Are Croton Democrats following NY election law in their candidate nominating process?

A lack of transparency in the selection of Ali Jaffery to replace Sam Watkins as the Village Justice nominee may raise larger legal issues as well as troublesome ethical concerns.

Feb 25, 2026

In a February 17 editorial entitled “Democracy Dies in Darkness—Even in Croton-on-Hudson,” the Chronicle took Croton Democrats to task for the opaque way in which the local party chose attorney Ali Jaffery to run for Village Justice in November’s elections over the incumbent judge, Sam Watkins, who has been on the Croton bench for 20 years.

The close vote for Jaffery, a party loyalist who is not well known in Croton outside of Democratic Party activist circles, took place at a January 22 meeting of Croton Democrats at the Croton Free Library. That meeting and especially its purpose was not publicized outside of that group.

As we pointed out in our editorial, the average Democrat in Croton—there are about 3,300 registered Democrats in the village—had little or no way of knowing that the Village Justice position was contested, let alone that a critical vote was going to take place on that day. As far as we have been able to determine, all communication by the local party is with party activists, not the larger group of registered Dems.

As we also argued in that editorial, while the January 22 meeting was supposedly open to anyone who wanted to attend, the doors to the library may as well have been locked shut given the lack of transparency about the process.

Indeed, the nomination process for Village Justice had been going on for some weeks, after both Watkins and Jaffery made it known to party officials that they both intended to run for Village Justice, and the party chair appointed a nominating committee to vet and interview them. The nominating committee, we are told, consisted of Cortlandt Town Clerk Laroue Shatzkin, former Croton trustee Ian Murtaugh, and Karen Pecora, who ran unsuccessfully for Croton trustee last November.

Those allowed to vote on January 22 were District Leaders of the Croton Democrats, yet we are not able to tell readers how many voted and what the exact vote count was. That’s because local party officials refuse to respond to any questions about the process, despite repeated requests for comment and information. Thus our emails (and texts) to Croton Democrats chair Michael Eisenkraft, vice-chair Emiljana Ulaj (wife of Croton Mayor Brian Pugh), and secretary Linda Simon (wife of Deputy Mayor Len Simon) have gone unanswered as we go to press.

Left to right: Croton Democrats chair Michael Eisenkraft, vice-chair Emiljana Ulaj, and secretary Linda Simon

To make matters worse, after the January 22 vote for Jaffery, Croton Democrats waited a full month before making any kind of public announcement about the results. As far as we are able to determine, that only came yesterday, in an anonymous article submitted to the River Journal/River Journal North (see below.) While we had heard earlier that the local party intended to send a letter of announcement to The Gazette, the official newspaper of the village of Croton-on-Hudson, no such letter appeared in the edition published this past week.

Croton Democrats waited to publicly announce their November 2026 slate of candidates until a full month after they had been chosen in a Jan 22 caucus meeting.

In our editorial, we argued that the lack of transparency in the process of selecting Ali Jaffery as the candidate this November was anti-democratic in nature; we would refer readers to that post for more details. A key paragraph of our post was this one:

“While the current dominance of Croton Dems in village politics remains strong, with the mayoralty and three trustee seats out of a total of five board members, Mayor Brian Pugh only defeated his Voice of Croton challenger by 22 votes out of more than 3,000 cast. That lays a heavy responsibility on Croton Dems to be fully transparent about their handling of such important matters as who will be our Village Justice. While Sam Watkins or any other candidate could mount a primary challenge to Jaffery, or run as an independent in November, Croton Dems have already put their hands heavily on the electoral scale.”

Yet as troublesome as the lack of transparency may be, the conduct of Croton Democrats raises an even more fundamental question: Did the local party follow New York election law in its nomination process, and has it been following the law in recent years?

With the help of three local attorneys, we looked closely at what the law says, along with judicial interpretations of the law in recent years. The answer appears to be no. Most importantly, the Croton Democratic Committee has routinely failed to provide the mandated public notice that the nomination process legally requires.

The most recent version of the New York Election Law can be found at this link. The rules for village elections are found in Section 15, and we have posted the relevant sections at the bottom of this story. The law requires that no matter how the nomination process is conducted, a political party must post a notice of a caucus or a primary with the Village Clerk at least ten days before it takes place, and publish a notice in the public areas of the Village Clerk’s office. The law also requires the party to publish a public notice of the event in a local newspaper, or alternatively to publish a notice in six public places in the village at least ten days ahead of time.

After the nomination has occurred, the party is required to post a certificate of nomination with the Village Clerk as well as a list of the enrolled members of the party who participated in the caucus or primary.

It’s important to note that these mandatory requirements hold even if, in the case of Croton-on-Hudson, the actual election is conducted by the county Board of Elections rather than the village itself. However, in response to a query from the Chronicle, Paula DiSanto, Croton’s Village Clerk, told us that she is “not involved in the process,” which we interpret to mean that she did not receive any of the required notices before or after the nomination on January 22.

As for public notice, we checked with Gary Cahill, editor and publisher of The Gazette, about whether the newspaper had published any such thing, since we had not seen it ourselves. Cahill responded that the only recent item he had received from Croton Democrats was a short letter by party chair Michael Eisenkraft inviting those interested in running for public office to get in touch. Cahill published that letter in the January 1-7 edition of the paper. The letter made no mention of the fact that the party planned to hold a nominations vote at its January 22 meeting in the library.

Even those on a Croton Democrats mailing list did not receive a reminder notice about the January 22 meeting until January 12, when secretary Linda Simon sent out a “mark your calendars” message to the group. That was followed shortly afterwards by an email only to District Leaders (that is, the smaller group of those eligible to vote for nominations) by Michael Eisenkraft, laying out voting and proxy procedures. (All voting must be in person, that notice said, even if proxies are assigned.)

In our discussions with local attorneys, it was suggested to us that Croton Democrats might claim that Section 6 of the New York election law, which addresses elections in towns—rather than Section 15, which includes provisions for village elections— applies in Croton since our elections were moved from March to November in 2011 and the Board of Elections is now running them. Indeed, after days of asking for comment, last night the Chronicle received an anonymous email from someone using the Croton Democrats email address (crotondemocrats@gmail.com) stating the following:

‘The procedures you reference in your emails apply to villages using a caucus to nominate candidates. Croton has not utilized caucuses since village elections were changed from March to November.”

But as our reporting shows, the public notification that the law requires is not restricted to caucuses, but applies to any nomination process a party is using. (We also told this anonymous correspondent that we still needed an on the record comment from an officer of the Croton Democratic Committee, preferably its chair.)

That the rules governing elections in New York State are legally binding and not just technical issues to be waved aside by political parties is made clear by a series of court decisions on the notification requirements. These are noted in an updated guidance to the law that the state issued last year, which can be found here. The key passages are as follows. The court decisions, which we have reviewed, make clear that a nomination can be ruled invalid if proper notification has not been made.

While Croton Democrats may want to argue (even anonymously) that these rulings about notification do not apply to their nomination process because they are not caucusing, as we noted above, there is no exception in New York election law to the notification requirement no matter what method is used to choose nominees.

So why are things the way they are, and why is the nominating process used by Croton Democrats both ethically and legally suspect? This would have to be a matter of speculation, but one thing seems clear: Apparently no one has publicly questioned the procedures, and so they continue to be the same, year after year. Perhaps the great numerical majority of registered Democrats in the village, and the difficulty opponents have found in challenging that party’s dominance, is part of the explanation.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party and its activists, in their criticisms of the Trump administration, have made the latter’s alleged anti-democratic policies, authoritarian rule, and disdain for court rulings a major part of their campaign in the upcoming midterms, in numerous special elections that have been held in recent months, and in political commentary and social media.

As a newspaper whose survival is dependent on a free press and First Amendment protections, the Chronicle is not neutral on the question of democracy in both its spirit and its letter. But democracy begins at home, and so it is reasonable to ask why some of our local leaders do not seem to feel bound by the laws that have been passed to help guarantee it.

We still hope for comment from Croton Democrats on these issues. The failure to respond to questions put to them by a reporter is itself a violation of democratic principles and values; perhaps at some point they will change course and opt for full transparency. Maybe our reporting is wrong or misguided; if so, they always have the option of telling us that, on the record. If they do, we will update this story accordingly.