A REFORM MOVEMENT IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN BROOKLYN HAS WON ELECTIONS, PREVAILED IN LAWSUITS, AND IS ON THE VERGE OF TAKING POWER

In Democratic party primaries this June, a coalition of reformers seeking change in the Brooklyn Democratic party organization contested many of the party’s Assembly district leader positions. These leaders vote to select the county leader, who since 2020 had been Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who is also a district leader in the Assembly district she represents, the 42^nd Assembly district.

There are two district leaders for each of Brooklyn’s 21 Assembly districts, and the party regulars aligned with Leader Bichotte Hermelyn held 26 of those 42 seats.

Recently, the reformers defeated seven incumbents aligned with Bichotte Hermelyn, putting them in a position to remove her as County Leader by a likely 23-19 vote that would normally have taken place at the time of the party organizational meeting, scheduled by law to take place between September 17^th and October 6^th.

At a meeting in July, the reformers selected Julio Pena, the Democratic leader in the 51^st Assembly district (primarily Sunset Park), who also had served as the Chair of Brooklyn Community Board Seven, as their nominee for County leader in the ensuing vote.

Who are the Reformers?

They ran under the banner of Brooklyn Can’t Wait, and run the gamut of district leaders from traditional reform Democratic clubs like Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats and Independent Neighborhood Democrats, based in the 44^th and 52^nd Assembly districts, to leaders from newly progressive bastions like the 50^th and 57^th Assembly districts, to Hispanic and Black leaders like Assemblywoman Maritza Davila from Bushwick’s 53^rd Assembly district, and City Councilwoman Sandy Nurse who defeated the incumbent leader in the 54^th Assembly district. Also leading the reform effort is a Brooklyn-wide reform organization, New Kings Democrats, which emerged in 2006 and has been gaining strength ever since, and is led by Tony Melone. A long-time progressive leader, outgoing Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez, was elected Chair of the County Committee at the September 23^rd organizational meeting, due to a snafu by the party organization that day when they mistakenly failed to run their own candidate.

Following the reformers’ meeting to select Julio Pena in the coming County Leader vote, Bichotte Hermelyn and her supporters staged a series of bizarre and essentially desperate maneuvers to stay in power, prompting a set of lawsuits with the courts repudiating their attempts.

On August 25^th, Leader Bichotte Hermelyn organized a meeting of the Executive Committee and amended the Party Rules to add dozens of persons to the Executive committee who weren’t district leaders and create new officers within the Executive Committee, intending to stack the deck so that she, or whoever she chose to replace her, would control the vote and the party apparatus, including its funds. The newly packed and problematic Executive Committee included the defeated incumbents, the lame ducks, and other outgoing district leaders who had not run for re-election and were no longer “elected .”  The meeting took place despite calls from virtually every major State Democratic leader, from Governor Hochul, Mayor Mamdani, Senator Schumer, Congressmember Jeffries, Attorney General James, and State Party Chair Jay Jacobs to reverse course.

Mr. Pena and his allies sued the Brooklyn Democratic Party in State Supreme Court to invalidate the amendments. On September 14, Judge Jill Epstein ruled in the reformers’ favor, confirming that the outgoing or defeated Executive Committee members were no longer “elected” members of the Executive Committee. They were no longer eligible to vote. The amendments packing the Executive Committee were a “nullity.”

The biennial county committee organizational meeting of the Democratic party was held on September 23^rd at City Tech, which I attended as a member of the county committee of the 44^th Assembly district. The controversial rules changes were pushed through by a set of presiding officers who had been defeated as district leaders in the June primaries, by proxy voting, where the party organization held more proxies than there were persons in physical attendance, despite calls to hold off on the meeting since the Appellate Division was reviewing Judge Epstein’s decision literally just a few blocks away at the same moment as the meeting.

On September 29^th, the Appellate Division 2nd Department unanimously upheld Judge Epstein’s ruling that the packing amendments were invalid, and issued an emergency order temporarily enjoining a vote for party chair that same night. Assemblywoman Bichotte Hermelyn had already decided to step down and anoint another member of the Assembly, Nikki Lucas, the district leader in the 60^th Assembly district based in East New York, as the new leader. Notwithstanding the injunction, the vote for the new leader was held remotely on October 4^th, and Assemblywoman Lucas was elected as the new leader with the expanded Executive Committee that had already been ruled a “ nullity,” meaning the election of Lucas was invalid.

The reformers are now in court against the party organization seeking an order of contempt against Bichotte Hermelyn, the party organization’s lawyer Anthony Genovesi, Jr. and others for violating the injunction.

So what? Is this just all “inside baseball?”

Just trying to explain all this inside baseball is itself a torment; it’s sad to see the state’s largest Democratic organization in a shambles over an election which it legitimately lost, and its leaders in anger and bitterness as they might be held in contempt of court.

But an effective Democratic Party must have a set of building blocks from the ground up, through county committees, district leaders, and party organizations to meaningfully exercise power, and with that power to create a fair and just society, with leaders people can be proud to vote for who have integrity. Having such a party organization in Brooklyn, the largest county in NY, from which have emerged the Senate minority leader, Senator Charles Schumer, and minority leader of the House of Representatives, Congressmember Hakeem Jeffries, means the effective exercise of power for good. That’s why there’s a point to all of this.

Mr. Julio Pena, the potential new County leader, may lack guile in exercising power, but he is a sincere and intelligent progressive who can count on many other experienced Democratic leaders in the reform coalition, such as those named above and others including Assemblywoman Monique Chandler-Waterman, who represents the 58^th Assembly district and is the new female leader there. The district leader in the 64^th Assembly district, Mark Hanna, has served as the reformers’ attorney in the litigation and has done a superb job.

I have invited the two district leaders in the 44^th Assembly district, Diana Gonzalez, who was elected in 2024 and re-elected this year without opposition, and her co-leader, Emmitt Sklar, elected this year without opposition, to join me to discuss the meaning of a potential reform victory in the Brooklyn Democratic party on my podcast, Empire State Political Pulse in the coming days.

Stay tuned!