BOROUGHWIDE \u2014 The future leadership of the Brooklyn Democratic Party has been the site of a power battle between the existing executive committee and members of an opposition group that have recently included more elected district leaders. Current county leader Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn has been at the center of controversies that include a lawsuit, rulebook rewrites and mounting protests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Brooklyn Democratic Party is the Kings County committee of the Democratic Party. It is one of the largest Democratic county organizations in the United States. Bichotte Hermelyn has served as the party chair since 2020, when she succeeded previous chair Frank Seddio. She became the first woman ever elected in the position, and the first Black woman to lead the party in any of the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
After this June\u2019s primary, an opposition group aligned with New Kings Democrats and a campaign called Brooklyn Can\u2019t Wait claimed enough district leader seats to make up a majority within the Brooklyn Democratic Party. The New Kings Democrats announced plans to elect district leader Julio Pe\u00f1a III in an upcoming internal party election in the fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last week, Bichotte Hermelyn announced a plan to expand who could vote on party leadership, adding more than two dozen members to the executive committee and additional representatives from each assembly district in the borough. A number of Democratic state officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Attorney General Letitia James, criticized the rule change, which was perceived as a technique for Bichotte Hermelyn to maintain power.<\/p>\n
Schumer said, \u201cGiven the clear results of the June Democratic primary in Brooklyn, the party should not change the rules in the middle of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Hochul told The City Reporter, \u201cDemocrats need to be focused on defeating Donald Trump and his MAGA enablers this November, anything else is a distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday evening, Bichotte Hermelyn\u2019s proposal narrowly passed in a tense vote amongst the current Brooklyn Democratic Party district leaders. Opposition members of the party filed a lawsuit ahead of the vote, saying it violates the party\u2019s bylaws and New York State election law. The lawsuit was dismissed by a judge because the vote hadn\u2019t happened yet. Now that changes have been approved, a new lawsuit is expected to be filed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing that people are excited to weaken our democracy and to limit the voices of duly elected folks,\u201d Pe\u00f1a told a reporter from City & State New York after emerging from the vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are expanding our Party to fight for working and middle-class families, make New York more affordable and defeat the Trump agenda,\u201d Bichotte Hermelyn said. \u201cWe held an open and fair vote in accordance with Party bylaws and state election law. The votes were counted, and the result is clear. I respect those who weighed in on both sides, and I thank our district leaders for their service.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sept. 23, the Brooklyn Democratic Party will hold an official vote to elect the new party chair, and will include the newly elected district leaders for the first time. A large meeting venue in Downtown Brooklyn has been established as the location in order to accommodate the expected large turnout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOROUGHWIDE \u2014 The future leadership of the Brooklyn Democratic Party has been the site of a power battle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,18390,100,99,48582,4008,426,398,9,24,5325,63,17961,82],"class_list":["post-332598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-democratic-party","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-charles-schumer-chuck-schumer","tag-hakeem-jeffries","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-letitia-james","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-no-paywall","tag-nyc","tag-rodneyse-bichotte-hermelyn","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332598","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=332598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}