In a big night for East Hampton Town Democrats, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez was elected supervisor Tuesday and will become the fourth woman to hold that post in the town’s history. With all 19 election districts reporting, the Suffolk County Board of Elections’ unofficial tally had Ms. Burke-Gonzalez and her running mates, Councilman David Lys and Tom Flight, cruising to victory over their Republican opponents.
Democrats also dominated in every other local race, including for nine trustee seats, with voters returning the seven incumbents who sought re-election, six of them Democrats and one a Republican who is cross-endorsed by Democrats. Two more Democrats -- one also cross-endorsed by the town’s Republican committee -- won seats as well. That campaign is covered separately.
According to unofficial results from the board of elections, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, who with her colleagues also appeared on the Working Families Party line, had 4,334 votes. Her Republican and Conservative Party challenger, Gretta Leon, had 2,067 votes. Mr. Lys and Mr. Flight, a Montauk resident and first-time candidate, had won 4,330 and 4,037 votes, respectively. Their Republican and Conservative Party challengers, Scott W. Smith and Michael Wootton, were trailing with 2,078 and 2,037 votes, respectively.
Absentee ballots already received by the board of elections are included in the unofficial count, a board official said on Tuesday, though the deadline to receive them is Tuesday, Nov. 14. Votes cast by affidavit at polling stations were also tallied on Election Night, the official said.
“Those of us called to public service know that the work is the reward,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, presently the deputy supervisor, told a crowd of Democratic committee members and supporters at Coche Comedor in Amagansett, where the party had gathered to monitor election results. “And there is much work to do these next two years -- preserving our community, investing in our future, improving townwide communications, and modernizing how town government operates.”
Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, who is the deputy supervisor, was elected to the town board in 2013 after serving for nine years on the Springs School Board. She will succeed Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, who early this year announced that he would not seek re-election after three terms as supervisor and six years as councilman.
She will lead a board comprising Mr. Lys, Mr. Flight, Councilwoman Cate Rogers, who is midway through her first term, and a councilmember who she will appoint to fill her vacant seat, presumably in January.
Mr. Lys, a former member of the town’s zoning board of appeals, was appointed to the board in 2018, following Mr. Van Scoyoc’s election to supervisor. He was elected in his own right later that year and re-elected for a full four-year term in 2019. Mr. Flight, a member of the Montauk School Board, is an emergency medical services provider and business owner. A native of London, he became a year-round resident in 2009.
The Republican candidates, who had gathered at the Palm in East Hampton on Tuesday night, left by 11 with results from several election districts still not reported on the board of elections site. They declined to comment until the final numbers were posted.
The campaign was marked by debates about the acute shortage of affordable housing in the town and the impact that has on businesses, essential service providers like fire and emergency medical workers, teachers, nurses, even highly compensated professionals like doctors. The incumbents and Mr. Flight pointed to recently completed housing developments and others under construction or in the pipeline, their opponents decrying what they called an unacceptably slow pace of building affordable housing. The town-wide overhaul of its emergency and personal wireless communications infrastructure was another topic, as was the litigation in which the town is embroiled regarding East Hampton Town Airport and the privatization of a 3,100-foot stretch of ocean beach on Napeague popularly known as Truck Beach.
In other races, David Filer, running on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines, was elected town justice, besting his Republican and Conservative Party challenger, Brian Lester, 3,929 votes to 2,524, according to the unofficial count. He will succeed Lisa R. Rana, who did not seek re-election.
“What you learn while doing this,” Mr. Filer said on Tuesday night, “is that there are so many people who are really dedicated to a good future for East Hampton, both Democrats and Republicans.” Mr. Lester, he said, “could not be more of a gentleman. He’s a good lawyer, but I think more important than that, he has a long record of giving back to the community, which I think is impressive.”
Stephen Lynch, the superintendent of highways, was unopposed for re-election, as were Jeanne Nielsen and Jill Massa, the incumbent assessors.
The elections bring a lackluster 2023 campaign to a close, the results predictable given the Democratic Party’s overwhelming advantage in voter registration. According to the board of elections, there are 9,934 registered Democrats in the town against 3,843 Republicans. There are 167 registered Conservative Party members and 52 Working Families Party members. “Blanks,” or registered voters who are unaffiliated with a party, number 5,470, and another 1,034 fall into the “others” category, voters registered with a party that is not on the ballot line, according to the board of elections.
The winning candidates will be sworn in at the town board’s organizational meeting, in January 2024.
