Former Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies announced they’d picked a new party chair at a late-night Zoom vote Sunday evening that appears to be in violation of multiple court orders.
Just 13 of 42 district leaders elected during the June primary voted to support the party’s handpicked successor, Assemblymember Nikki Lucas. Only four elected district leaders were actually on the call, with the rest voting by proxy. But of the 26 new members added to the executive committee during a vote found to be illegal by a lower court and an appeals court last month, 21 voted to support Lucas, giving her an easy majority.
“I am deeply honored by the vote of confidence from my fellow District Leaders and our Executive Committee,” Lucas said in a press release sent out by the party Monday. “Brooklyn is the powerhouse of the Democratic coalition in New York, and our party is at its strongest when we are united, transparent and rooted in our neighborhoods.
The Brooklyn Democratic Party, Bichotte Hermelyn and Lucas did not return requests for additional comment on the apparent violations of court orders.
New Kings Democrats, who have been locked in a fight over leadership of the party, quickly slammed Sunday night’s vote.
“This is illegal and undemocratic,” the group wrote on X.
Reformers aligned with New Kings Democrats quickly filed paperwork in one of several ongoing lawsuits Monday asking a judge to hold party leadership in contempt of court, which is punishable by fines or jail time.
‘Null and Void’
It’s the latest in the contentious fight over the future of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, one of the country’s largest county parties with more than a million registered members.
After reformers aligned with New Kings Democrats flipped enough district leader seats in the June primary to elect their own party chair, Bichotte Hermelyn called a vote of outgoing district leaders to change the rules to add a slew of newly appointed members to dilute the New Kings Democrats majority.
Both a lower court and an appeals court sided with reformers, finding district leaders who had already lost their seats in the primary had no authority to vote on substantial changes to party rules. An appeals court deemed the rules the changes were “null and void.”
But Bichotte Hermelyn seemed intent to press ahead with a vote anyhow with a slew of handpicked new members, forcing reformers to sue again, asking a judge to step in to block the vote last Tuesday to assure the correct people would be voting on the leadership election.
Another state supreme court judge sided with them, issuing a temporary injunction to hold off the vote.
Making the matter even more complicated, Brooklyn Democrats had accidentally allowed Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a close ally of the reform slate, to become the head of the county committee, the larger organizing body of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. They accidentally left off a name for chairperson on their preferred slate of candidates during a raucous meeting last month.
Velázquez, a longtime opponent of the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine, was suddenly launched to its most powerful position in the period before the executive committee picks a new party chair.
Velázquez’s attorneys sided with reformers and didn’t contest their request for a restraining order. When Brooklyn Democratic Party lawyer Anthony Genovesi tried to contest their standing in the party, arguing he still represented the party, a judge sided against him on Friday, finding that after the meeting where Velázquez was accidentally elected, Bichotte Hermelyn and her attorneys no longer had any grounds to represent the party in court.
Despite all of that, Bichotte Hermelyn went ahead with the vote Sunday night in which a slew of her handpicked allies voted to support her preferred candidate, Lucas.
“It’s a wild hail mary move,” said Mark Hanna, a reform-aligned district leader and election lawyer representing the reformer faction in court. “Stage an illegal meeting in contempt of court and hope that I guess the court just ignores all of the context.”
“The whole thing is just a clown show,” he added.
The two parties are expected back in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning.
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