Politics & Government
Kabot to Wage Write-In Campaign
The former supervisor challenges incumbent Throne-Holst, whose name will be the only one on the ballot.
Linda Kabot, a former Southampton Town supervisor who lost her re-election bid in 2009 to current Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, kicked off a write-in campaign Wednesday to reclaim her seat.
Kabot, a Quogue resident and Republican, said in an interview Wednesday evening that she is running because she believes no one should run unopposed and voters should have a choice.
Throne-Holst, a member of the Independence Party with the , was previously , as the Republican Party failed to field a candidate against her.
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Kabot's run is not backed by a party. “I’m doing this as an independent write-in campaign," she said. "It's grassroots."
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Aiding her chances of success, she said, are new voting procedures — the use of scantron paper ballots as opposed to lever machines. With her campaign literature, she is including instructions on how to write in a candidate properly, and asking voters to remember that her last name starts with a "K" and not a "C," so they spell it correctly on the ballot.
Kabot was elected to the town council in 2001 and 2005. Then in 2007, in the middle of her second term as a councilwoman, she successfully challenged incumbent Supervisor Patrick "Skip" Heaney" for the Republican nomination and went on to win the general election.
Her two years as supervisor were troubled as it came to light that the town's bookkeeping was in disarray — as botched accounting before she became superviser overstated how much money town funds held. Then, in the midst of the 2009 campaign, she was pulled over on Labor Day in Westhampton Beach and charged with driving while intoxicated; she was in February.
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Kabot said that after she was acquitted, many asked her if she would run for office again, and she received a lot of encouragement.
“Earlier this year I had declined making a comeback," she said. "I didn’t feel that I was in a position to jump into the political fray.”
But she said that due to a groundswell of support, and the fact that Throne-Holst was running unchallenged, she decided to throw her hat in
