Southampton Showdown: Special Election Will Fill Vacant Town Board Seat

Two candidates from Hampton Bays running in a special election to fill an open Southampton Town Board seat debated who is best for the job days before early voting was scheduled to begin.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork hosted the debate on March 3 between Democrat John Leonard and Republican Rick Martel. Moderators peppered the candidates with questions about the mass deportation of immigrants, relations with the Shinnecock Nation, recreational marijuana, development, and how best to address the perennial frustration of traffic.

“I’ve done it before. I hope to do it again,” Martel, a former Southampton Town Board member who was ousted by Democrat Michael Iasilli in the 2023 elections, said when asked what skills he brings to the table. Leonard replied: “My work as a civil litigator engaging in compromise and negotiation in very complex matters will be an absolute asset to the board.”

The two are running for the town board seat that was vacated when former Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni (D-Southampton) was elected to represent much of the East End in the New York State Assembly. The special election is scheduled for March 18 with the 10-day early voting period running from March 8 to 16.

“I think that we should issue a formal declaration stating that the town will only honor judicially issued warrants and that would be the only way in which we would participate in any federal activity within our borders,” Leonard said when the topic turned to immigration. “We need to protect our marginalized communities.”

Martel, who is also running on the Conservative Party line, distanced himself from the hard-line rhetoric of the GOP standard bearer, President Donald Trump, who wasted no time making good on his campaign promise to enact mass deportations.

“I agree that if there’s a warrant for somebody, if they have a criminal record — you know, felony convictions — it’s easy for me to say let’s send them out of the country,” he said. “The ones that are here legally or illegally have taken a tough path to get here. I truly think that if they’re working, if they’re involved in their community, if their kids are in school, that at this point they’ve become part of our community.

“I know it’s not a terrific Republican thing to say, but I truly believe they’ve become part of our community,” he continued. “We could not do without them. We should accept them.”

Of course, while high-profile national issues trickling down to the local level have drawn lots of headlines in recent weeks, the Town of Southampton also has no shortage of contentious homegrown issues it is facing. Chief among them is the town and the Shinnecock Nation being locked in litigation over the tribe’s ongoing construction of a gas station and travel plaza in the Hampton Bays property known as Westwoods.

“I’m in favor of keeping the lawsuit in place so that we can get a final answer,” Martel said of the town’s lawsuit asking a judge to determine if Westwoods is exempt from town zoning regulations like the Shinnecock territory is, as the tribe argues. “We can then figure out a path to work together on Westwoods.”

Leonard, a longtime attorney who is also running on the Working Families Party line, said he does not think the town should have sued the Shinnecock, but hopes that — if elected — he could help negotiate a settlement.

“I think there’s a massive distrust between the nation and the town for good reason,” he said. “We need to work as hard as we can with the Shinnecock nation to find a way forward. A huge part of my practice is compromise and negotiation in order to reach a settlement that benefits all parties.”

His suggestion would be to assist the tribe with obtaining the curb cut from the New York State Department of Transportation so that the Westwoods property can be developed as a gas plaza.

“The Shinnecock nation is an integral part of our community,” he said. “They are not only a sovereign nation and our neighbor, but they’re also part of our community and we need to respect that. We need to have empathy for them.”

Besides the Westwoods controversy, the Shinnecock also made waves recently when they opened Little Beach Harvest, a recreational cannabis dispensary that was exempt from state licensing, in Southampton. When that happened, the town board decided to become one of four towns on Long Island to allow pot shops and cannabis cafes to open in its jurisdiction. Martel said he tried to fight that move, but was unsuccessful as a Republican on the Democrat-majority board.

“I thought it would lead to other issues, and there was always this discussion of tax money and revenues that might come from it,” he said. “I figured the Shinnecock Nation could benefit from them being the sole supplier in Southampton Town.”

Leonard countered that ensuring that legal cannabis is regulated also keeps criminals from adding dangerous additives such as fentanyl to the product before it’s sold.

“We have to remember that marijuana is in our community and it’s not going anywhere,” Leonard said. “Saying … that we shouldn’t have cannabis dispensaries, I think it’s a myopic view. I think it’s not paying attention to the modern world in which we live.”

When the topic turned to development, the two candidates walked a fine line. On one hand, many in the community and policymakers want to preserve the region’s charm and open space. On the other hand, voters recently approved a new tax to help fund affordable housing projects and address the region’s housing crisis.

Estelle Gellman, who moderated the debate that streamed on SEA-TV’s YouTube channel, asked the candidates if they would be in favor of a building moratorium.

“I don’t believe that a building moratorium makes sense at this point,” said Leonard, co-founder of the affordable housing advocacy group known as the Hampton Bays Alliance, and member of the town zoning board of appeals. “It just encourages stagnation, and I think that would be devastating to our economy, and I don’t think it would help us in the long run. A building moratorium would mean that we wouldn’t be able to build any affordable housing.”

It was one of the issues on which both candidates agreed, with Martel also opposed to a building moratorium.

“The building industry, whether it be renovations or new buildings, what keeps the economy here going,” he said. “We have to continue to allow people to, you know, live the life they want to live here, but at the same token, keep things, keep the parameters into the neighborhoods and, and just keep it the way we’ve had it.”

Of course, with more development, comes more traffic. Neither candidate had a silver bullet proposal to solve the longstanding issue.

“I’m hoping the Traffic Mitigation Task Force does come up with solutions, but it’s going to be tough,” Martel said. “It’s sheer volume out here in our case. We’re going to have to get creative on County Road 39 to solve it.”

Leonard said there will be no one solution.

“I believe that we have to have a multi-pronged approach to traffic mitigation,” he said. “I think building additional affordable housing as well as repurposing other housing east of the canal is one of the tools in the toolbox to move us forward on that so that we can shift drive times, shift drive patterns, and you know, the more cars that we take off the road, the better.”

Gellman noted that the early voting sites will be the parish center of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in West Hampton and the Student Activity Center at Stony Brook, Southampton.

For registration information, polling locations and to check what time polling sites will be open, visit suffolkvotes.com

-With Isabella Reilly