An Arrest? An Affair? Keith Hernandez? Just Another Day in the Julia Salazar Campaign

ALBANY, N.Y. — It was, in the end, an arrest about nothing.

In the latest twist in the Zelig-like story of Julia Salazar — born-again democratic socialist, would-be immigrant and actual New York state Senate candidate in Brooklyn — news broke Thursday of her 2011 arrest involving a dispute with the ex-wife of former New York Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez.

The charge? Attempted identity theft.

The legal skirmish between the two women also included an assertion that Salazar, 27, had an affair with Hernandez, an allegation both denied but which nonetheless propelled the already peculiar political story into the realm of media mania, with the candidate, who is challenging state Sen. Martin Dilan to represent a north Brooklyn district, being pursued outside City Hall on Thursday by question-barking reporters and a TV crew.

As reported in London’s Daily Mail, the newest revelation about Salazar dates to 2010 when Kai Hernandez, then Keith Hernandez’s estranged wife, filed a police report alleging that Salazar, then a 19-year-old attending Columbia University, had attempted “to gain access to my bank accounts by fraudulently pretending to be me” in a phone call to Kai Hernandez’s bank.

At the time, Kai Hernandez also accused Salazar of other crimes, including stealing more than $10,000 in cash, nearly $1,000 in wine and $1,175 in Pottery Barn gift cards. Salazar was a neighbor of Kai Hernandez in Tequesta, Florida, and house-sat for her on several occasions, according to court documents.

The couple divorced in February 2011. The next month, Salazar was arrested on charges of criminal use of personal information, according to police reports.

Those charges, however, were dismissed and Salazar filed a lawsuit in 2013 against Kai Hernandez alleging that her “false accusations” and “character assassination” had led to the humiliation of “being handcuffed, being fingerprinted and having to pose for mug shots.” An amended complaint, filed by Salazar’s lawyer, contained the suggestion of the affair, used as an example of Kai Hernandez’s dishonesty and malfeasance toward his client. The complaint also noted that Salazar had known Keith Henandez since childhood.

“Julia considered Keith to be a father figure,” the complaint read.

After a four-year legal battle, the case resolved in Salazar’s favor in March with a $20,000 payment to her, according to her lawyer, Adam Hecht.

“Kai Hernandez’s bizarre and fraudulent attempts to defame and victimize Julia were recognized as baseless by the authorities, who declined to file charges, and this matter was resolved,” Hecht said in a statement. “Keith, Kai and Julia agree that there was no affair. We have no further comment on this.”

The revelations only added to the snowballing, stranger-than-fiction tale of Salazar, whose insurgent campaign has been buffeted by a series of articles outlining discrepancies in her personal biography. Among the inconsistencies are her campaign’s assertion that she was an immigrant from Colombia, though she was actually born and raised in the United States, and the implication that she had graduated from Columbia. (She conceded in an interview with The New York Times that while she had completed her course work, she had not graduated and did not intend to.)

Other curiosities in her biography include her embrace of left-wing politics (she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) after serving as the president of a conservative, right-to-life group in college. Raised in a Roman Catholic home, Salazar also once served as the Columbia chapter president of Christians United for Israel, before renouncing that group and converting to Judaism.

The involvement of Keith Hernandez, now a Mets television broadcaster on SNY, also brought on a barrage of jokes about “Seinfeld,” the famous show about nothing, on which the ballplayer made several appearances.