The fate of Brooklyn’s beleaguered Maimonides Medical Center is at the center of a local power struggle — that appeared to boil over Sunday when an influential state lawmaker slammed a group that has pledged to “save” the hospital as “not kosher.”

State Sen. Simcha Felder, who represents the communities around Maimonides and was born there, made the stunning comments in an interview with The Post ahead of a town hall meeting planned by the group — “Save Maimonides” — set for Monday night.

“The movement is not kosher. It’s absolutely a smear campaign,” Felder said.

He accused the organization of being led by “hatchet men who’ve run negative campaigns and whose goal is destroy the hospital and besmirch [Maimonides CEO] Ken Gibbs.”

“Maybe they want Ken Gibbs’ job,” added Felder.

The senator said the group is spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars”  on what he described as an anti-Maimonides campaign.

Neighborhood residents and elected officials have complained about the quality of patient care at Maimonides, describing Brooklyn’s largest hospital as disorganized and in decline.

In February, The Post reported that top executives at the Borough Park hospital were pocketing seven-figure salaries while the 700-bed facility was hemorrhaging tens of millions of dollars. Gibbs, for instance, saw his compensation skyrocket from $1.8 million to $3.2 million from 2019 to 2020, during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to not-for-profit financial records filed with the IRS.

Earlier this month, The Post reported about claims from patients about poor care, that were among nearly 1,000 complaints collected by the Save Maimonides campaign, a grassroots effort launched in July to counter what it contends is neglect and mismanagement at the hospital.

Felder said the need for improvements at Maimonides is beyond dispute.

He was one of five legislators who penned a letter to Gibbs last month, detailing a list of complaints including excessively long wait times pinned on staffing shortages, and fiscal mismanagement.

“Everyone agrees improvements have to be made. You fix the problem. It doesn’t mean you destroy the hospital,” he said.

Union workers at the hospital also have prodded Maimonides officials to bolster patient safety and staffing — without undermining the stability of the facility.

Save Maimonides, in a statement, suggested that Felder is beholden to the hospital’s trustees and management who have donated to his campaigns.

“It is unfortunate that Senator Felder seems to be under pressure from his donors at the hospital, but we agree with his recent public statements regarding the poor patient treatment, financial mismanagement and indifference of the executives at Maimonides Medical Center,” the statement said.

“We hope this sudden change of heart does not mean he is also turning his back on over 2,000 of his constituents who have voiced their shock at the poor quality of care at the failing hospital in recent weeks. We have one goal – to make Maimonides better for all of its patients,” the group said.

Felder scoffed when hearing the group’s statement, and said he hasn’t had a competitive election in years and hasn’t focused on fundraising.

“This just proves my point. This is their M of O [modus operandi]– they try to smear and destroy people. I’m not afraid. They’re full of it,” he said. 

Labor leaders representing Maimonides employees also took issue with Save Maimonides, with one calling the group a “fake AstroTurf” campaign that has misled people into believing they are affiliates of the unions.

“We are deeply unsettled by reports that individuals with no apparent relationship to Maimonides, and who have passed themselves off as affiliated with unions at the institution, are spreading misinformation to staff, patients, and visitors under the guise of ‘saving Maimonides,’” said Brian Morse, executive vice President of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

He added: “1199SEIU members have long advocated for improving care, jobs, staffing, and funding for vital safety net hospitals like Maimonides, and it is outrageous that outsiders would be exploiting these very real issues for their own business or political agendas.”

The head of the New York State Nurse Association also claimed the group is exploiting legitimate concerns that workers have about Maimonides. “Their co-opting of our fights for ratios and safe working conditions is an insult to our union’s mission,” Nancy Hagans, the union’s president and a Maimonides nurse, said in a statement. 

But Mendy Reiner, co-chairman of Save Maimonides, responding to the criticism said, “We have nothing but respect for the hardworking employees of Maimonides. We don’t claim to represent them.”

“We represent the thousands of patients who have suffered at the hand of mismanagement by Maimonides leadership. Our goals are the same as the unions – fix the hospital and obtain more resources to end the chronic understaffing,” he said.

The group’s town hall meeting on Monday night is set to take place at a Borough Park catering hall and will include a free “buffet dinner” and live entertainment.

In its own statement, the hospital said the Save Maimonides group is undermining the facility by scaring Brooklyn residents away from seeking care there. 

“The campaign’s choice of tactics speaks for itself – spending an exorbitant amount of money to discourage people from using the hospital, launching highly personalized and misleading attacks, seeking to undermine the unions that represent our workforce, and attempting to conceal the campaign’s funders and organizers is not a constructive way to improve patient care,” a spokesperson said in the statement.

Maimonides is one of the remaining stand-alone community hospitals in New York City. Most others have merged with larger medical networks to survive financially. For example, Lenox Hill hospital on the Upper East Side is now part of Northwell Health, and Lutheran hospital is now part of NYU Langone Health system.

Maimonides is considered a safety net hospital, with many patients covered by Medicaid, the health insurance program for the needy. Medicaid pays less for service than patients with private or commercial insurance.

The hospital leadership said it has met with elected officials and other community partners and health officials to help address concerns about patient care and staffing issues.

Maimonides insisted that its staff-to-patient ratios are “in line with, or in many cases better than” those of comparable city hospitals and have remained steady the past three years while grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.

“But like all hospitals, we have had to contend with industry-wide shortages in nursing and other professions.  To offset the gap, we have conducted extensive recruitment, hiring, and training; over the past nine months, we have welcomed more than 250 NEW NURSES to our patient care teams and several nurse educators to help guide them as they begin roles in various clinical settings,” the hospital said.

The hospital said its staffers also “actively seek out and utilize patient feedback” to make improvements.