NY1 has learned a coalition of reform Democrats who say they now have enough votes to control the Brooklyn Democratic Party has chosen a Sunset Park district leader to be the party’s next chair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The coalition, known as Brooklyn Can\u2019t Wait,” was led in part by the reform group New Kings Democrats, and it picked Julio Pe\u00f1a\u00a0as its candidate to take over the Brooklyn Democrats. He spoke exclusively to NY1 yesterday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we have a majority of a coalition, but we want this to be a much broader coalition of folks and really ensure we are turning the page and building a new Democratic Party,\u201d Pe\u00f1a said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pe\u00f1a and this coalition are looking to unseat Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who has led the Brooklyn Democrats since 2020. She was the first Black woman to hold the post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For years, so-called reform Democrats have been trying to wrest control of the Brooklyn Democratic Party from longstanding leaders who they claim lack transparency and accountability. In this year\u2019s primary, for the first time they secured enough seats in the county\u2019s executive committee to hold a majority. They say Pe\u00f1a has 22 votes \u2013 a slim majority to take over as chair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vote will not be held until September, so this coalition must stay intact until then.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When asked what his top priority would be if elected, Pe\u00f1a said it was to elect Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy top priority is beating back Republicans. We have districts in Brooklyn that unfortunately Republicans have gained ground on,” he said.<\/p>\n
NY1 has reached out to Bichotte Hermelyn for a response. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Pe\u00f1a is a lifelong resident of Sunset Park and was previously the chair of Community Board 7. He is a director of a high school after school program through the Chinese American Planning Council.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NY1 has learned a coalition of reform Democrats who say they now have enough votes to control the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[109,25,98,100,99,14647,4275,9,24,12,63,27],"class_list":["post-298487","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-local-politics","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298487","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=298487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}