'As the civil war escalates, the two sides have generated threats, insults, sly insider moves, lawsuits, and rival slates of candidates,' explains errollouis
Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the queen of Kings County, is under siege. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer. Photo: Seth Wenig/AP/Shutterstock Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, wrote Shakespeare. Not in Brooklyn.
That bigger picture — the desire to elect Democrats and rally voters to fight for women’s rights, voting rights, immigrant rights — is something both sides of the party’s civil war claim they want. But the Brooklyn Democratic Party organization, universally referred to as County, can’t effectively deal with big issues until the faction fight gets resolved. As the civil war escalates, the two sides have generated threats, insults, sly insider moves, lawsuits, and rival slates of candidates.
That didn’t satisfy the reformers. “It seems like they can’t take yes for an answer,” Hermelyn told me. “They ask all these things and I’m about progressivism, I’m about reforming, because I believe in those things as well, and we will provide them.” It’s a small but meaningful piece of neighborhood patronage that district leaders covet. Hermelyn set off a firestorm by appointing special party liaisons to the Board of Elections in selected districts. These handpicked representatives of County were given the power to bypass the district leaders and give their own list of election inspector candidates to the Board of Elections.
“We have a party boss who thinks that she can come in and take away the responsibility of these duly elected party officials and give them to people who are her loyalists and cronies. This is just a disgusting display of cronyism and patronage,” said Diana Gonzalez, president of the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, a progressive pro-reform club. “Here’s what we need to do: We need to vote her out. The way we vote her out is by electing district leaders who will stand up against this.
If all of this sounds depressingly petty and overblown — a political firestorm over control of $500 patronage gigs — it’s not. The county organization controls nominations to civil and Supreme Court judgeships, which are substantial and powerful positions, held by jurists who serve 10- and 14-year terms and handle a broad range of criminal, commercial, and family court cases.
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