The fallout to news that the leadership structure of the Brooklyn Democratic party is changing has been swift.<\/p>\n
“We’re very disappointed in this and especially because this subverts what the voters went out and voted for in the primary when they picked these members to be district leaders,” said Jay Brown, president of the Bay Ridge Democrats.<\/p>\n
“Voters made a clear choice and a clear signal in June. The rules of the party are such that the 42 district leaders elect the party chair,” said Bryan Mayger, the communications director for the New Kings Democrats.<\/p>\n
Assemblywoman and the party head Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn on “Inside City Hall” Wednesday night announced that she would be expanding the party’s executive committe from 42 to over 68 members, saying, “We want to create a perception of inclusiveness. We are expanding our executive committee to include more duly elected county committee members, assembly district representatives. And any other people who are elected in their communities.”<\/p>\n
The move comes as Bichotte Hermelyn’s leadership is being targeted by reform members of her party.<\/p>\n
The New Kings Democrats have said they have the votes to oust her and install Julio Pena as the new party boss. But that plan is now in danger.<\/p>\n
In September, the party was set to have their organizational meeting where executive members vote on the chair.<\/p>\n
The reformers would’ve held 22 out of 42 of those votes. But the expansion will preempt that meeting, diluting their voting bloc.<\/p>\n
“This is a move against the values of the Democratic party. We’re supposed to be the party that listens to the people, the party that stands up against authoritarianism that stands up against unaccountable leadership,” said Mayger.<\/p>\n
Opponents called it a power grab. Bichotte Hermelyn has been the chair for six years.<\/p>\n
“We want people who want to take the lead and be leaders but not for being leaders’ sake,” said Brown.<\/p>\n
Others took to social media to voice their discontent using words like “petty authoritians” and “embarrassing” and comparing the effort to President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 elections results.<\/p>\n
Bichotte Hermelyn, in the interview, said she speaks to House Minority leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. In reaction, spokesman Justin Chermol clarified: “Leader Hakeem Jeffries has not met with or spoken to Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn about the upcoming organizational meeting. He was surprised by yesterday’s announced plan to expand the executive committee of the Kings County Democratic Party and does not support it.”<\/p>\n
Opponents of the change are calling on members to reject it.<\/p>\n
“No matter where you stand in the Democratic, this is something that you should be against from a pure values perspective,” said Mayger.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fallout to news that the leadership structure of the Brooklyn Democratic party is changing has been swift.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109,25,6348,9,24,55,54,12,56,108,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-326966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-kelly-mena","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326966","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=326966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}