Election Day on a Thursday? Party primary votes set for Sept. 10

Members of the Republican, Conservative and Independence parties in Riverhead head to the polls to pick their candidates for town board and town justice tomorrow in an unusual Thursday primary election.

Candidates and their committees are now focused on getting the vote out tomorrow. Turnout is usually light in a party primary for local office, but a primary election held on a Thursday instead of the typical Tuesday presents a special challenge. Rain in the forecast tomorrow could further suppress turnout.

Those circumstances usually benefit the incumbents — but usually the incumbents are running with the support of the political party organization behind them. Not so in this election: incumbent Supervisor Sean Walter and Councilman James Wooten were both passed over by the Republican party committee, which instead nominated Councilwoman Jodi Giglio for supervisor and newly retired police officers Tim Hubbard and Robert Peeker for council. (The other incumbent councilman, George Gabrielsen, aslo a Republican, chose not to seek re-election.)

“We’re working the phones and will continue that effort throughout the day tomorrow,” Riverheads Republican leader Mason Haas said in an interview this afternoon. “It is an odd day,” Haas said, referring to the Thursday election. “We’ve been through the town three times and we’re finding people still don’t realize it’s on Thursday this year. Everybody’s used to voting on a Tuesday.”

Both supervisor candidates say the response they’ve received going door-to-door in town has been excellent. Giglio says people are saying they’re ready for change in town hall, while Walter says people are expressing satisfaction with his efforts and results over the last nearly six years.

“I’m feeling really good about it, but if it turns out not in my favor tomorrow, I will run as a Conservative,” Walter said in an interview last week.

A former registered Conservative who once served as that party’s committee chairman in Riverhead, Walter has the Conservative party line in the November election and has pledged to continue his re-election campaign. The November supervisor’s race could be a three-way race regardless of what happens tomorrow, since Giglio has the Independence Party line. A three-way contest could benefit the Democratic supervisor candidate, Anthony Coates, if Republican voters are split between Walter and Giglio.

The council race is a contest among three retired Riverhead police officers: the incumbent councilman, Wooten and Hubbard and Peeker, who both retired in the past year. A fourth retired cop, John Dunleavy, who is also a Republican, is in the middle of his third four-year term. He is currently the longest-serving town board member. Wooten was first elected in 2007 and was re-elected in 2011, after briefly challenging Walter for the GOP supervisor nomination.

Giglio sought the supervisor nomination in 2009, when the Republicans nominated Walter instead. Then a newcomer to politics and head of a short-lived business group, Giglio says the party leader at the time told her the nomination had been promised to Walter, who had run for town council two years earlier. She backed down from a floor fight at a brokered party convention where she agreed to run for council instead.

The relationship between Walter and Giglio has been rocky almost from the start. Hostilities have ebbed and flowed over the course of their tenure in office, with the councilwoman at one point accusing the supervisor of harassment and even filing a complaint against him with police. They have argued publicly in the board room — though each of the various members of the all-Republican board have publicly sparred with each other over an assortment of issues. Both Walter and Giglio have publicly argued, not only with each other but also with Dunleavy and Gabrielsen.

Promising a “more harmonious” board has been one of the tenets of the Giglio-Hubbard-Peeker campaign.

The two council candidates have said since they first declared their candidacies that bickering among board members has inhibited the board’s ability to accomplish things for the good of the town. Specifically they fault Wooten for what they say is an undistinguished record in eight years on the board.

Wooten acknowledges that he is “not a legislation type of councilman” but prides himself on working “one on one with citizens to help them with their problems.” He points to the privatization of the town animal shelter as one of his major accomplishments as a councilman.

Walter, who is seeking his fourth two-year term as supervisor, says he’s running on his record and points to holding the line on taxes, balancing the town’s budget, ongoing downtown revitalization and progress in redeveloping the former Grumman site in Calverton as the cornerstones of his career as supervisor.

Walter claims his challenger has “sold herself out” to western Suffolk interests and argues that the campaign waged against him by a super PAC funded by the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association is evidence of that purported sell-out. Walter says the county police union wants to take over the town police and argues that Giglio struck a deal with the union to gain its backing. Both Giglio and the Suffolk PBA president vehemently deny that charge. Suffolk PBA president Noel DiGerolamo says spending by the L.I. Law Enforcement Foundation PAC on numerous direct mailings, radio and Internet ads and phone calls is because Walter is “incompetent” in his management of the town police department and invited the Guardian Angels to patrol in Riverhead.

Giglio positions herself as a business owner who will run town government as a business, trimming costs and increasing efficiencies. She also calls for beefing up the town’s code enforcement division to allow the town to crack down on overcrowded housing and advocates a “get tough” stance on undocumented residents, including having the police take people who cannot produce proof of legal residency in the U.S. into custody for fingerprinting.

Town justice primaries

There are three candidates for town justice, vying for nominations on the Republican, Conservative and Independence lines.

Riverhead town attorney and former supervisor Robert Kozakiewicz was picked by the Republican committee to run for the seat being vacated by longtime judge Richard Ehlers, who is retiring at the end of his term this year. Kozakiewicz is also seeking the Conservative party line.

Lori Hulse, a member and past president of the Riverhead Board of Education and a deputy town attorney in Southold, is challenging Kozakiewicz for the Republican nomination. She is also running for justice on the Conservative and Independence lines.

Jeanmarie Costello, an attorney in private practice in Riverhead, is seeking the Conservative and Independence lines. Costello is also the Democratic candidate for town justice; there is no primary in that race.

Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Find your polling place here.