That year, Republicans<\/a> unseated<\/a> three Democratic state Assembly members in districts that had been blue for decades. Onlookers said the county party was \u201cincapable\u201d of fulfilling its mission and that they hadn\u2019t \u201cused their resources to fund any general elections.\u201d<\/p>\n It was not the start or the end of Democratic losses in southern Brooklyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two years earlier, Nicole Malliotakis had defeated<\/a> Max Rose in NY-11, now New York City\u2019s only Republican congressional district. She beat Rose by more than 40,000 votes in a 2022 rematch. In 2024, just a year after Democrat Iwen Chu was elected to represent the first Asian-majority state Senate district, she was unseated<\/a> by Republican Steve Chan.<\/p>\n Those losses were, in part, what spurred reform group New Kings Democrats in its mission to vote out longtime party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. In June, the group won enough district leader seats to do just that, and threw their support behind longtime district leader Julio Pe\u00f1a III.<\/p>\n \u201cOur number one job needs to be electing Democrats,\u201d Pe\u00f1a said. \u201cRegardless of how we feel personally about folks and different ways of approaching things, we have to get back to our core responsibility of electing Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n But Bichotte Hermelyn in August introduced a new set of party rules<\/a> that thwarted NKD\u2019s plans and seemed to ensure her tenure would continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n The changes sparked what has become a monthslong battle over party leadership, replete with shouting matches, lawsuits and restraining orders.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though courts have repeatedly ruled against<\/a> Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies, she held a likely-illegal vote on Oct. 4 to elect Assembly Member Nikki Lucas<\/a> as party chair. Reformers say the vote was illegitimate, as it was violated a temporary restraining order, and are waiting for a court to weigh in.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the election drew closer, party members repeatedly raised concerns about five candidates hoping to unseat incumbent Republicans in southern Brooklyn: Mike DeCillis in NY-11, Joey Cohen-Saban in AD-45, Chris McCreight in AD-46, Joyce Xie in AD-49 and Larry He in SD-17.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have other battles as a Democratic Party we should be fighting,\u201d Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said at a rally in September. \u201cA poll came out where a Trump Republican is only five points away from the party\u2019s governor in this race. We have congressional races that can flip the House to give Democrats the power. And instead of \u2026 focusing on that, we have to focus on a power grab that would probably shame Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n A week before the election, with early voting well underway, the party has grown no closer to resolving its legal and internal issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some critics, including at least two candidates, say leadership has once again failed to do what\u2019s necessary to propel Democrats to victory, especially in the critical final weeks. Typically, county parties would be organizing phone banks and voter canvassing events, sending out mailers, and providing candidates with financial support, Pe\u00f1a said. But the Brooklyn Democratic Party has long deviated from that playbook.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, there\u2019s what a party usually does, and then there\u2019s what the Brooklyn Democratic Party usually does, and those two things are very different,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018We\u2019re used to\u2019 lack of support in southern Brooklyn, some candidates say\u00a0<\/p>\n Some longtime political players say they were prepared to go it alone after years of neglect by the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n McCreight, a second-time Assembly candidate who has been active in local politics for decades, said the Brooklyn Democratic Party has long focused on primary elections, not general elections. In deep-blue North Brooklyn, most Democratic nominees don\u2019t face Republican challengers come fall, but that\u2019s not the case further south.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s part of why he and a cadre of other local politicos \u2014 including former council member Justin Brannan and state Sen. Andrew Gounardes \u2014 founded Bay Ridge Democrats in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t an attempt to win primaries, because quite frankly, back then a lot of the seats that we were trying to win were held by Republicans,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it was very November focused. We were successful by and large, and we did this because you know overall we\u2019ve seen for decades that the party itself, as a general rule, is more focused on primaries than general elections.\u201d<\/p>\n McCreight has worked on successful campaigns for former Council members, including Brannan and Vincent Gentile; as well as current member Kayla Santosuosso<\/a>, who defeated Republican George Sarantopoulos in a closely-watched race last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, he\u2019s running against incumbent Republican Alec Brook-Krasny in AD-46, which covers a swath of southern Brooklyn from Bay Ridge to Coney Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brook-Krasny represented the district as a Democrat from 2006 to 2015, but changed parties<\/a> in 2022 and defeated Democratic incumbent Mathylde Frontus. McCreight first ran against Brook-Krasny in 2024, and lost by just over 1,000 votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the success of other candidates, McCreight said he has not gotten any support from the Brooklyn Democratic Party during his campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, we\u2019re used to it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, this is what we signed up for.\u201d<\/p>\n McCreight, who supports Pe\u00f1a and NKD, said he has a solid coalition of supporters and community groups. Democrats in southern Brooklyn, who say they lack support from the party, have a different approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy campaign has tons of local volunteers. We win our races by doing the right thing for the neighborhood, being active in the community, making sure people know who we are before we decide to run, and you know we organize around that and make sure that folks who want to get involved have an easy way of doing that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He has also gotten plenty of support from clubs like the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats and Brooklyn Young Democrats, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n DeCillis, who is preparing to face off against Malliotakis in NY-11, is using a similar tactic. He\u2019s run in the district\u2019s Democratic primary twice before, but dropped out both times after Max Rose entered the race. Since then, though, he\u2019s stayed engaged in local politics, leading town halls on immigration and Medicare and Medicaid and organizing Staten Island\u2019s first \u201cNo Kings\u201d rallies. Shifting political leanings in the borough pushed him to run again.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI realized that there was a genuine grassroots movement happening that was separate and different than what had happened before, because these are people who came to their first protest, their first town hall, their first rally,\u201d DeCillis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Richmond County Democratic Party is more involved in the nomination and endorsement process, DeCillis said, but he would, in theory, expect some financial and logistical support from the Brooklyn Democratic Party. But, in reality, they didn\u2019t expect much, DeCillis said. He pointed to Bichotte Hermelyn\u2019s spat with<\/a> Brannan in 2023, when he faced off against Republican Ari Kagan.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time, DeCillis recalled a \u201creally weird vibe coming to most of southern Brooklyn that [Bichotte Hermelyn] did not want to elect Democrats down here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He felt NY-11 was flippable, though, and that what his campaign lacked in funding and institutional support, they could make up for in manpower.\u00a0With the help of hundreds of volunteers, he said, he and his team have been carrying out mass canvassing events, sending emails and targeted advertisements, and holding phone banks to reach voters.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI like the way we\u2019re doing it now because \u2014 not that I would turn down $8 million \u2014 but I think that what we\u2019re seeing is that the level of enthusiasm and engagement is absolutely off the charts,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen it that involved down here, even in the 2018 flip.\u201d<\/p>\n Pe\u00f1a and the New Kings Democrats have been helpful too, he said, and have hosted canvasses and worked to amplify the campaign. DeCillis, long frustrated with the Brooklyn Democratic Party\u2019s lack of action, said the ongoing battle to maintain control had made things worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey were fairly useless before, but what they\u2019re doing now is literally handicapping these races by going through all of this logistical\u00a0 nonsense of trying to litigate something that is frankly not their right,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so it\u2019s been really unfortunate because it also has drawn attention away from what we\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n While McCreight and DeCillis forge their own paths, Cohen-Saban said he has enjoyed plenty of support from the county party in nearby AD45.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018The support in that race \u2026 was Rodneyse\u2019<\/p>\n A lifelong Brooklynite and chief of staff to local state Senator Sam Sutton, Cohen-Saban said he decided to run in AD45 in 2022, immediately after Democrat Steve Cymbrowitz lost his race to Republican Michael Novakhov by more than 4,000 votes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem was my base, which is the Sephardic Jewish community and the Orthodox Jewish community, historically, has not really come out to vote,\u201d he explained. \u201cThat was the challenge. People were like \u2018Well, you really need to have a strong base in order to run, especially in a district that is this conservative.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Cohen-Saban said, he had \u201cno name recognition,\u201d but believed he could win voters over. He spent a year \u201crunning around the district,\u201d knocking on thousands of doors and meeting tens of thousands of voters.<\/p>\n \u201cMy theory is that communities will vote for their own if the message is right, and if they believe that this person is going to fight for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the 2024 election, Novakhov defeated Cohen-Saban by just 232 votes. In a district that went heavily for Trump in the presidential election, losing by such a slim margin was \u201cextraordinary,\u201d Cohen-Saban said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe support in that race really, from the very, very beginning, was Rodneyse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bichotte Hermelyn introduced him to people and stakeholders across the district, he said, helped him get his campaign off the ground, connected him with the New York State Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee<\/a>, and helped with day-to-day operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShe was there every day,\u201d Cohen-Saban said. \u201cI was this first-time candidate who had no idea what I was getting myself into, no idea who to call, where to start, what to do \u2026 but she really helped walk me through it. She helped. I\u2019ve got nothing but good things to say.\u201d<\/p>\n He is familiar with the gripes some other candidates have about the county party, he said, and isn\u2019t sure why Bichotte Hermelyn threw her weight behind him, especially since he had such a slim chance of victory in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe she just likes me as a person, I don\u2019t know,\u201d he laughed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since Lucas\u2019 contested election as chair, she has helped too, he said, in getting volunteers and drumming up support from labor organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the midst of the inter-party turmoil, he hasn\u2019t seen much difference in how the party is operating, he said, and he feels there\u2019s a sense of unity among \u201cestablishment\u201d members.<\/p>\n Cohen-Saban \u2014 along with Xie and He \u2014 have largely sided with Bichotte Hermelyn and the establishment. They voted in favor of Bichotte Hermelyn\u2019s rule changes in August, and supported Lucas as the new chair earlier this month, while McCreight abstained from both votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Xie and He did not return requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t Bichotte Hermelyn\u2019s support that spurred Cohen-Saban\u2019s choices, he said, but a clash with his fellow district leaders earlier this summer. In June, newly-elected district leader Carmella Charrington, who was backed by NKD, shared a video<\/a> promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cohen Saban, furious, put together a petition calling for her resignation. But NKD president Tony Melone reportedly<\/a> texted district leaders not to sign it. Instead, Melone wrote, they would work together \u201cto fight antisemitism and educate all our coalition partners.\u201d That was \u201cthe straw that broke the camel\u2019s back,\u201d Cohen-Saban said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis guy\u2019s not a district leader. Yes, he\u2019s the president of NKD or whatever it is, but we are colleagues and we stand together. At least that\u2019s what it\u2019s supposed to be, right?\u201d Cohen-Saban said. \u201cI cannot support anybody that can take a stance or a stand against anti-Semitism, and it\u2019s especially the case if that anti-Semitism is coming from someone from within our party, someone from a certain faction. We should call it out, irrespective of the politics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Waste of resources\u2019<\/p>\n He feels the infighting is a \u201cwaste of resources,\u201d and said he wished party members could \u201cput our differences aside\u201d to carve out a path forward, rather than arguing the same issues over and over again.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to happen, especially not before the election,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n While both sides seem to agree that the disagreement is wasting time, they can\u2019t agree on whose fault it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pe\u00f1a, McCreight and the reformers say the party establishment should drop their legal challenges and accept a new era; Bichotte Hermelyn, Lucas and their allies say they have done plenty for candidates, and that reformers are getting in the way of their success.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, reformers named Xie, He and Cohen-Saban \u2014 along with dozens of other county party members \u2014 in a lawsuit over the likely-illegal Oct. 4 vote to elect Lucas as party chair. Days later, Lucas sent out an email slamming the suit.<\/p>\n \u201cThese so-called reformers have spent years creating chaos in a grab for power instead of building the Democratic Party,\u201d the email read. \u201cAt a time when Democrats should be fighting Republicans, they are targeting fellow Democrats. These tactics are divisive, disruptive, and undermine the democratic process by attempting to weaken candidates who have earned the support of their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n District leader and lawyer Mark Hanna told City & State<\/a> that the candidates were only named \u201cso they are listed when it comes time for a judgement that has to do with their vote,\u201d and that he had warned all three that taking part in the vote would violate a temporary restraining order handed down by a judge.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the same email, the party said it had spent years \u201cidentifying, recruiting, mentoring, and supporting community leaders who reflect the neighborhoods they seek to represent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThrough thousands of volunteer hours, door-knocking efforts, phone banks, canvasses, and grassroots organizing, we have helped build a pathway for candidates like Larry He, Joyce Xie, and Joey Saban to seek office and provide meaningful representation for their communities,\u201d it wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recent campaign finance filings seem to show that the party has spent very little \u2014 if any \u2014 money on the races, which Pe\u00f1a said seemed \u201c100% accurate,\u201d though he noted the filings are sometimes delayed. Reformers for months have said the Brooklyn Dems already owed their lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars, and worried that an ongoing legal battle would drain their coffers altogether.<\/p>\n The Brooklyn Democratic Party may have forgotten about the ONLY Republican congressional district in Brooklyn but we certainly haven\u2019t. Less than one month to go until Election Day \u2013 let\u2019s win this! #Brooklyn https:\/\/t.co\/lBPnAnM9Ce<\/p>\n \u2014 Julio Pe\u00f1a III | \u80e1\u7acb\u6b50 (@Julio_PenaBK) October 10, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n![\"max](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/11082022_PF_Max_Rose_Election_Party_10-scaled-1.jpg\")
Democrat Max Rose, who represented NY-11 in Congress for one term, lost to Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2020.File photo by Paul Frangipane<\/p>\n![\"nikki](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/nikki-rodneyse.jpg\")
Lucas (right) and Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. File hoto courtesy of Brooklyn Democratic Party<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/BrooklynDemsCommitteeMeeting_092226-4.jpg\")
McCreight (right) with Pe\u00f1a at the Brooklyn Democratic Party\u2019s contentious county committee meeting in September. File photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/RallyMalliotakis_051826-3.jpg\")
Protestors outside Malliotakis\u2019 Brooklyn office earlier this year. File photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"joey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/cohen-saban-group.jpg\")
Cohen-Saban (left) said he had \u201cno name recognition\u201d when he entered the race in 2024. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Democratic Party<\/p>\n![\"nikki](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/CourtHearing_KingsCountyDemocrats_100626-26.jpg\")
Assembly Member Nikki Lucas, the contested chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.File photo Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"rodneyse](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/CourtHearing_KingsCountyDemocrats_100626-12.jpg\")
Bichotte-Hermelyn and her lawyer, Anthony Genovesi, during a hearing on the party\u2019s ongoing leadership battle .File photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/FullSizeRender_4.jpg\")
Brooklyn Republicans Michael Novakhov (second from left), Ari Kagan, Alec Brook-Krasny and Lester Chang (far right.) File photo by Robert Pearl<\/p>\n