Candidate With 1.2K Votes: Didn't Know I Was Running

An 83-year-old Long Island woman claims she recently discovered she was an unwitting candidate for town supervisor—only after she received nearly 1,200 votes. "Is that a joke, or something?" Maria Delgado of Huntington asked upon learning of her candidacy, per Newsday. Delgado's daughter, Linda, told People that her mother claims to be a longtime Republican. Yet Maria Delgado was registered as a candidate with the progressive Working Families Party, which claimed to have backed the Democrat in the race.

Suffolk County Democratic Chairman Rich Schaffer has labeled Delgado a "shill" candidate, alleging that Republicans and Conservatives orchestrated her candidacy to siphon votes from the Democratic candidate, Cooper Macco. Macco won 20,766 votes compared to Republican incumbent Edmund Smyth's 21,368. That means the 1,195 votes cast for Delgado would've been enough to change the outcome had they gone to Macco.

Shoshana Hershkowitz, co-chair of the Suffolk County Working Families Party, blamed "corrupt individuals" for forcing a primary and winning it, noting the party had officially backed Macco, per HuntingtonNow. However, GOP county chairman Jesse Garcia has dismissed the allegations as "an outright lie." Suffolk County Republicans have now shared documents related to Delgado's voting history, indicating she's a past Democratic voter who joined the WFP and voted in the June primary in which she won.