Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Fidler and Storobin in Tight Brooklyn Race

The outcome of a bitterly fought special election between two Jewish candidates in a southern Brooklyn state Senate district remains uncertain the day after the vote.

Democrat Lewis Fidler and Republican David Storobin both claimed victory Tuesday night after polls closed. Unofficial results from Tuesday night showed Storobin ahead by 120 votes, with at least 757 paper absentee ballots remaining to be counted starting next week.

They are vying to replace state Sen. Carl Kruger, who resigned last year after pleading guilty to corruption charges.

The race in the district, which has large numbers of Russian-speaking and Orthodox Jews, has been acrimonious.

Ads appeared in local Orthodox newspapers attacking Fidler, a city councilman, citing his support for same-sex marriage and previous self-description as a “bacon-and-eggs kind of Jew.” It is unclear who paid for the ads.

Fidler at one point accused Storobin of “ties to skinheads, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.” Storobin had interviewed an Afrikaaner separatist from South Africa and an anti-immigration activist from the Minuteman Project for a web magazine he edited, and white supremacist sites had linked to his articles from the publication.

Storobin, who emigrated from the Soviet Union as a child, angrily rejected the accusation. Fidler later said he regretted the characterization, saying he wished he had used the word “links” rather than “ties.”

The articles in question have been removed from the site.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.