Across the River from Wall Street, Democracy Gets a Little Bit More Participatory

Across the River from Wall Street, Democracy Gets a Little Bit More Participatory

Author’s note (added 9/25): Over the past few years, I have been an intermittent participant in local Brooklyn politics through New Kings Democrats and Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform, political organizations that hope to change the character of Brooklyn politics by working through the unlikely mechanism of the Kings County Democratic Party, long home to backroom urban bossism. This post is thus somewhere between participant-observation and journalism, sympathetic to reform efforts but recognizing the necessary compromises such a position entails.

Two years ago, Matt Cowherd could barely even get inside the biennial meeting of the Kings County Democratic Committee. In 2010, the then-president of the New Kings Democrats—an organization of reformers based in North Brooklyn—led a press conference and rally before the meeting to call for an end to party boss Vito J. Lopez’s undemocratic reign. While chants of “Vito Must Go!” echoed across Cadman Plaza, reformers from around Brooklyn voiced their opposition to Lopez’s power-broking, from packing the party’s executive committee with “at-large” representatives to launching friendly donors into judgeships.

They were rewarded for their efforts with more of the same; upon arriving at the meeting, many of their numbers were initially turned away on the grounds that the room was at capacity (the party had reserved a 250-seat hall at St. Francis College; quorum for the meeting is roughly 650 representatives). Citing national Democratic Party rules that require all such meetings be open to the press and public, the reformers were eventually seated, but the scene outside was but the prelude to a symphonic farce. Wielding over 600 proxy votes, Lopez rejected even the most innocuous proposals (activating voter registration committees, encouraging citizens to run for empty county committee seats) and soaked in the reformers’ boos like a professional wrestling heel. Though staring down a scandal involving the allocation of funding to nonprofit organizations in his assembly district and several newly elected reform candidates (including the New Kings’ own Lincoln Restler), the boss seemed unfazed, and his grip on the party seemed as secure as ever.

Fast-forward to last Wednesday at Kingsborough Community College, where Cowherd rose to offer an amendment to the changes to party rules proposed by Councilman Lew Fidler (a member of the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club, a South Brooklyn machine stronghold) and seconded by JoAnn Simon (a district leader elected from Boerum Hill on a reform platform). Expressing delight at the proposals—which included the elimination of all “at-large” executive committee members, the activation of committees to promote voter registration and community outreach, impartial screening of judicial appointments, and the suggestion that the party meet more than biennially—Cowherd asked only that a party website be created and that the right of the public and press to attend meetings be affirmed. Fidler rose to note that his original draft of the new rules had included such a proposal, and the chair suggested that Cowherd’s proposals be accepted as a “friendly amendment.” They were, and the changes to the rules passed with a resounding “Aye.”

This is not to say that machine politics in Brooklyn have gone the way of the woolly mammoth, or that reformers will now be beating their swords into plowshares. Though Lopez had resigned as party leader earlier in the week amid the fallout from a sexual harassment scandal, the rules passed with a vote that met quorum only because Frank Seddio—longtime party insider, holder of hundreds of proxies made out to Vito J. Lopez, and presumptive party leader—assented. Cowherd wore a sticker (as did many other reformers) with images of Seddio and Lopez that read “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.” Councilman Charles Barron, never one to mince words, stood to denounce the “embarrassment” of “backroom politics” and demand that party leader elections be open to the entire committee, not just forty-two district leaders (this did not make it into the new rules).

Though not the parody it has been in the past, the meeting still featured plenty of unintended political comedy. A district leader was overheard saying he planned to vote “for the handpicked successor.” A vice-chairman of the meeting tromped down from the stage to the back of the hall (as the crowd watched with confused murmurs) to inform a committee member, in a whisper, that his unexpected nomination of his own ally undermined a compromise cut between reformers and the machine earlier that day, after which he withdrew it (to general laughter). The piece de resistance came in the form of an announcement from the chair, reminding executive committee leaders that their meeting, at which the party leader would be selected, was to take place “in the room behind the curtain.”

Still, these reforms are real. Getting rid of at-large representatives ensures that those who vote for the party’s leader have themselves won election in their assembly districts. Regular meetings and reconstituted outreach committees mean the development of what JoAnn Simon called “indigenous leadership.” Properly implemented, they could mean the resurgence of the Democratic Party as a progressive force in Brooklyn communities.

Implementation, of course, is key, and it will fall to Seddio, on whose South Brooklyn turf the meeting was held. The man some call Vito Lopez’s “protégé” is no stranger to machine politics and their attendant scandals, having resigned his own judgeship amid questions about donations he made to party organizations. His path to power was smoothed by successful efforts to incorporate the ideas of potential rivals Karim Camara and Simon, two reform-minded district leaders who were pushed as potential alternatives to the “handpicked successor,” but questions remain about the direction his leadership will take. Still, reformers are willing to give him a chance, and Seddio has promised to treat the change in leadership as an opportunity to blaze a new trail, for himself and for the party.

Last Wednesday’s meeting was an enormous step forward for a political machine that has long guarded power at the expense of vitality. At one level, the recent victories of Republicans over uninspiring machine-approved candidates and campaigns in Brooklyn (where seven of eight registered voters are Democrats) has driven home the need to re-energize the party. Councilman Fidler, who lost such a contest this spring, drew some of the night’s loudest cheers when he urged “everyone in this room” to stand together to beat back the “xenophobic and homophobic” GOP in Kings County. But these reforms are also a response to years of on-the-ground work by reformers, including (but by no means limited to) the New Kings Democrats, who have brought reform candidates to power and shown the importance of engaging new voters, be they denim-clad hipsters or recently arrived immigrants. It is work that is full of compromise, frustration, and incremental advances, but it is also work that can build lasting institutions, coalitions, and community capacity for change. The Kings County Democratic Committee is a long, long way from Occupy, literally and figuratively, but as the latter movement contends with the pitfalls of open-ended horizontalism, progressives can look to the borough of Brooklyn, where sustained efforts have yielded an advance for democracy.