{"id":348434,"date":"2026-09-16T16:20:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348434\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T16:20:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:20:43","slug":"how-local-political-parties-control-the-judicial-bench","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348434\/","title":{"rendered":"How local political parties control the judicial bench"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s an elected office most voters may not notice.<\/p>\n

“There’s gonna be a meeting tonight at 6:30 at this random place in Brooklyn that I don’t know where it is, and I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Jan Combopiano, a first-time judicial delegate.<\/p>\n

She was appointed by an elected official earlier this year and her sole task is to go to a judicial convention later in the summer to help select a slate of judges to appear on the November ballot for the state’s trial courts \u2014 known as the state Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

“I believe we have to pick four of the nine candidates to go forward and be on the ballot,” she told NY1.<\/p>\n

This is all part of the convoluted, sometimes confusing, way judges are put on the bench in New York \u2014 which includes a mix of running for office, appointments and electing lawyers to sit on the bench for more than a decade at a time depending on the type of court. Each of them, whether it’s running for civil court, getting nominated for the state Supreme Court by local political parties, or getting appointed by the mayor for criminal or family court, all have a lot of politics at play.<\/p>\n

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NY1 has been investigating the process \u2014 and the politics behind it \u2014 for months, finding party leaders in the driver’s seat, where critics and the candidates themselves will say favoritism and donations can win the day.<\/p>\n

“I am running today because I am deeply concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability in the judicial selection process and what implications that has not only on the judges who do get selected but on the public’s confidence and trust that the judiciary is serving its appropriate role,” said Brian Chelcun earlier this summer, a candidate for Civil Court. “It is certainly public perception, and I think some grounded reality in it, that getting endorsements, getting the support you need to run for judge or in some cases getting nominations through this process are related to political connections or fundraising.”<\/p>\n

He was not selected by the party.<\/p>\n

NY1 followed the process to get nominated for the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn all summer. While Combopiano was elected to select the judges officially as a judicial delegate, the choice was really made days before at a roadside lobster house in southern Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

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“I’d like Peter Luger’s rather than the Lobster House, to be honest with you,” said one Brooklyn district leader, Frank Seddio.<\/p>\n

That’s where top party leaders gathered behind closed doors in early August over seafood to select who they would put on the ballot.<\/p>\n

“It all depends on what the district leader wants to do,” said another district leader, Shaquana Boykin. “Cause supposedly the Democratic Party is supposed to be more interactive with the judicial delegates, but no.”<\/p>\n

The judges they had handpicked showed up at the end of the meal. None of them would talk to NY1.<\/p>\n

“For some reason, all someone reached out to them and told them to come down,” Seddio said. “All the winners were invited. All the candidates were hovering in the area. I suspect they may have been in Kings Plaza shopping.”<\/p>\n

Days later, scores of judicial delegates, including Combopiano, attended the judicial convention at a golf course in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

“It does not feel like democracy in action,” Combopiano said. “It feels like trying to exhaust people on a hot summer night.”<\/p>\n

While they officially vote to put these endorsed candidates on the ballot, the decision had already been made. There was no debate about who would be chosen.<\/p>\n

During the process, it was clear the head of the party in Brooklyn did not want NY1’s cameras to capture the moment. Allies of Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who has chaired the Brooklyn Democrats since 2020 and is an assemblywoman from the borough, blocked NY1’s cameras.<\/p>\n

The assemblywoman then hid behind a tablecloth so she would not have to answer NY1’s questions.<\/p>\n

For years critics have alleged it’s party loyalty that gets candidates on the ballot in this process \u2014 over merit.<\/p>\n

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NY1 examined all the campaign contributions to local parties, the local party leaders or district leaders, given by more than 340 judicial candidates since 2020 across the five boroughs. NY1 found these candidates have contributed more than $742,000 over this period \u2014 perhaps hoping it would win them favor with local party leaders, including $124,366 to the Queens Democratic Party. and $37,325 to the Brooklyn Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

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Some party leaders and officials, like Bichotte Hermelyn and Seddio, got thousands of dollars in donations.<\/p>\n

NY1 asked one Civil Court candidate, Michelle DeSouza-Forte, whether she had donated. She responded: “You can check my filings and see if I did.”<\/p>\n

She has given at least $2,115.<\/p>\n

Another judicial candidate, Bridget Hamblin, told NY1 she had not donated. NY1 found $474 in donations.<\/p>\n

NY1 analyzed all the judicial races in the five boroughs since 2020. Only half of them were contested. Many had candidates on multiple ballot lines where voters had no choice.<\/p>\n

Since 2015, there have been 19 judges either removed, censured or sanctioned in New York City by the Commission on Judicial Conduct \u2014 a state agency charged with oversight of ethical issues on the court. This year, one former Brooklyn judge, Edward King, was arrested and accused of defrauding real estate investors of millions of dollars by the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

Last year, he was named in a civil suit alongside a Brooklyn party leader \u2014 both were accused of defrauding investors in that case, too. It has since settled.<\/p>\n

That leader, Seddio, is also closely connected to King’s co-defendant in the criminal case, Sam Sprei, having represented him as an attorney in other civil lawsuits. Seddio was also chair of the party for eight years, just before the current leader took over.<\/p>\n

Seddio claimed to NY1 he has no connection to former King, despite the legal paper trail.<\/p>\n

“It was a sad thing to see that happen to anybody much more a judge cause it takes away from the entire judicial system,” Seddio told NY1. “People have been elected in this county are the most unqualified people I’ve ever seen on earth who are elected by the public.”<\/p>\n

The question remains: is this the best way to get people on the bench?<\/p>\n

“You might want to elect judges saying the people should have a more direct say over who is selected, but on the contrary side, opening up the process could result in campaign finance issues,” said Jeffrey Wice, of New York Law School.<\/p>\n

Experts note that the party’s control of the process in New York has been challenged in the nation’s highest court.<\/p>\n

In a 2008 case, the U.S. Supreme Court found political parties have the right to control these selections, with former Justice Antonin Scalia delivering the opinion of the court, saying: “None of our cases establish a candidate’s constitutional right to have a fair shot at winning a party’s nomination. Party conventions with their attended smoke-filled rooms and domination by party leaders have long been an accepted manner of selecting party candidates.”<\/p>\n

That means party control is completely valid.<\/p>\n

“To the degree that you want to run for Supreme Court justice, very much so that is pretty much controlled entirely by the political parties,” Wice said. “You have races for surrogate, civil court; there are primaries. Races are becoming much more divisive in New York City, where parties have less control over who they can nominate.”<\/p>\n

That became clear to Combopiano last month in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

“It just felt like it was all performance and it was all like, ‘Oh look at us.’ We’re showing we have judicial delegates and they all came out here to Marine Park, which is very far away from where I live, but it doesn’t serve a real purpose. And it doesn’t feel like it was useful,” she said.<\/p>\n

Who went home, Combopiano said, without making a real impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s an elected office most voters may not notice. “There’s gonna be a meeting tonight at 6:30 at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,25,98,14647,4275,9,24,11,10,12,27,200],"class_list":["post-348434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-courtney-gross","tag-local-politics","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348434","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=348434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}