Huntington Manor Fire Commissioner Michael Pastore carried petitions for Maria Delgado in Huntington supervisor's race, records show

A Huntington Manor fire commissioner and longtime town employee collected petition signatures for Maria Delgado, the Working Families Party candidate for Huntington supervisor, according to copies of the petitions obtained by Newsday and town payroll records.

Michael Pastore, a commissioner, collected 35 signatures, records from the Suffolk County Board of Elections show. Fifteen signatures were collected by Kurtis Greene, 56, of Greenlawn, documents show.

Both are registered members of the Working Families Party. There were 639 Huntington Town residents enrolled in the Working Families Party as of Nov. 1, according to Suffolk's elections board. To qualify for a primary, Delgado would have needed 5% of enrolled members, or more than 30. 

Pastore, 59, of Huntington Station, has worked for the Town of Huntington since 1986, payroll data shows. He's now the town's part-time emergency preparedness coordinator.

Huntington employs an individual named Kurtis Greene, who has worked for the town as a heavy equipment operator since 2018, according to payroll data.

However, town officials would not confirm whether the Kurtis Greene who works for the town is the same individual who signed the petitions, saying they cannot confirm employees' addresses.

Greene could not be reached for comment. A Newsday reporter spoke to Pastore outside his house on Thursday, where he said he would speak by phone later in the day. After that, he never responded to multiple calls.

The Huntington supervisor's race was among the closest on Long Island: Ed Smyth, the Republican incumbent, defeated Democrat Cooper Macco by 602 votes, according to unofficial returns from the Suffolk County Board of Elections. Delgado received 1,195 votes in the Nov. 4 election — about 3% of the total. The margin was narrow enough possibly to have swung the election to Smyth. A spokesperson for the state Attorney General's Office said Wednesday the agency was reviewing complaints about the race.

The results have touched off a political uproar and sparring among Democrats and Republicans within state, county and town party committees. Democrats are crying foul, saying the minor party line was hijacked to spoil votes from Macco. But Republicans say they had no involvement in the petition-gathering effort for Delgado.

While Macco received the state Working Families Party's endorsement, Pastore and Greene collected enough signatures for Delgado so she could qualify for a June primary. She won, denying Macco the advantage of a second ballot line in November. 

Adding to the mystery, Delgado, 83, of Huntington Station, told Newsday on Nov. 7 that she had "no idea" she was on the ballot days earlier. Records from the Suffolk County Board of Elections, provided to Newsday earlier this week, show Delgado voted in person in the June primary and again on Election Day. There is no trace of a public campaign: State campaign finance records show no fundraising accounts in her name. She has no website.

Delgado's election tally has prompted questions about the origins of her candidacy and how she managed to capture nearly 3% of the vote in a narrow race to run Huntington. The town, one of Long Island's largest, is responsible for a $238 million annual budget and controls decisions on influential issues ranging from development, zoning and environmental preservation. 

Suffolk Democrats and officials in the state Working Families Party have accused Republicans and conservatives of raiding the minor-party line to siphon votes away from Macco. 

A man parked in Delgado's driveway on Thursday told a reporter she had no comment.

Suffolk Democratic Chairman Richard Schaffer said in an interview that "clearly there is something more going on here, and it isn't just that Maria Delgado didn't know she was a candidate and voted."

The involvement of at least one town government worker shows that "everyone connected with the town knew what was going on here," Schaffer said. He added, "town employees don't randomly decide to get people qualified for a minor party primary."

Jesse Garcia, the Suffolk County Republican Chairman, said it's not relevant whether a petition-gatherer is employed by the town.

“They are American citizens," he said about the individuals who gathered petitions for Working Families Party candidates. "I don’t agree with their politics, but they have the right to carry petitions for whomever they want to.”

Smyth said he knows Pastore, but is unfamiliar with Greene, noting the town employs several hundred people. “If there’s a prohibition on town employees participating in politics, I’m not aware of it,” he said in an interview.

'How do we fix this?'

According to town payroll records, Pastore was hired by the town in 1986. He earned nearly $152,591 in 2020, including overtime, as a parking meter officer. The following year, payroll records note a change in job title to town emergency preparedness coordinator in the emergency operations center. His 2024 pay was $7,904, data shows. 

In July, the town board gave Pastore a proclamation honoring him for 40 years of service with the Huntington Manor Fire Department. He is a former chief of the department, Newsday has reported.

Dave Bennardo, a Republican councilman who was reelected in November, honored Pastore during the July meeting: "I don't need to read from a proclamation for this award. I've been blessed to know Mike in his 40 years in the fire service." Bennardo, a former South Huntington school district superintendent, said he met Pastore in the early 2000s. "He is a wonderful human being who is an example of what community means," Bennardo said.

Christine Geed, a town spokeswoman, confirmed that Pastore, the fire commissioner who was honored at that meeting, is the same Michael Pastore who has worked for the town.

On Wednesday, the state Working Families Party held a Zoom call in a bid to rebuild the party's local operations. Jasmine Gripper, a co-director for the state party, said the best way to stop what happened in Huntington is to register more Working Families Party members in the town.

“How do we fix this? We actually want to stop the hijacking of our line. The way we do that is we actually need to get more people who understand this problem, who support the Democratic nominees, to register as Working Families. So change your party association to the Working Families,” she said.

Breaking 5-0 control

The state Working Families Party screened and endorsed the Suffolk Democrats' slate in Huntington. That included Macco for supervisor; Vincent Colavita for highway superintendent; and Jen Hebert and Stephen Anastasia for town council. All four are registered Democrats, records show.

Pastore and Kurtis Greene collected petitions for Delgado and three other candidates: George B. Bergbuchler, Chris Haines and Erick Greene. Haines defeated Colavita in the highway superintendent primary for the Working Families Party Line. Greene and Bergbuchler defeated Hebert and Anastasia in the town council primary for that line.

Neither Delgado, Bergbuchler, Haines nor Greene responded to interview requests for Newsday's voters guides, which were published before the primary in June and November's general election.

In the general election, Hebert, in a six-person race for town board, was the top vote-getter and won one of two at-large council seats, breaking Republicans' 5-0 grip on the town board.

Hebert received 22,396 votes, while Bennardo, a Republican incumbent, had 21,169. Anastasia finished third, with 20,046 votes, unofficial results show. Gregory Grizopoulos, a Conservative, received 19,032 votes. Bergbuchler and Greene captured 2,001 votes in total, returns show, meaning their candidacies may have cost Democrats a second board seat.

Bergbuchler, Haines and Erick Greene first registered with the Working Families Party in 2021, according to board of elections officials.

Pastore first registered with the Working Families Party in 2003; Kurtis Greene has been registered with the Working Families Party since 2021, according to the elections board.

Attempts to reach Erick Greene, Bergbuchler and Haines were unsuccessful. They were not available for comment at their homes, or by phone.

Election board records show Delgado registered with the Working Families Party in 2021. She registered as a Democrat in 2020 and in 2016 with the Woman's Equality Party. 

'What Maria's motivation was'

Democrats have a voter enrollment advantage of 34% to 30% in Huntington Town, according to data from the Suffolk County Board of Elections. There are 53,929 registered Democrats and 47,772 registered Republicans. The number of unaffiliated voters — 47,757 — is almost equal to the number of registered Republicans.

There are 2,620 Conservative Party voters, 639 Working Families Party members, and 6,027 voters enrolled with other parties, the data shows.

Through her daughter, Delgado said she was previously registered as a Republican.

But John Alberts, Suffolk's Democratic Elections Commissioner, said in an email Delgado was never registered as a Republican.

Schaffer said the petitions gathered by Pastore and Greene were “meant to take away a line from the officially designated slate of candidates by a rogue slate." 

Schaffer said unresolved are “more questions as to what Maria’s motivation was; who brought Maria to the dance? ..."

He said the party reviewed the petitions Pastore and Greene collected, but did not find anything that would have been a violation of election law to justify a challenge.

Newsday's Arielle Martinez, Joseph Ostapiuk and Yancey Roy contributed to this story.