Schneiderman Not Ready to Concede County Comptroller Race

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said Thursday he is not ready to concede the race for Suffolk County comptroller, even though his incumbent opponent, John M. Kennedy Jr., declared victory on Tuesday night. 

Mr. Schneiderman ran on the Democratic ticket for the county post. He said that although the election returns showed a narrow margin of victory for Mr. Kennedy, there are enough uncounted absentee ballots to reverse the outcome.

"The board of elections has not yet counted some 30,000 absentee ballot votes," Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement from his campaign. The absentee ballots are "disproportionately from registered Democrats," he said. 

Mr. Kennedy leads Mr. Schneiderman by 8,623 votes out of a total of 484,757 cast on Election Day.

“It’s important that every vote gets counted,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “I am interested in getting this resolved however it goes. If and when it becomes statistically impossible for the race to be called in my favor, I would then be prepared to concede.”

Mr. Schneiderman has one year left in his term as supervisor.