Senator Martin Dilan (Photo: Sen. Dilan's Office)

A campaign fundraising committee set up to bankroll the state Senators from the erstwhile Independent Democratic Conference was recently ruled to have been illegal by a state Supreme Court judge. Campaign finance records show that Brooklyn Senator Martin Dilan, who was never part of the IDC but is facing a tough primary challenge this year, was also a beneficiary of thousands of dollars spent by that committee for his last reelection campaign, a fact opponents are using as fodder to criticize his commitment to the Democratic

Julia Salazar, middle in black (photo: Salazar campaign website)

The Harlem apartment where Julia Salazar lived in 2013 while completing her undergraduate work at Columbia, where she majored in Middle Eastern Studies, was falling apart.

It was run “by a totally abusive management company, a neglectful landlord,” Salazar, 27, told Gotham Gazette. “They didn’t heat the building adequately in the winter, failed to make repairs that were really urgent. Some people had been waiting for well over a year