Crooklyn Machine resorts to forgery to maintain control over Dem party

 

THE CITY

The Brooklyn Democratic Party submitted paperwork with at least two forged signatures to the city Board of Elections as part of a bid to knock fellow Democrats off June primary ballots, a grassroots political organization alleges.

On Thursday, Rep Your Block, a volunteer organization, lodged a complaint with the board, citing sworn affidavits from two registered Democrats in Brownsville and East New York who said the signatures on ballot challenges to candidates filed in their names weren’t theirs.

The “filing of these objections with your agency amounts to the criminal act of filing a false instrument,” the complaint to the BOE states. “These objections and any resulting specifications should be dismissed by your agency.”

Rep Your Block, which aims to get more residents to participate in the borough’s Democratic party, also communicated to THE CITY concerns about the validity of at least a half dozen other signatures submitted on formal objections to candidates’ ballot petitions filed with the board.

They point to a similarity in the handwriting among the signatures, obvious discrepancies between the submitted signatures and voter signatures already on file at the Board of Election, and even misspellings of some of the names.

“We just want to be a part of our own political party. It shouldn’t be that hard. And to have to go to a criminal end to block us is just shocking,” said Maggie Moore, campaign director for Rep Your Block. “It’s really, really unfortunate and disappointing.”

The flagged challenges were among dozens linked to the Brooklyn Democratic Party targeting the ballot petitions of nearly 200 candidates who are seeking party positions. 

 THE CITY

Reon Sealey, 21, writes his name in a hasty, hard-to-read scribble. So on Friday, when reporters from THE CITY visited his Brownsville, Brooklyn, apartment, he was surprised to see a document with a clear cursive signature purporting to be his — and misspelling his last name, without the second “e.”

The document is an official filing submitted to the city Board of Elections, aimed at knocking a Democratic candidate running for a low-level party position off the June primary ballot.

“This is not my signature, 100% it’s not,” said the young man, wearing a hoodie on a windy day outside his apartment building.

His upstairs neighbor, Osasogie Airhiavbere, told THE CITY she too didn’t sign that form, which showed a tidy version of her signature right beside Sealey’s.

“It’s definitely fraud, and it’s not good,” said Airhiavbere, a 38-year-old administrative staffer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The neighbors join two other registered voters in Brownsville and East New York who swore in affidavits last week that their signatures were forged on similar election-related documents, THE CITY previously reported.

All four of the residents’ contested signatures appear on ballot objection forms that list a top attorney for the Brooklyn Democratic Party as the point of contact.

The two affidavits alleging fraud formed the basis of an official complaint filed with the New York City Board of Elections last week by Rep Your Block, a volunteer organization that helps Brooklyn residents run for county committee seats.

Caption de Blasio's puppet Reynoso

 

The Brooklyn Mechanic

 

 

Politico

 When Eric Adams needed space to work on his mayoral campaign, an old friend set him up with a brightly-lit spot in his own downtown Brooklyn office, steps from Adams’ Borough Hall headquarters.

When he was setting up his campaign team, Adams hired the same confidante for legal advice and help putting together ballot petitions.

And when Adams was building a war chest to underwrite his victory in the Democratic primary last month, it was that friend, Frank Carone, who hosted fundraisers and, along with his wife, donated the maximum amount allowed under law. Their Mill Basin, Brooklyn neighbors followed suit, contributing $29,430 to Adams — the Brooklyn borough president who is now the odds-on favorite to become the city’s 110th mayor.

In fact, Carone has been such a constant in Adams’ political and personal orbit, he was summoned over a loudspeaker at an election night victory party a few weeks ago: “Frank Carone, we need you by the DJ area please.”

Carone is an attorney whose practice at Abrams Fensterman has exploded since he joined in 2011. The firm covers a bit of everything — divorce proceedings, criminal trials, medical malpractice cases.

And its more than 100 attorneys also represent real estate, nursing home and transportation companies that rely on city government for their businesses. That’s when Carone’s reputation as a well-connected litigator and man about town became a lucrative asset.

As head of the firm’s Brooklyn office, Carone offers clients strategic advice on government relations while also helping them accelerate the grind of municipal bureaucracy. He relies on a thick Rolodex built over the years, through a keen knowledge of city agencies and control over a piece of the Brooklyn Democratic political machine.

He makes himself a port in a storm, sticking by friends in tough times and inviting them for a home-cooked meal at his house in Southern Brooklyn, replete with neoclassical rooflines and a waterfront pool deck. But Carone can just as quickly exert pressure when he feels he’s been crossed, according to more than a dozen interviews with politicians and operatives who have dealt with him.

Now, after eight years of friendship with Mayor Bill de Blasio, Carone has an opportunity for an even closer connection to a government he readily does business with. Carone and Adams are so close, they’ve even spent Thanksgiving together.

“Frank is a very honest broker. He is a man of his word and he’s very public about who he supports. He’s been with Eric since day one,” Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, said. “He’ll continue to be a confidante of Eric’s when he’s mayor — he’ll be one of his top confidantes, one of his top friends in the world — and someone he can rely on.”

Introducing Rodneyse Bichotte, the new leader and money bundler of the Democratic Brooklyn Machine

THE CITY

Five years after she joined the state Legislature, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte (D-Brooklyn) is all but set to take over the cash-strapped Kings County Democratic Party.

And she’s bringing with her a campaign fundraising record unusually prolific for a junior lawmaker — fueled, in part, by donations from groups her bills have aided.

Bichotte pulled in more cash than all but one Brooklyn Assembly Democrat in the first half of 2019 — beating out 17 other lawmakers, many of them senior to her, with a haul of $112,095 in an off-election year.

Overall, Bichotte had $411,702 in her campaign coffers as of July. The party she’s expected to soon lead, meanwhile, has only $32,833.95 in the bank, state filings show.

Key to her numbers are entrepreneurs who benefit from her actions as chair of the Assembly’s minority- and women-owned business subcommittee. She’s also drawn support from anesthesiologists battling to preserve their place in the operating room and players in Brooklyn courthouses with a stake in the county Democrats’ nods for judgeships.

Bichotte, who would become the first black woman to head a county Democratic party in the city, told THE CITY that repairing the group’s finances is essential — and she vowed to pursue “big donors and small donors.”

“I’d certainly like to raise money for the county to help our candidates, to help the Democratic Party,” said Bichotte, who became the first Haitian-American elected to the New York state Legislature when she arrived in 2015.

“I’m very particular about making sure that the treasury is healthy for the purpose of helping out candidates and also getting more civilians more engaged and included in our processes,” she added.

She was also the only elected official in New York to endorse Mayor de Blasio's farcical presidential run