This June, Brooklyn Democrats elected 22 District Leaders from the Brooklyn Can’t Wait coalition who had pledged to bring a new era of leadership to a Brooklyn Democratic Party that for too long has been weak, corrupt, and visionless. 

Those 22 District Leaders make up a majority of the 42-member executive committee that will elect the party chair once they are seated at the party’s yet-to-be-announced organizational meeting. Last month, the Brooklyn Can’t Wait coalition announced their united intent to elect Julio Peña III as the new party chair.

Today, the outgoing party chair, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, announced a vague plan to throw out the party rules and pack the executive committee with more than two dozen of her handpicked party officers so that she can overrule Brooklyn voters and hang on to her position. This would be a flagrantly anti-democratic power grab, a return to the worst days of bossism — Vito Lopez tried the same trick two decades ago before he resigned in disgrace. It would go against everything our party should stand for. All Democrats should reject it.

At a time when faith in politics is at an all-time low, our party should be working to rebuild trust with voters, not telling them once again that their voices don’t matter. The Trump Republican Party is the party of lawlessness, of authoritarian leadership, and of denying election results. Democrats must be better.

Our party should be focused on winning elections in November. We have competitive races right here in Brooklyn, across NYC, and statewide. Yet the party chair is once again showing she is only concerned about herself, threatening to throw the party into chaos and sapping attention and resources away from great candidates who want to deliver for the people of New York. This adds to a long history of feckless leadership that includes botched endorsements, borrowing and spending huge sums of money to kick other Democrats off the ballot while raising nothing to support Democratic candidates in competitive general election races, and repeated allegations of corruption.

Enough is enough. We call on Assemblymember Bichotte Hermelyn to withdraw this anti-democratic scheme before she does even more damage to the Democratic Party and to the public’s trust in our elected leaders. And we call on every Democratic elected official in Brooklyn and beyond to stand up and make sure our party respects the will of the voters. Our party needs an orderly transition of power, following the rules, so we can organize and win in November.