raised less than $10k, and yet people countywide have noticed and embraced me and are spreading the word. Voters are spontaneously rebelling against the corruption. Against the government incompetence and waste. The breadth and depth of support I’ve received is humbling and inspiring. I actually have a shot at winning, when normally my campaign would be preposterous.
If you’re sick of the corruption, and want to participate in the grassroots movement to help me win, please tell anyone you know in Suffolk County about what happened to their ballot and how to write me in. If you can spare $25 (or more or less), please donate it so I can pay for digital ads and yard signs.