Chaos and conflict marked a much-delayed, eight-hour meeting of the biannual Brooklyn Democratic County on Wednesday.
The result: the party rubber-stamped rules that a lower court judge had recently found were illegal.
The contentious meeting was the latest front in the war between the establishment Brooklyn Democratic Party, led by Democratic Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who didn’t show up to Wednesday’s meeting, and a reform coalition seeking to overthrow her, led by the New Kings Democrats.
In last June’s primary, the reform coalition won enough votes to oust Bichotte Hermelyn as party chief and gave their unanimous support to Julio Peña III, a longtime district leader from Sunset Park.
But Bichotte Hermelyn called a meeting of the outgoing district leaders in August who voted to add dozens of new voting members to the executive committee, making the reformers’ block irrelevant. /
On Wednesday, about 200 Democratic county committee members crowded into the auditorium of City Tech in Downtown Brooklyn, most of whom supported a reform slate of party leaders affiliated with New Kings Democrats, for the biannual organizational meeting, which has hundreds of voting members.
The party establishment came out on top, beating out reformers in a series of votes, thanks to hundreds of votes cast by proxy.
Tech glitches, a medical emergency and various other delays meant the meeting, which was supposed to start at 10:00 a.m., didn’t kick off until 3:30 p.m., to the chagrin of numerous attendees.
“Obviously these things are designed to make you frustrated and want to leave,” said Steve Flack, a county committee member who pledged to stick around until the end, no matter how long it took.
“I’m here for the whole run. I’m running on spite.”
Members of the Brooklyn Democratic county committee waited five hours for the meeting to start, Sept. 23, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporter
An older woman pushing a walker stalked out of the auditorium into the lobby at one point yelling, “This is goddam ridiculous. Nobody got no time for this.”
The meeting, when it finally began five and half hours after it was supposed to, quickly devolved into chaos after the first vote. The number of votes cast through clicker devices was more than the 1,142 people supposed to be allowed to vote either in person and by proxy.
“The numbers are not adding up,” one audience member pleaded.
Other reformers raised concerns that people hadn’t gotten required notices in the mail about the rules changes and that reformers hadn’t been allowed to review the records for hundreds of proxy voters before the vote.
“This is a farce,” said District Leader Diana Gonzalez.
Bichotte Hermelyn, who several party officials said was in the building, was nowhere to be found. She’d left several allies to run the meeting including outgoing district leader Anthony Beckford, Party Parliamentarian Rob Robinson, a former district leader Renee Collymore and the Party Second Assistant Secretary Alan Rocoff.
Members of the Brooklyn Democratic county committee wait while a meeting in Downtown Brooklyn was delayed by hours, Sept. 23, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporter
“You got two table clothes over there, so why is Rodneyse too chickenshit to show up?” one heckler yelled, a reference to a recent report from NY1 where Bichotte Hermelyn had run away from reporter Courtney Gross hiding behind tablecloths held up by her supporters.
As the crowd grew louder, party leaders kept pointing to security to have people removed from the auditorium. But CUNY Public Safety Officer Tatiana Dunlap said that wasn’t her job.
“This is your meeting,” she said. “We don’t arrest people for yelling.”
‘Democracy In Its Best Form’
The county committee meeting comes at a tumultuous time for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. A judicial ruling, expected in the coming days, could mean Wednesday’s entire proceeding may have to be scrapped and done over again. As chaos was unfolding inside City Tech, a panel of appellate judges a few blocks away was considering the case.
At an executive committee meeting slated for next week, the party is supposed to pick a new party chair.
By the time rule changes time came up for a vote, the crowd had erupted into chants of, “shame, shame shame.” The changes passed with 865 votes supporting the county establishment, to 272, relying on hundreds of proxy votes.
Anthony Jones, a district leader and ally of Bichotte Hermelyn joked he was wearing his “power grab jacket” and said he felt bad for those who had shown up thinking they could impact the proceedings Wednesday.
“They’re believing that, ‘Okay, we’re gonna come in here, we’re gonna do to see the Democratic process in motion, but they don’t understand that it’s based on the current district leaders and the weighted vote,” he said.
Later as the meeting concluded just before 6 p.m., Jones added, “this is democracy in its best form.”
Outside the auditorium, election lawyer Howard Graubard, who represents reformers, said the party’s confusion seemed to have accidentally allowed Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, aligned with reformers, to become the new chair of the county committee.
That’s because their slate had listed many officers, but had not explicitly designated a chair, while the reformers had listed Velazquez, meaning she was unopposed.
Later asked about Velazquez potentially chairing the county committee, Collymore seemed confused and she said would follow up with Bichotte Hermelyn.
“It was supposed to be there,” she said.
“This is what my wife would call a schweinerei,” Graubard added, referring to the German word meaning a filthy mess or dirty trick, he said. “They can’t do simple functions that you would expect of any competent county party.”
Graubard said they were collecting their notes on the various ways they thought the proceedings had violated election law and party bylaws and would see how the Appellate Division ruled before deciding their next legal maneuver.
“It was a mess, and it was a betrayal of democracy. Vote totals don’t make sense, voting procedures don’t make sense,” said Mellone, the president of New Kings Democrats. “When the intention of the party is not to have a fair vote then this is what you get.”
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