Alec Brook-Krasny

Alec Brook-Krasny (Russian: Алек Брук-Красный) (born March 2, 1958, Moscow, former Soviet Union) is an American Jewish former politician and the first Soviet-born Russian speaker to become a member of the New York State Assembly. He was a member of the Democratic Party, and was elected on November 7, 2006 to represent the 46th District, which covers the neighborhoods of Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Dyker Heights, and Seagate, in Brooklyn.^[1] While in the assembly, he served on the Housing, Aging, Cities, Election Law, and Governmental Employees Committees. On June 11, 2015, he announced his resignation from the assembly effective July 7, to work in the private sector.^[2]

Brook-Krasny immigrated to the United States in 1989 from Moscow, where he had graduated from the Moscow Institute of Consumer Technology (currently the Russian State University for Tourism and Services) in 1983. After several years in New York City, he became a manager and started his own successful business, a children's entertainment and community center called Funorama, in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.^[3] He later was appointed to Brooklyn Community Board 13 and quickly rose to the position of treasurer.

His first political campaign was in 2000 for the New York State Assembly. Though he lost to the party-backed incumbent, he won a record number of votes as the city's most viable write-in candidate. In 2001, he ran for the New York City Council. Although he won the endorsement of the New York Times,^[4] he lost the election to Domenic M. Recchia, Jr. That same year, Brook-Krasny became the founding Executive Director of The Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations (COJECO), a central coordinating body for 33 community-based, Russian-speaking émigré organizations in New York.

In 2006, State Assemblywoman Adele Cohen retired and Brook-Krasny declared his candidacy for her position. Running a fierce campaign against fellow local activist Ari Kagan, who is also Russian-born, Brook-Krasny successfully reached out to many non-Jewish voters and secured the endorsements of many local newspapers and elected officials. He won a very close Democratic primary election, with 3,101 votes to Kagan's 2,958,^[5] and then easily won the general election over the Republican candidate, Patricia B. Laudano, 10,423 to 4,139 votes.^[6]

Brook-Krasny was reelected to his assembly seat in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014, before resigning in mid-2015, and was succeeded by Pamela Harris, who was selected as the Democratic nominee by a party committee^[7] and then won the special general election in November.^[8]

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