NYC Council candidate Anna Belfiore-Delfaus appears to confirm she doesn’t live at address listed on her petition forms

A City Council candidate in southern Brooklyn who’s under fire for allegedly misrepresenting her employment and residence history appeared to confirm Sunday that she doesn’t live permanently at an address she listed as her home in official ballot petition paperwork.

The candidate, Anna Belfiore-Delfaus, who’s running in this year’s Republican primary for the Bay Ridge and Coney Island-based 47th Council District, included the apparent admission about her residence in a lengthy statement posted to her Twitter page.

The statement was issued in response to a Daily News expose published Saturday that revealed Belfiore-Delfaus listed a Bay Ridge address as her home in petition forms filed with the city Board of Elections, even though she appears to live in a house on Staten Island with her husband outside the confines of the 47th District.

The News’ investigation also found Belfiore-Delfaus has routinely on the campaign trail this year described herself as a city public school teacher who resisted the municipal COVID-19 vaccine mandate even though she hasn’t been on the Education Department payroll for nearly a decade.

Belfiore-Delfaus’ statement — which she released after refusing to respond to repeated requests for comment from The News last week — says she “was born, raised and lived practically my entire life in Brooklyn” and that her “kids go to school in Brooklyn and have all their extracurricular activities in Brooklyn.”

However, in apparent reference to living outside the 47th District, her statement also says: “Election law clearly states during a redistricting year that you do NOT need to reside within the district in which you are running until 30 days after the general election.”

“That being said, I do have an apartment in Bay Ridge in order to be close to my kids while in school, and we have a property in Staten Island,” her statement adds.

Belfiore-Delfaus did not respond to emailed questions Monday about specifics on her residential situation, including the address of her alleged Bay Ridge apartment.

Her petition forms list her home address as a one-family Bay Ridge house on 79th St. owned by a woman named Sabrina Sorrentino. Belfiore-Delfaus’ relation to Sorrentino is not clear, and Sorrentino refused to say whether the Republican candidate lives at her house when contacted last week.

Though the petition form claims she lives in Brooklyn, The News spotted Belfiore-Delfaus on Friday afternoon walking into the Staten Island home she shares with her husband and three daughters. Her husband is still registered at the Staten Island home, and Belfiore-Delfaus used to be as recently as January, when she changed to the Bay Ridge address, right around the time she also launched her campaign for the 47th District, public records show.

Jerry Goldfeder, a veteran New York City election lawyer, said Council candidates by law have to live in the districts they’re vying to represent on Election Day, not 30 days afterward, as claimed by Belfiore-Delfaus.

While stressing that he has no inside knowledge about Belfiore-Delfaus’ situation, Goldfeder said it can be problematic for political candidates to list an address they do not live at as their home on official Board of Elections paperwork.

“That can be a fraud,” he said.

A Board of Elections spokesman would not comment other than confirming that Belfiore-Delfaus is registered at the Bay Ridge address.

As to her apparent misrepresentation of her Education Department career, Belfiore-Delfaus confirmed in her statement she hasn’t worked as a teacher since she went on child care-related leave in 2015.

Though she has regularly called herself a “NYC public school teacher” while campaigning, Belfiore-Delfaus said she doesn’t see a discrepancy in that because she considers herself a “teacher by profession.”

Referring to her opponents in the 47th District primary, who criticized her over the revelations about her career, Belfiore-Delfaus continued: “These sources have labeled me as a fraud and consider me to not be a teacher since I’ve left to raise my kids. So, a retired officer, marine, doctor, nurse, etc. can no longer refer to themselves as such because they are not currently working. This is the claim.”

Belfiore-Delfaus also said she was supposed to return to work from her unpaid child care leave in September 2022, but opted not to because she did not want to comply with the Education Department’s since-rescinded coronavirus vaccination mandate.

“My choice was to wait it out until they reversed the mandate. By the time the mandate was reversed, I had already begun putting into motion running for office,” she said.

According to a Department of Education source directly familiar with the matter, there’s no record of Belfiore-Delfaus attempting to return to work or seeking an exemption to the agency’s vaccine mandate.

Belfiore-Delfaus capped off her statement by saying she considers concerns over her employment and residence “a failed attack to try to discredit me.”

“They fear putting a woman in power,” she said. “I have the interest of the people in mind and not selfish political ambitions.”