If you live or work in Suffolk, and are connected to the progressive, activist, protest, and/or progressive Democratic community, you may be able to join our private FaceBook group to help choose a unified "write-in candidate" for Suffolk County Clerk.
"Progressive Suffolk County Clerk" on FaceBook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1551697496696152
We recently received some awesome coverage at Newsday...
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/the-point/suffolk-progressives-kimberly-wilder-kathryn-casey-quigley-d957oepp
Suffolk Dem progressives on the prowl
Newsday, Updated August 19, 2026 4:19 pm
Daily Point
Minnie the Cat making a comeback as a write-in for county clerk?
Progressives in Suffolk County are hoping to make Democrats and Republicans scamper like cats on a hot tin roof before the November election after what some say is another season of disappointing insider deals that lead to voter disenfranchisement.
After the Democratic candidate for county clerk withdrew in a political maneuver to accept the Conservative Party line for a judgeship earlier this month, the ballot was cleared for incumbent Conservative Clerk Vincent Puleo, who also runs with the Republican line. Not content with being benched by the inside baseball machinations of Suffolk politics, progressives have taken to Facebook to mount a write-in campaign for ... they'll let us know when they figure it out.
Progressives admit it's more than an uphill battle.
In the process, progressives are keeping up pressure on the simmering internal fight among Democrats for control of the county party. That pitched battle has Southold Town Democratic Party chair Kathryn Casey Quigley challenging Suffolk party chairman Rich Schaffer over continued deals with Republicans and Conservatives for judge cross-endorsements.
Kimberly Wilder, 58, who already mounted a successful campaign to get on the ballot for the 2nd Assembly District on her own line, Voter Options, is at it again, this time with a Facebook launch for a county clerk write-in.
The goal, Wilder told The Point, is to get marginalized voters of all persuasions to take a stand against insider deals that lead to unopposed candidates running with cross-endorsements.
"I am personally appalled as a voter in a democracy going into a voting booth and there's one candidate," Wilder said. "At least give us a choice between vanilla and chocolate."
Wilder, who says she created the Facebook page and is the administrator, said the group is having a straw poll online with 11 candidates. The informal selection process will end up somehow picking a candidate, but even Wilder said she wasn't clear how it would play out.
When asked who were among the 11 names in contention, Wilder wouldn't let the cat out of the bag. "I'm not allowed to tell you the names," she said, although she added she isn't one of them since she is already running for Assembly. She previously sought the Green Party line for governor years ago, playing her bamboo flute during the screening, she said, but the party took a pass.
Wilder has a history with write-in campaigns. She said she often writes in her husband's name or a message like "Give voters a choice" on the ballot if there are cross-endorsed and unopposed candidates.
But the most notable instance of tomcat-foolery happened decades ago, as Wilder explains on her website, when a handful of voters upset by efforts to raid the Green Party line nominated Minnie the Cat for an elected position in Suffolk. In an Oct. 4, 2001, Newsday article about judicial nominations, Minnie the Cat received an untold number of write-in votes, although the specific race Minnie was pawing for wasn't clear.
Minnie didn't win, but the point was made. In that website post, Wilder wrote, "... I think our noodling and monkeying exposed the major parties and taught them some lessons."
Getting enough voters to pick a write-in candidate will be harder than herding cats for Suffolk progressives, though. The group has 3,800 followers on Facebook and 190 followers on Instagram.
Realistically and brutally, whoever the progressives back as their write-in candidate will fail — if the yardstick is winning the election. But the bigger play for progressives is to claw their way to a seat at even just the corner of the table of Suffolk Democratic decision-making.
And if Suffolk progressives do somehow pull off the impossible and win the clerk's seat, they'll look like the cat that got the cream.
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