This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.
A coalition seeking to overhaul the Brooklyn Democratic Party is “very likely” to file a lawsuit challenging the party chair’s eleventh-hour effort to upend an upcoming leadership vote.
On Wednesday evening, the chair of the party, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, announced a plan to dramatically expand who would vote in an upcoming internal party election to choose its chair. New York Focus obtained and is publishing the full text of that plan, the details of which have not been previously reported.
The shift comes after a reform-minded coalition of local Democratic clubs and politicians called Brooklyn Can’t Wait picked up eight district leader seats during the June Democratic Party elections. That grew the coalition to include 22 of the borough’s 42 district leaders — just enough to unseat Bichotte Hermelyn in the election. In July, the coalition announced that it had united behind District Leader Julio Peña III for the role.
Peña III has promised to focus on defeating Republicans in elections across Brooklyn and to reform the borough’s patronage-laden judicial system.
Bichotte Hermelyn sent a text to district leaders late Wednesday announcing a special meeting to consider her proposed bylaw changes. The meeting will take place on August 25 at the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club.
The eight challengers elected in June have not yet taken office, so votes would instead be cast by district leaders who lost to them. If all 42 district leaders vote, the proposal would need 22 votes to pass. (New York Focus called the district leaders who lost to challengers; most did not answer, and one, Heriberto Mateo, said he didn’t know how he’d vote.)
In an interview Wednesday on NY1’s Inside City Hall, Bichotte Hermelyn said the proposal would make the party more inclusive and combat “backroom politics.”
“We know that we are the largest Democratic Party in the entire nation,” she said. “However, we realize that we have the fewest number of people making major decisions. We only have 42 district leaders who are making decisions for 1.2 million Democrats.”
She also said that under the current rules, it’s far from clear that the coalition supporting Peña III would deliver the 22 votes needed to elect him, since the district leaders pledged to him could waver.
On Wednesday, Bichotte Hermelyn said the amendments would now newly give 26 county committee executive officers voting rights in the leadership election this fall. A copy of the proposal obtained by New York Focus shows that includes a dozen newly created positions, as well as giving such rights to officers whose positions had been ceremonial.
The new leadership positions would be chosen by the party’s county committee, but Bichotte Hermelyn’s control over that committee and the practice of proxy voting would make the outcome a “fait accompli,” according to Bryan Maygers, a spokesperson for the New Kings Democrats, a political club that led the charge to unseat Bichotte Hermelyn. The chair would also likely exert major influence over a more complex process to add 21 new voting members in December, he said.
The additions would leave the chair in control of more voting members than there are elected district leaders, making future leadership elections “meaningless,” Maygers said.
The proposal would also grant any former party leader permanent voting rights. That could give a vote to former district leader and Assemblymember Clarence Norman, a convicted felon.
Another proposal states that any future amendment to the party rules concerning “proxies” would require a supermajority vote to pass. Current proxy voting rules give the chair significant control over the county committee.
The Brooklyn Democratic Party did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Maygers predicted that reformers would challenge the plan in court.
“I think it’s very likely that a lawsuit would come out of this,” Maygers said. “It’s disenfranchising all of the district leaders who won their elections. It’s essentially neutralizing all of those elected leaders and reassigning that power to a bunch of de facto appointments from the chair.”
This isn’t the first time a party chair has been accused of packing the party executive committee. Former Assemblymember Vito Lopez installed 11 new executive committee members, strengthening his grip on power. He eventually was forced to step down amid a sexual harassment and groping scandal. Lopez, who is now deceased, denied the allegations at the time.
Bichotte Hermelyn’s new proposal, which goes well beyond Lopez’s maneuver, would undo a reform reportedly passed in 2020 at the same meeting where she was elected chair. That reform barred county committee members from voting in internal elections, according to a blog post at the time by the New Kings Democrats.
Nick Garber contributed reporting.