FBI agents are probing Suffolk County Democratic Chairman Rich Schaffer over claims he tried to buy votes for his reelection, allegations he dismisses as baseless.
Federal agents have contacted Suffolk County Democratic Party members and local government officials about Schaffer, the longtime Long Island party boss, after insiders accused him of offering money and pressure to lock down another term, the New York Post reported.
Schaffer won reelection last month anyway. As of Wednesday he said law enforcement had not contacted him. He branded the claims against him “baseless.”
The FBI declined to comment. The New York State Attorney General’s office had already confirmed it was reviewing whistleblower complaints about the chairman.
For a party that lectures the country on “our democracy,” the picture from its own Suffolk County machine is ugly: cash offers, job threats, and a secret recording inside a Board of Elections office.
Text messages reviewed by the Post show Schaffer offered payments to at least three committee members in exchange for their attendance and their votes.
In one message previously reported by the paper, Schaffer allegedly wrote about getting a member’s father off a night shift as a security guard so the man could cast a ballot for him.
“Can we pay him to miss work?”
That is the language attributed to the county Democratic chairman in those texts. The messages sit at the center of the claims now drawing federal attention.
Schaffer has held the top post for 26 years. Progressive challenger Kathryn Casey Quigley tried to end that run. The contest turned into what party figures described as a bitter civil war inside the Suffolk County Democratic Committee.
Before last month’s election, someone secretly recorded a meeting in a Board of Elections office. On that audio, an ally of Schaffer can be heard pressing committee members to fall in line with the boss or risk their jobs.
Schaffer himself allegedly threatened Roc Romain on the same tape. Romain serves on the committee and holds a job at the Suffolk County Board of Elections. He is married to Islip Town Democratic Chairwoman Leigh-Ann Barde.
Barde once called Schaffer her “political father figure.” She turned on him after the alleged threat to her husband.
Former allies and multiple Democrats also accused the chairman of backdoor deals with local Republicans. The alleged arrangement: keep Democrats off the county ballot so GOP candidates could run unopposed. Those claims remain just that, claims from party insiders, but they add to the portrait of a machine more interested in control than competition.
Attorney Mark Lesko answered for his client with a full-throated defense of the chairman’s character and a dismissal of the motives behind the accusations.
“Anyone that knows the reality of Long Island politics understands that Rich Schaffer is the model of professionalism and ethics.”
Lesko went further on the complaints themselves.
“We are confident in the facts and will not give these politically motivated allegations any credence.”
Schaffer won. The chairmanship stayed with him. The texts, the tape, the job threats, and the FBI knocks on other people’s doors did not stop the outcome inside his own party.
Party members and local officials told the Post they have already sat for interviews with federal agents. The bureau will not say whether Schaffer is a target, a subject, or simply a name in a widening inquiry. No charges or arrests have been announced.
The attorney general’s earlier review of whistleblower complaints means two layers of government have now looked at the same Long Island Democratic operation. One is state. One is federal. Neither has closed the book in public.
Vote-buying and coercion inside a party committee are not abstract process fouls. They are the kind of conduct that corrodes trust in elections from the ground up, especially when the people involved control ballot access, patronage jobs, and the machinery that decides who even gets to run.
Suffolk County voters did not get a clean fight for the Democratic chairmanship. They got offers of cash, pressure on paychecks, and a recording made in the Board of Elections itself. Schaffer kept the gavel. The FBI is now asking the questions his own party would not answer.
When Democratic bosses treat committee seats like inventory and jobs like leverage, “defend democracy” starts to sound like a slogan for everybody else.
