{"id":359347,"date":"2026-09-29T00:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T00:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/359347\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T00:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T00:34:07","slug":"ny1-exclusive-brooklyn-dem-chair-backs-out-of-party-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/359347\/","title":{"rendered":"NY1 Exclusive: Brooklyn Dem chair backs out of party race"},"content":{"rendered":"

After weeks of drama and intrigue, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who has led the Brooklyn Democratic Party since 2020, said exclusively on NY1<\/a> that she would step aside and no longer seek another term as head of the party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am leaving the party in that capacity a stronger, more inclusive, more transparent party and I am just really excited,” she said on “Inside City Hall” Monday night. “We have a number of qualified candidates. We have legislators. We have former legislators and former state committee members who can also run for that position.”<\/p>\n

The news is bound to shake up Brooklyn politics, which has been in turmoil for months.<\/p>\n

Party leadership is expected to vote on a new leader Tuesday night. It is unclear if new candidates will emerge at the last minute.<\/p>\n

Bichotte Hermelyn has been feuding with a group of so-called reformers in the party for years. Those reformers put forward their own candidate earlier this summer – Julio Pena – after they said they won a majority of seats on the party’s leadership committee during the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, Bichotte Hermelyn attempted to outmaneuver them.<\/p>\n

She put forward a rule change that expanded the leadership’s ranks, potentially giving her an advantage when the party was set to vote on a new leader.<\/p>\n

But those changes are tied up in court, and it’s unclear whether the courts would side with her.<\/p>\n

“There will be an opportunity to nominate other people, and there will be a democratic process where people will have a say, and you know, we get to choose who is going to be our next party chair,\u201d she told NY1.<\/p>\n

Bichotte Hermelyn has created controversy over the last several months.<\/p>\n

Her rule change was widely condemned by top leaders of the Democratic Party in New York, like the governor, the mayor and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, she rescinded her endorsement of the governor’s reelection bid following Gov. Kathy Hochul’s selection of Adrienne Adams for lieutenant governor. Bichotte Hermelyn eventually reversed course.<\/p>\n

But after Monday’s decision, her future is uncertain.<\/p>\n

In a video statement shared with NY1, she said she is not going anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After weeks of drama and intrigue, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who has led the Brooklyn Democratic Party since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[109,25,98,100,99,14647,9,24,12,63,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-359347","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-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359347","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=359347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}