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Brooklyn Democratic Party district leaders voted to enact sweeping — and widely decried — changes to the county party’s bylaws Tuesday night that reformers say will help current chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn maintain control of the organization, according to several people familiar with the voting.
Despite calls from every major state Democratic elected official to reverse course — including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Attorney General Letitia James — Bichotte Hermelyn pushed ahead with the vote.
Over the course of the evening, several changes to party rules passed with the support of 21 district leaders, including eight lame ducks who lost their seats to primary challengers this June, clearing the way to add dozens of new seats on the executive committee ahead of Bichotte Hermelyn’s re-election bid for party chair, according to people familiar with the voting. Between eighteen and twenty district leaders opposed the different measures in individual votes.
Tuesday’s vote appears to subvert the efforts of a reform slate of district leaders, who had amassed enough votes after June’s primary to pick their own county boss for the first time in nearly two decades of organizing.
“What’s going on in there is a miscarriage of the will of the voters,” said Luke Ohlson, a district leader from North Brooklyn aligned with New Kings Democrats and Brooklyn Can’t Wait, who stepped out to speak to reporters during a break in voting. “We are disenfranchising thousands of voters by putting these measures into place plain and simple.”
The closed door meeting took place in Mill Basin at the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club run by Frank Seddio, the former county Democratic party chair who still serves as a district leader. The City Reporter and other journalists were denied entry to the vote.
Seddio told reporters outside they weren’t allowed in because meetings of the executive committee are private, though a number of people who weren’t on the executive committee were allowed to pass through security, including Bichotte Hermelyn’s husband Edu Hermelyn, a former district leader, and Corey Ortega, a Manhattan Democratic party insider.
As journalists attempted to watch the vote through the clubhouse windows, someone inside taped up sheets of paper to block the limited view of the club’s interior.
After a nearly four-hour long meeting, Bichotte Hermelyn left by a backdoor and drove away, refusing to speak to reporters waiting outside.
She sent a statement early Wednesday morning from the party.
“Last night, Brooklyn District Leaders voted to expand representation on the Executive Committee — adding leaders from every Assembly District and building a Party that truly reflects Brooklyn,” the statement read. “This strengthens our fight for working families, affordability and against the Trump agenda. The vote was open, fair and democratic. No kings in Brooklyn — we move forward together.
Keeping Control
Tuesday’s vote comes as chair Bichotte Hermelyn was on the brink of losing control of the party she’d ruled for the past six years.
Reformers aligned with New Kings Democrats and a campaign called Brooklyn Can’t Wait had flipped enough district leader seats in June’s primary to take a majority of voting leaders for the first time in nearly two decades of organizing against the county establishment.
With 22 newly-elected district leaders, including several who hadn’t yet taken their seats, the group lined up behind longtime district leader Julio Peña, who they had planned to vote in as the new chair this fall.
District leaders are volunteer elected positions, and two represent every Assembly district in Brooklyn. They make up the executive committee of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, and up until Tuesday, were the only voting members who would decide who the party would pick as chairperson every two years.
But as the potential end to her time leading the party loomed, Bichotte Hermelyn called a hastily scheduled vote last week, pushing for a slate of changes to party rules she billed as “reforms” that would add dozens of additional voting members to the executive committee.
Bichotte Hermelyn and the Brooklyn Democratic Party had described the changes as an opportunity to “expand leadership” and “expand representation.”
But her critics say the changes will allow the county establishment to easily fill the new seats with loyalists and proxy votes, making the newly-elected district leaders’ voting block irrelevant.
Speaking to reporters outside the Thomas Jefferson Club ahead of the vote Seddio defended the changes.
“The opportunity of doing it now may appear to seem that there’s an attempt to grab power. I don’t know that I see it that way myself,” he said. “I think that these are a chance at this point to democratize a lot of the positions that the progressive group in our party has looked for over the years.”
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” said Renee Collymore, a former district who lost her seat to a reform-aligned challenger. She serves as a volunteer “liaison” to the district and as the 7th vice chair for the party. Collymore said she hoped if the changes went into effect, she’d get to vote on party leadership in the future.
“We are fighting so people can be included. Isn’t that a better Democratic party?”
Collymore said she thought all the elected officials who’d come out against the vote had been pressured into doing so.
“These are politicians, what do you expect of them. It’s about survival for a lot of these people,” Collymore said.
Asked if she thought Bichotte Hermelyn was also trying to survive being ousted as party chair, Collymore said, “She’s not fighting for survival. We are doing our job right now.”
Reformers sued ahead of the vote, saying the executive committee voting violates the party’s bylaws and New York State election law.
A judge declined to step in ahead of the vote because there wasn’t enough evidence of irreparable harm, according to Mark Hanna, an election lawyer who is both a district leader and the attorney behind the reformers’ lawsuit.
But Hanna said they planned to refile the lawsuit now that the vote had passed.
Bichotte Hermelyn took over for Seddio in 2020 in a rare moment of unity for Brookyln Democrats.
During her years in office, she drew fierce criticism for spending the party’s limited resources fending off progressive challenges from within the party as Republican candidates in Brooklyn gained ground.