Brooklyn DA ‘looking into’ appointments of dead, unwitting people to borough’s Democratic Party

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office is scrutinizing revelations that dead and unwitting people have been appointed to positions in the borough’s Democratic Party, a spokesman for the DA told the Daily News on Tuesday.

The eyebrow-raising appointments to the party’s county committee first came to light last week, and the spokesman, Oren Yaniv, said the DA’s office is reviewing whether there’s grounds for an investigation.

“We are looking into this,” Yaniv said.

The preliminary step from the DA — which Yaniv stressed does not mean that a formal probe is underway — comes two days after The News reported that Coney Island resident Alfreida Davis was appointed to the party’s county committee in December 2020 even though she died a month prior.

Davis’ appointment was made via a form submitted by Dionne Brown-Jordan, the district leader of the 46th Assembly District and an assistant treasurer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. The same form also appointed three other local residents who said in interviews that they were picked for committee seats without their consent or knowledge.

Those revelations, in turn, came on the heels of a report from the news organization The City finding that at least another 20 Brooklynites, without their permission or knowledge, were nominated for party committee posts last month after their names were included on petitions circulated on behalf of Brown-Jordan and Michael Silverman, her male district leader counterpart.

Insurgents in the Brooklyn Democratic Party have alleged that the appointments could be a concerted effort by party leaders to consolidate power by using the unwitting committee members as proxy votes to amend rules and advance candidates of their preference.

A New York court recently found that it can be illegal to deliberately include dead or unaware people on political petitions.

Democratic Assemblywoman Mathylde Frontus, who represents Coney Island and Bay Ridge in the state Legislature and personally knew Davis, told The News that she and two local political candidates, Chris McCreight and Angela Kravtchenko, plan to hold a press conference Wednesday with some of the Brooklynites who were appointed to the party’s committee without their consent.

The focus of the press conference, Frontus said, will be to make a case for why the committee appointments must be investigated.

“I feel bad for all the people caught up in this mess,” said McCreight, a City Council staffer who’s challenging Brown-Jordan for the 46th district leadership in this year’s election. “We’re talking about seniors, some over 90 years old, who are finding out from reporters that their names are being used without their consent. We need to get to the bottom of this to make sure these deceptive practices don’t continue.”

Brown-Jordan, who’s running against Frontus in this summer’s Assembly primary in addition to serving as district leader, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. A spokesman for the Brooklyn Democratic Party did not return a request for comment.