It\u2019s not an elected office you may have paid attention to, but in Brooklyn, a fight over state committee seats \u2014 often referred to as district leaders \u2014 is set to test the county\u2019s power in the borough.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the slate wants to see a change in leadership,\u201d said one candidate, Akel Williams, in Brooklyn this week. \u201cIt\u2019s not about any one person, but it\u2019s about coming to a consensus of a leader who can actually fight for Democrats, who supports Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
A slate of nine district leader candidates is looking to challenge the Democratic Party establishment
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Those insurgents said they need to win nine seats to take over the party
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The party leader is dismissing the challenges\u00a0<\/p>\n
Williams is running as part of a slate of nine candidates \u2014 part of the Brooklyn Can\u2019t Wait Coalition \u2014 looking to gain a majority of seats on the county Democratic Party\u2019s executive committee.<\/p>\n
The point \u2014 to get new leadership in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen for many, many years under different party leadership, the same culture of corruption, the same pay to play and a party that has just not been effective,\u201d said Tony Melone, the president of the New Kings Democrats.<\/p>\n
The New Kings Democrats, a progressive, insurgent political organization in the borough, is spearheading the effort. In a map the group gave to NY1, they said they already have allies as district leaders in the blue-shaded districts. The teal-shaded districts are the races they\u2019re targeting.<\/p>\n
If they win and get a majority of the county committee, they plan to oust the county committee\u2019s current leader \u2014 Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis opponent of mine, his candidate is the same one in past videos that I revealed and exposed along with Tony Melone himself for collecting fraudulent signatures,\u201d said incumbent Anthony Beckford, who is facing off against Williams, on social media.<\/p>\n
Where the current party establishment tried to kick these candidates off the ballot. They ended up in court in some cases.<\/p>\n
But the insurgent candidates won.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current leadership is definitely pay to play. It\u2019s all about status,\u201d said another insurgent candidate, Carmella Charrington. \u201cIt\u2019s all about power.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about policy. It\u2019s not about legislation,\u201d Bichotte Hermelyn told NY1. \u201cIt\u2019s about getting access to the throne and taking over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chair of the party appeared on \u201cInside City Hall\u201d on Tuesday, responding to the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankly, there is some racial undertone to that because the New Kings Democrat is being led by white men who really have targeted all the Black leaders to take them down because they want to support me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In the end, while these races might be small, both sides realize the stakes could be much bigger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not an elected office you may have paid attention to, but in Brooklyn, a fight over state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[109,25,98,100,99,14647,9,24,12,63,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-237504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-courtney-gross","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}