NEW YORK — In a serious escalation of a long-running political feud, Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright scheduled a vote on whether to expel Rep. Adriano Espaillat and three allies from their roles as district leaders.
The move toward an expulsion vote comes after an ethics report found the member of Congress tried to cheat in an election for a party position in 2023.
Now Espaillat has filed a lawsuit to block the Thursday vote, saying the report was politically motivated and invalid since the Manhattan Democrats’ ethics committee chair actually lives in Westchester County.
“The Ethics Committee has operated as an arm of a factional political agenda,” Espaillat’s attorney Ali Najmi wrote in the suit filed Monday. “County Leader Keith Wright has demonstrated a long-standing hostility towards Congressman Adriano Espaillat.”
The situation is inflaming longstanding tensions between Espaillat and Wright — and threatens to weaken Espaillat’s hold on his local base of power.
Wright’s side is downplaying the controversy, saying the party is just following a process and Espaillat is overplaying his hand.
“It’s just another ridiculous thing in a long history of Adriano not paying attention to the bigger things in life,” Manhattan Dems Executive Director Kyle Ishmael said in an interview. “He’s paying attention to whatever small fight he can pick with Keith [Wright] or some proxy battle. It’s ridiculous and unnecessary.”
Espaillat and Wright have been locked in a heated rivalry for more than a decade. In 2012, and again in 2014, then-Assemblymember Wright stood with former Rep. Charlie Rangel when Espaillat challenged the veteran congressmember’s reelection. When Rangel retired and picked Wright as his successor, Espaillat ran against Wright and won. The battle turned ugly, with accusations of racist voter suppression, and became a referendum on the Upper Manhattan district’s African-American population in Harlem, represented by Wright, versus the growing Dominican population centered in Washington Heights, represented by Espaillat. The tensions have continued, with Espaillat and Wright regularly finding themselves backing candidates on the opposite sides of elections big and small.
It was a small election that kicked off the saga resulting in the lawsuit. Espaillat and three aligned district leaders backed Assemblymember Harvey Epstein for county chair over Wright’s pick, Nico Minerva in October 2023. County chair is the number two position in the party, behind the leader. But Manhattan is a reform party organization, where the leadership holds relatively little power over the party.
Minerva ended up narrowly winning the vote, but accusations flew that Espaillat and his fellow district leaders — Assemblymember Manny De Los Santos, Maria Morillo and Mariel De La Cruz — had tried to cheat by reporting that Minerva didn’t get a single vote from their district’s county committee members when he had actually received 23 votes. Espaillat and others denied wrongdoing, blaming the mixup on procedural issues caused by Wright’s party leaders.
The county party’s ethics committee opened an investigation last year and released a report Feb. 10, 2025 finding that Espaillat and his allies “intentionally misreported votes” which “constituted a deliberate attempt to suppress votes for Minerva.” The report also found Espaillat and allies violated other party rules at the meeting and “engaged in obstruction and intimidation.” The ethics committee offered three options for the party’s district leaders: permanently expelling Espaillat, De Los Santos, Morillo and De La Cruz as district leaders; suspending them for ten years; or adding two additional district leader seats in Espaillat’s home Assembly district that could not be held by members of his political club.
The roughly 70 district leaders are volunteers with limited formal powers, but expulsion could limit Espaillat’s influence in the party — and would keep him from ever becoming county leader, a job that some suspect he would like to take away from Wright.
After Wright announced the report would be discussed at the party meeting Thursday, Espaillat filed the suit, asking a judge to block the party from taking action on the report.
The suit notes that two of the five members of the ethics committee have publicly dissented with the report, and that a third, Chair Denny Salas, actually lives in Westchester County, which would make him ineligible for a party position in Manhattan.
“It is inherently problematic — and unethical — for someone who no longer is legally qualified to be registered as a voter in New York County to deceive members of the (county party) and then attempt to oversee ethical standards and compliance within the Manhattan Democratic Party,” Najmi, the attorney, wrote in the suit.
Najmi provided video of Salas, who works as a lobbyist with Gotham Government Relations, answering the door at his home in the village of Ossining and saying he had not lived at his previous address in Manhattan for two years.
Salas declined to immediately comment on the suit and his residency. Wright’s spokesperson denied the party leader was using the report to hurt Espaillat.
“It’s not a Keith Wright report, it’s not a Keith Wright ethics committee. Because the whole party had to vote on the ethics committee,” Ishmael said. “We’re going to continue following the process, which includes at least discussing the report on Thursday.”