Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Tonight’s tussle for control of the Kings County Democratic Party, scheduled to be held at the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club, is the latest battle in a long-running war between the party’s chair, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, and a group of insurgents that currently includes roughly half of the 42 district leaders who serve as the all-important executive committee. The showdown will not feature high-flown debates over progressive versus moderate policies, or whether socialists belong under the same big tent as pro-business Democrats. The conflict boils down to who will control the selection of polling locations and the many patronage jobs and judicial elections that constitute the main business of every one of the city’s county-level party organizations.
The reformers, who hail largely from the progressive wing of the party, claim to have a majority and have vowed to oust Bichotte Hermelyn when the party holds its next organizing meeting in September. But on August 19, the party chair unveiled a plan to change the rules in advance of the September meeting in a way that adds 26 seats to the executive committee, ostensibly in the name of inclusion but with the convenient side effect of creating a batch of new votes in support of Bichotte Hermelyn. She has vetted some potential new committee members, which sources tell me might include a number of longtime allies like retired Assemblywoman Annette Robinson and former congressman Ed Towns.
Bichotte Hermelyn has framed the changes as providing increased representation. “We only have 42 district leaders who are making decisions for 1.2 million Democrats. And meanwhile, you have other counties like Manhattan, which has twice as many people in their executive committee and half the population as in Brooklyn. You have Richmond County (Staten Island), who only have about 300 county committee members, with again, more people on the executive committee,” she told me in an interview. “I think the perception has been backroom politics, and we don’t want that perception anymore. We are expanding our executive committee to include more newly elected county committee members, assembly district representatives, and any other people who are elected from their communities, and this is for the purpose of building a more inclusive leadership.”
A more inclusive leadership in which Bichotte Hermelyn will have support from about two-thirds of a newly constituted 68-member committee, thereby squashing the reformers’ attempted takeover.
The reformers, many of whom are part of the New Kings Democrats club, cried foul at a rally on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall on Monday afternoon.
“What Rodneyse is doing is a power grab, and it is pathetic. It is undermining the values of the Democratic Party at a time when we need leaders, every single leader in our city, to be pushing back against Trump’s divisive MAGA agenda,” said City Councilwoman Shahana Hanif. “What we are not going to do is let her win.”
“For too long, the Brooklyn Democratic Party has been allowed to be about self-dealing, about who gets the Surrogate’s Court contracts, about a set of pretty corrupt things that help a tiny handful of people enrich themselves and cling to power,” said Brad Lander, a former comptroller and current Democratic congressional candidate. “But of course what the Brooklyn Democratic Party should be is a vehicle for bringing voters in, for training future leaders and volunteers, for getting people excited about the possibility of running for office, for navigating the conflicts, intentions, and debates within the party to have those productively so you can choose candidates that represent the broad array of Brooklyn Democrats.”
Nearly every top Democrat in New York — including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Senator Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Letitia James, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries — has publicly sided with the reformers, demanding that Bichotte Hermelyn call off Tuesday night’s rules changes. “They are an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters,” Mamdani said Monday.
She’s going forward regardless.
The reformers filed a lawsuit on Monday requesting a temporary restraining order to stop tonight’s meeting, but a judge denied the motion before the Borough Hall rally was over. In general, courts stay out of intraparty squabbles; in 2008, a fight over Brooklyn’s judicial election process made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices laid out the messy process in Kings County before turning their backs with barely disguised disdain, concluding, “We decline to enter the morass.”
The bottom line is that the Brooklyn Democratic organization, like its counterparts in the other boroughs, is a favor factory. It’s where New Yorkers turn after consulting the city’s army of nonprofit staffers, government social workers, ministers and priests, who may offer programs, prayers, and sympathy but still fail to provide the job, cheap apartment, or emergency loan that the favor-seeker needs today.
The thousands of Brooklynites who look forward to snagging one of the $250-per-day jobs manning the poll sites every election year generally aren’t interested in abstract arguments about socialism. The hundreds of neighborhood lawyers who aren’t looped into the alumni networks of Ivy League law schools rely on the county organization to give them a shot at a judgeship.
And the many volunteers who register voters, carry palm cards, and otherwise make elections happen occasionally need a job for a relative or help securing a visa or straightening out a problem with Social Security or unemployment insurance.
Bichotte Hermelyn’s power play tonight is a wager that the legions of needy Brooklynites who have relied on the county organization for generations want the existing favor factory to stay open a little longer.
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