NY1 where Bichotte Hermelyn<\/a> had run away from reporter Courtney Gross hiding behind tablecloths held up by her supporters.<\/p>\nAs the crowd grew louder, party leaders kept pointing to security to have people removed from the auditorium. But CUNY Public Safety Officer Tatiana Dunlap said that wasn\u2019t her job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is your meeting,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t arrest people for yelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Democracy In Its Best Form\u2019<\/p>\n
The county committee meeting comes at a tumultuous time for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. A judicial ruling, expected in the coming days, could mean Wednesday\u2019s entire proceeding may have to be scrapped and done over again. As chaos was unfolding inside City Tech, a panel of appellate judges a few blocks away was considering the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At an executive committee meeting slated for next week, the party is supposed to pick a new party chair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the time rule changes time came up for a vote, the crowd had erupted into chants of, \u201cshame, shame shame.\u201d The changes passed with 865 votes supporting the county establishment, to 272, relying on hundreds of proxy votes.<\/p>\n
Anthony Jones, a district leader and ally of Bichotte Hermelyn joked he was wearing his \u201cpower grab jacket\u201d and said he felt bad for those who had shown up thinking they could impact the proceedings Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re believing that, \u2018Okay, we\u2019re gonna come in here, we\u2019re gonna do to see the Democratic process in motion, but they don\u2019t understand that it\u2019s based on the current district leaders and the weighted vote,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Later as the meeting concluded just before 6 p.m., Jones added, \u201cthis is democracy in its best form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside the auditorium, election lawyer Howard Graubard, who represents reformers, said the party\u2019s confusion seemed to have accidentally allowed Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, aligned with reformers, to become the new chair of the county committee.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because their slate had listed many officers, but had not explicitly designated a chair, while the reformers had listed Velazquez, meaning she\u00a0 was unopposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Later asked about Velazquez potentially chairing the county committee, Collymore seemed confused and she said would follow up with Bichotte Hermelyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was supposed to be there,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what my wife would call a schweinerei,\u201d Graubard added, referring to the German word meaning a filthy mess or dirty trick, he said. \u201cThey can\u2019t do simple functions that you would expect of any competent county party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graubard said they were collecting their notes on the various ways they thought the proceedings had violated election law and party bylaws and would see how the Appellate Division ruled before deciding their next legal maneuver.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a mess, and it was a betrayal of democracy. Vote totals don\u2019t make sense, voting procedures don\u2019t make sense,\u201d said Mellone, the president of New Kings Democrats. \u201cWhen the intention of the party is not to have a fair vote then this is what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chaos and conflict marked a much-delayed, eight-hour meeting of the biannual Brooklyn Democratic County on Wednesday.\u00a0 The result:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,2132,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-355313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-democrats","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355313","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=355313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/092326_brooklyn_dems_meeting-7.jpg\")
Members of the Brooklyn Democratic county committee waited five hours for the meeting to start, Sept. 23, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporter<\/p>\n![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/092326_brooklyn_dems_meeting-3-2.jpg\")
Members of the Brooklyn Democratic county committee wait while a meeting in Downtown Brooklyn was delayed by hours, Sept. 23, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporter<\/p>\n