DA candidate says he was snubbed because he's Muslim. Chair says it's harassment claim.

Adeel Mirza, former Westchester County assistant district attorney, is seeking the Democratic nomination to run for Westchester County district attorney in 2024.

A candidate for Westchester County District Attorney is accusing the chairwoman of the Scarsdale Democratic Party of Islamophobia, claiming she prevented him from presenting his credentials to the committee because he is Muslim.

But Myra Saul denies that the exclusion of Adeel Mirza last month had anything to do with his faith. Instead, she said, the committee decided his candidacy was not going to be considered because he’s the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit stemming from his treatment of a subordinate when he was a prosecutor in the DA’s Office four years ago.

The other Democratic candidates, Susan Cacace and William Wagstaff, were invited to the meeting Jan. 18, and after their presentations the committee endorsed Cacace.

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“Based upon the press reports regarding the sexual harassment litigation concerning him, the Scarsdale Committee chose not to consider Mr. Mirza.  He was informed that he was not on our agenda,” Saul said in a message to the Journal News/lohud when asked for the reason for his exclusion and whether he was told the reason.

According to Mirza, he made presentations to dozens of other Democratic committees.

Democratic district leaders from throughout Westchester will convene Monday to nominate a candidate for DA, though a June primary remains a possibility. The leaders are not bound by endorsements of their local committees.

Mirza and Saul first met for coffee in December, he said, as he was introducing himself and his candidacy to party leaders around the county. He said the conversation went well but there were comments she made that at first seemed innocuous but took on a new significance to him when he was excluded from the committee meeting.

He said while speaking about his background he explained that his mother was from Pakistan and his father from India. Saul expressed surprise, he said, because the two countries have long been in conflict. But he told her it wasn’t an issue because they were Muslim, as he was. He said Saul asked him if he was “devout” and he told her he wasn’t. He claimed she responded that was good because it wouldn’t fit with the committee’s values.

He said he was taken aback but “didn’t want to make waves” as he was soliciting support for his candidacy. And as he was not devout he thought little of it until the snub, he said.

Saul insists that while Mirza discussed his background she never asked if he was devout and certainly didn’t say what he claimed in response.

“That’s a complete lie. I never said anything like that,” she said.

The night of the meeting there were also candidate presentations to the committees in Bedford and Northern Westchester. Mirza said he was also not invited to Bedford and only learned of that one and Scarsdale’s when he was presenting at the first committee meeting.

He reached out to Saul who told him he wasn’t invited. Mirza claims when he asked why, she hung up on him. He said he called Westchester Democratic chair Suzanne Berger about the snub, although he did not share his suspicion about Saul’s motivation.

He said Saul apologized the next day and sent him the names and numbers of all Scarsdale’s district leaders so he could make a personal pitch to each. Mirza said there was no point to that after the committee had already made its endorsement.

She said she offered him the contact information so he could do his own “outreach.”

“District leaders are free to vote how they want at the convention regardless of the Committee endorsement and I told him that,” she said in a text.

Berger said that while many committee chairs would have let all the candidates present, it was up to Saul whom to invite and she wasn’t second-guessing her.

She said she wasn’t privy to the conversation when Mirza and Saul first met but that she has “known Myra for years and I don’t think she would say those things.”

Mark Dembo, the Bedford Democratic chair, did not return several phone and email messages from The Journal News/lohud over the past week. But Mirza said Dembo emailed him Tuesday to say that he wasn’t invited because Dembo didn’t have the candidate’s contact information.

He said he never met Dembo so could not speak to his motivation. But he said that Saul’s denial rings hollow.

“She could have said it was the lawsuit but she didn’t because that’s not the reason,” he said of his phone conversations with her. “It’s 100 percent Islamophobia…I presented to 37 other committees I was only not invited to Scarsdale. Given what’s going on in the world it’s not unreasonable to think that was the reason.”

Mirza has denied the allegations made against him in the lawsuit by a former prosecutor, Bianca Brown, particularly that he put his hand down her pants and grabbed her buttock at a White Plains restaurant where they had met for drinks shortly after she was hired in the fall of 2019.  Brown claims Mirza had been pressuring her to go out with him and at the restaurant made racially inappropriate remarks and even showed her the letter he wrote recommending she be hired after her interview with him and two other prosecutors.

Brown, who was fired in 2021 and also fired later from a job at the Bronx DA’s Office, sued Westchester, current District Attorney Mimi Rocah and her predecessor Anthony Scarpino, Mirza and two other prosecutors, alleging sexual and racial harassment and retaliation as a result of her complaint.

Under Scarpino, Mirza was disciplined – stripped of five vacation days and removed from the hiring committee – but it remains unclear whether Brown’s complaint about him at the time included the allegation about the groping. And he lost his job when Rocah took office in January 2021 and reviewed the disciplinary report.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: DA candidate says he was snubbed because he’s Muslim. Chair says it’s harassment claim.