Board of Election Recount for Brook-Krasny--But Krasny-Kagan Sniping Continues

The New York City Board of Elections stands poised to anoint Alec Brook-Krasny as the Democratic nominee for the 46th District State Assembly seat after a recount of votes—both from voting machines and paper and absentee ballots--showed Brook-Krasny increasing his razor-thin thin lead over Kagan from 94 votes to 138. However, Kagan is still considering taking Krasny and the Board of Elections itself to court over alleged irregularities at the polling stations on Election Day. And even if Kagan decides over the next several days to concede what appears to be the inevitable, the atmosphere between the two candidates is so poisonous at the moment that an early reconciliation does not appear in the offing.

In a brief conversation with this reporter, Kagan stressed that he is not yet conceding the race despite the definitive BOE recount and “is looking into possible legal action” based on many irregularities” allegedly committed by poll watchers appointed by the two Democratic district leaders, Mark Davidovich and Dilia Schack. While declining to go into details as to the nature of the alleged infractions “because this may become a legal matter,” Kagan said that one representative case involved a person who was not allowed to vote because his name was not found on the list of registered voters at the polling station where he was told to vote and that he was specifically denied a paper ballot, as allowed by law, after requesting it.

Yet given the extreme unlikelihood he would prevail in such a challenge, why even further infuriate the Krasny camp and the Democratic establishment and thereby hurt his own chances of running as a consensus candidate in a future race? “I believe the other side is already infuriated with me—with my very existence in the world” Kagan replied, in expressing the opinion that a legal challenge of the vote count is unlikely to make things much worse. “Many of my supporters have been urging me to make a challenge and not one of them has asked me to concede the race,” Kagan said. “So I’ll decide what to do based on whether my lawyers tell me we have a chance to successfully challenge what happened.”

Even if he ultimately concedes, Kagan vowed, “I do not plan to disappear. My strong showing in the race—49.2 percent of the vote while running against the Democratic machine and the whole political establishment made clear that I am not ‘just a journalist’ as Krasny kept saying, but a force everyone will have to deal with going forward.”

For his part, Brook-Krasny sounded decidedly non-conciliatory himself, telling rubyjewsday, “I have to decide what to do about the damage Kagan did to my reputation in Brighton Beach. His supporters were successful there in spreading outrageous rumors against me, including the false charge that I was in jail for stealing money (before emigrating to the U.S.). Some people told me they wouldn’t vote for me because I was in jail. I was a nice guy during the campaign and he smeared me all over the place.”

But what about his own publicly uttered charge that Kagan was a Communist Party member and attended a a military school with KGB ties? “Kagan never denied those charges which happen to be true. I decided to speak out after he accused me of being close to the Putin government, and here he had that kind of past.”

Given that he won the election wouldn’t it be appropriate for him to reach out and try to end the bitterness? “I suppose I’ll try to do that,” Brook-Krasny said with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. “But I am very upset about the vicious campaign run against me. I’ve done a lot for the Russian Jewish community and what was done to my reputation is simply not fair to me.”

Brook-Krasny predicted Kagan may now support his expected token Republican opponent, Patricia Laudano, a Dyker Heights realtor, who at this point has virtually no support or name recognition in the Russian community and is given almost no chance of winning. Still, it’s a safe bet if that Kagan now gets behind Laudano and forces Krasny to campaign hard against her, both sides in the nasty inter-Russian community battle can kiss any chance of reconciliation goodbye for a long time to come.