LI grandma ‘had no idea’ she was running for Huntingdon supervisor

An 83-year-old Long Island granny who says she had no clue she was on the ballot for her town’s top elected post scored enough votes to have potentially tipped the scales for another candidate in the squeaker race.

Election officials are now scrambling for answers after elderly Huntingdon resident Maria Delgado — a registered Republican whose name was on the Working Families Party ballot line for town supervisor — pulled in more than 1,100 votes.

“I had no idea,” the “flabbergasted” Delgado told reporters, bursting into laughter, when asked about her “candidacy” after last week’s tight election win by Republican incumbent Ed Smyth, according to Newsday.

Delgado’s daughter Linda, who was translating for her mother because she does not speak English fluently, said when told of her mom’s supposed bid for office, “Is that a joke, or something?”

The race ultimately saw Smyth take the town’s top seat by just over 600 votes by beating Democratic challenger Cooper Macco in the nail-biter — where Delgado’s 3% of the votes could have changed the outcome, according to unofficial data from the Suffolk County Board of Elections. 

Delgado’s daughter called the situation “unbelievable” and questioned who would register her mother, a longtime Republican, as a candidate for a party that sits to the left of traditional Democrats, according to Newsday. 

Democrats meanwhile said there’s nothing funny about the situation and are calling foul. 

They accused Republican and Conservative operatives of running a coordinated effort to infiltrate and exploit the local Working Families Party line — a tactic known as party-raiding — to confuse voters and covertly pull votes away from Democrats.

“Maria Delgado is a shill candidate, and I’m sure she probably doesn’t even realize she’s a candidate,” Suffolk Democratic Party Chairman Rich Schaffer said. 

“What [Republicans and Conservatives] did is meant to siphon votes from the Democratic candidate — It’s gone on over several cycles in Huntington,” Schaffer said, advocating for election reform. 

Shoshana Hershkowitz, co-chair of the Suffolk County Working Families Party, told local outlet HuntingtonNow that she has “no idea” who Delgado is and said she was never screened for the party’s endorsement.

In fact, the Working Families Party had already backed Macco as their candidate but was later forced to hold a primary, which Delgado won after a petition for her candidacy was submitted and received the 30 needed signatures to trigger the competition. 

“A group of corrupt individuals petitioned themselves onto the ballot, forced a primary and unfortunately won the primary,” she said. 

Members of the Suffolk Working Families have long accused Republicans of re-registering to vote under their party during primaries to get around the rules and sneak candidates that don’t actually back the party’s values onto the ballot. 

Roughly 650 Huntington Town residents are registered as voters in the Working Families Party, according to data from the State Board of Elections.

In Suffolk County, Working Families registration jumped roughly 4%, gaining 167 new voters since last year, according to the state Board of Elections — a small but suspicious spike that Working Families Party leaders suspect includes Republicans re-registering to infiltrate their ranks and rig their primaries. 

The Huntington Republican Committee did not comment on the allegations.