Politics: THE PARTY’S OVER, by Howard Graubard

It is generally believed that Henry Kissinger, a man Republicans were happy to refer to as “Doctor,” even though he lacked any sort of medical degree, was responsible for the quote “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
It’s such a great line, better even than his more famous “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” that one can almost forgive his being a war criminal.
Anyway, the quote seems prescient in describing the latest goings on at the Kings County Democratic Committee, even though the only Academy the Kings County Dems belong to is that of the overrated.
At this point, what’s left of the Party is a shell of its former self, divided and at war, nearly bankrupt, and rumored to be abandoning its office at 26 Court to take refuge inside of the suite of a law firm, Abrams Fensterman, which both cynics and some thoughtful observers consider the Party, such as it is, to be a wholly owned subsidiary of.
What is left of the Party these days is little more than a shell existing more as a function of law than as a functional body, with little influence left behind its role in selecting Supreme Court Judges, Board of Elections personal, and its role in nominating candidates in certain special elections.
When legendary Brooklyn Democratic boss Meade Esposito was asked how much power he had, he used to respond, “how much do you think I have?”
These days, most people believe that the Brooklyn Democratic Leader has no power at all, and if one doesn’t believe in fairies, then Tinkerbell won’t fly.
And yet, with the County Organization a near irrelevancy as three longtime Assembly members lost their primaries to socialists, the battles to control this hollow shell has turned into endless litigation (full disclosure: I have been a not-infrequent legal advisor to the attorney for the rebel New Kings Democrats) and 12 hour-plus battles of endurance.
The roots of this war are a totally different understanding of the purpose of the Party.
What exactly is the function of a Party organization? The traditional view is that the Party has several functions.
First, it allegedly tries to win general elections. I say “allegedly,” because for many decades in Brooklyn, it often seemed that a lot of local Democratic leaders regarded general election days as a vacation period. Moreover, they seemed to regard certain turf as belonging to the GOP, and some even considered it bad form and bad business to challenge them in their turf—after all, if we didn’t have a Republican Senator, who would carry our local bills in the Republican Senate?
By contrast, the Party has been far more aggressive in taking sides in internal party races, though this is not unique to Brooklyn. Party organizations throughout the country have always taken official roles in endorsing candidates for Party nominations. This is what parties do, and party organizations, which consist of the duly elected local leadership of the party, certainly have an argument that they have a right to do this.
Those who disagreed were often inconsistent—some of the same people who had been complaining that the Party failed to recruit strong candidates against former State Senator Marty Golden, were heard complaining loudly when the Party actually did so.
Perhaps most notably, party organizations serve as middlemen, lining up votes by elected officials, especially, but not exclusively, during leadership battles, and lining up jobs for supporters.
The latter role has diminished. The rise of the Civil Service and public employee unions and the coming New Deal and Great Society, as portrayed in the novel, “The Last Hurrah,” by Edwin O’Connor, has largely eliminated the clubhouse as the place people go for subsistence charity, free legal services and entry level employment. In NYC, changes in local laws have further diminished the power of the “machine,” which today has far less sway, even in its last stronghold, the courthouses.
In all these functions, the role of the County Leader was a lot like that of Paul Sorvino in “Goodfellas.” When the organization was in a non-war setting, local crews were allowed a great deal of autonomy, paid the boss his tribute and came to him to settle disputes. An effective leader kept the peace and divided up the pieces and was usually allowed a second helping for his troubles.

In opposition to this view, but, in reality, not so much, was the traditional “Reform” movement. They wanted a less transactional and more transparent party, and they were generally more liberal, but ultimately, they were looking more to cleanse the party’s structure than to change its concept.

Most notably, the old-line reformers were looking for the Party to leave elected officials to do the work of governance, and not to be subject to the dictates of the Party organization.

In recent years, though, a new “reform” movement has grown up in Brooklyn and elsewhere, which seems more intent on remodeling the party as a grass roots driven from the precinct level organization. Much of this movement is driven by left ideology, and many of its adherents openly seek to use the Party organization to corral its elected official into supporting what it deems to be “progressive” policy. Or, in other words, to subject the electeds to the dictates of the Party organization.

In Brooklyn, the primary group embracing this view is known as New Kings Democrats (NKD). Now, NKD is not the only group on Brooklyn’s Democratic left, and it is arguably less significant in winning elections than the local Democratic Socialist of America (DSA), which whose membership it has a large overlap, but DSA, largely, and not without evidence, disdains the Party organization as irrelevant to its concerns, while NKD places changing the Party organization as its central concern.
NKD originally arose inspired in part by campaigns like Howard Dean’s, Barak Obama’s and Bernie Sanders (whose most vociferous backers are likely to vilify Dean and Obama). But mostly, NKD rose in response to a dictatorial County Leader named Vito Lopez.
By the time of his fall, in his grab to hold all power and brook no dissent, Lopez was studiously trying to leave no corner of the County without an enemy, but no rival to him emerged.

But Vito’s advantage was also his problem, everyone feared him, but no one loved him—and the minute anything emerged which wiped away the fear, he had no friends left. The minute the Lopez sex harassment scandal emerged, the terminal cynics who backed him were rushing to the microphone so fast to call for his removal that the Reformers who been doing so for years nearly got crushed in the stampede.

Which left us with Frank Seddio.

Seddio preferred being loved than feared, and could not understand why he was neither. Vito used to stand in the way of meaningless reform proposals out of pure spite. Frank figured out how to adopt such proposals and adapt them as his own. A significant number of reform proposals made during his tenure were adopted, albeit sometimes in altered from.

Seddio’s problem with the young reformers was that he heard their words but often missed the underlying music. When it came to the young reformers, Frank was, in many ways, tone deaf. When NKD’s Brandon West said he wanted a real election for party positions, Frank answered “how many slots do you want?”

Instead of saying “we Democrats believe in the right things, so it’s important that government jobs go to those who share our beliefs and will implement our policies,” Frank said “What’s wrong with patronage?” Sadly, he did not seem to be able to convey that those two sentences essentially meant the same thing in actual practice.

And yet, Seddio was mostly backed in his leadership by the longtime reformers who had actually achieved elected office and wanted to accomplish actual goals. He was also seemingly the first Brooklyn Leader in most of our lifetimes to actively seek to beat the Republicans in turf which others have ceded to them without a fight.

But there were some real substantive issues with Frank’s leadership. His conduct during the process to fill Dan Squadron’s Senate vacancy, which was to prevent the individual members of Brooklyn’s County Committee from having any vote in the process, and to connive with Manhattan Leader Keith Wright to give the seat to a candidate who’d gotten 28% of the vote at the Manhattan meeting, was seen as indefensible, largely because it was.

Seddio’s indifference, if that is what it was, to the manner in which his underlings obtained proxies for his last County Committee organizational meeting allowed the process to go from hardball to foul ball and resulted in a meeting doomed from the start to be a zoo. His efforts to modernize the Party’s tech savviness were mixed, and it sometimes seemed as if Frank’s iPhone had a rotary dial. Seddio’s problems with NKD intensified with the death of District Leader Lew Fidler, one of the few regular leaders who seemed to understand NKD’s concerns and attempt to address them.

Moreover, it sometimes seemed that the primary purpose of the Seddio regime was to use the Party Leadership to bolster the courthouse standing of his Law Chair, Frank Carone. During the Seddio tenure, Carone’s firm, Abrams Fensterman, which, was also Seddio’s once and future home, became Brooklyn’s largest and most powerful, and it was not unusual for a judge hearing an Abrams motion, with Seddio’s firm as co-counsel, to be greeted in the front row by Seddio, Carone and Anthony Genovesi, Jr, while a fourth lawyer actually argued the case. This maneuver, charmingly referred to by judges as “the full Court press,” probably existed mostly to impress unwary clients, but was not lost on its audience.

Ironically, despite such antics, it was usually the organization, during Seddio’s tenure, that was the guardian of at least minimal standards in the courthouse, as it was the ragtag band of consultants running candidates against the organization who generally ran the least qualified judicial candidates, something which even many of Seddio’s most vociferous critics often conceded.

At any rate, Seddio’s personal financial travails, resulting in a series of cases and/ or judgments against him in other states, were probably responsible for his departure, allowing him to return to Abrams Fensterman, the firm he quit to avoid it from being subjected to the law’s provisions banning the firms of Party Leaders from practicing in lucrative areas of the law like land use, a part of the firm’s practice which had grown with Carone’s ascendancy.

It should be noted that during Seddio’s travails, NKD and other Seddio adversaries, like Assemblyman Walter Mosley, widely believed to be seeking the Party leadership, were publicly and probably unfairly trying to connect Seddio’s financial problems to the Party’s empty coffers in a way which implied corruption, rather than inattention.

Before he left, Seddio made sure to engineer his successor, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte. A key part of the deal alleged to have been put into place was that Carone would remain as Party Law Chair, even though he personally does little election law work, ensuring the perception that Abrams was still Brooklyn’s go-to law firm.

In retrospect, it was clear that this move was months in the making. Rodneyse’s co-leader and cousin, Josue Pierre, had been running hard for State Senate against Kevin Parker, gathering much support from both the left and traditional reformers, when the plug was suddenly pulled from the race. Something was clearly up.

The Coalition to put in Rodneyse was broad. While some of the old-line reformers preferred Mosley, Bichotte had the strong and loud support of local allies 44th AD Reformer Doug Schneider, and his co-leader, the more regular, but dying to be perceived as Reform, Lori Knipel, who had previously joined Rodneyse and the ultra-Orthodox community in supporting the election of Farah Louis in a special election for Jumaane Williams old seat on the City Council against Williams’ candidate.

At the beginning of her term, everyone tried to put the best face on Rodneyse’s victory. After all, Bichotte was the Brooklyn’s Democracy’s first female leader, and first of Haitian origin, with a pretty progressive legislative record. Simultaneous with Bichotte’s victory came a move to repeal one of the Seddio’s biggest NKD-inspired reforms, twice-yearly, rather than bi-annual county committee meetings. In a Daily News Op-Ed, NKD President Marianna Alexander laid the blame for this entirely on Seddio, absolving Bichotte of the blame entirely (probably delighting Seddio, who earned himself a chit), although, in private, she acknowledged that this couldn’t have happen without Bichotte’s agreement. But, Alexander stressed, it was important to use the opportunity of the change in leadership presented to build bridges.

The bridge collapsed soon enough for the stupidest of reasons: personal pettiness.

I got my first hint when a regular Assemblymember called me because he said Bichotte told him he had to remove some people she didn’t like as County Committee members, or County wouldn’t bind his petitions. A conflict involving a Congressional candidate carried on his sheets forced me to delay giving an answer, and master-diplomat Jeff Feldman, then still in place as Party Executive Director, resolved the issue. Still, this just low-level meddling was something unprecedented in anyone’s experience.

Then, things got even sillier.
Sometime between the time petitions started circulating and the time they were filed, the people circulating the 42nd Assembly District petition, Rodneyse Bichotte and Josue Pierre, apparently had a falling out with two members of their slates for Delegates and Alternate Delegates to the Judicial Nominating Convention (Christina Das and John Wasserman, the President and Immediate Past President of Brooklyn’s Young Democrats) and decided, probably at the last minute, to drop them from the slate even though the petitions from their club had their names on every single one of them.

I say last minute, because instead of printing up a new coversheet, as would be the practice of the normally fastidious Jeff Feldman, Feldman’s deputy (as he was then) Jonathan Harkavy (whose signature appears on the cover sheet in place of Feldman’s), or someone else (hopefully before Harkavy signed it, rather than afterwards), simply whited out the names and addresses of Das and Wasserman (some of their name and address info is partially visible), leaving blank spaces on the cover sheet.

That anyone involved would care enough to go through this trouble, given the utter meaninglessness of the one-day party position involved, shows a level of spite which is almost of legendary proportions.

Someone who would go to the trouble of making this happen clearly wanted a message delivered to the world: “fuck with me, and there is nothing I won’t do, no matter how petty or insignificant, to fuck with you.”

Somewhere (where I won’t say), Vito was tipping his hat.

The Party was suddenly acting in other ways which seemed to undermine years of trust built about its operations and their norms. The complicated series of maneuvers involving the sacking of the petitions of NKD-allied reformer Nick Rizzo (a client), ostensibly a County candidate, became clear when an attorney from Abrams Fensterman suddenly interjected himself into a Skype court hearing on Rizzo’s case, even though he was ostensibly not representing anyone. I will refrain from disclosing any further details, suffice it to say I know things I’d rather not say.

Something had changed. Jeff Feldman, already dying to retire, was now bemoaning the new order to close friends, who, this being politics, only shared their observations with a few dozen close associates.

The moderate reformers, most of them unenthusiastic about Bichotte to begin with, were, by this point, alarmed.

And, then came the primary. The young, hip, left elements, emboldened by the victory of Julia Salazar in 2018, were further buoyed when the Presidential primary was combined with the legislative one, and Bernie voters never disposed to voting in local elections were now a steroid boost to the likes of Marcella Mitaynes, Phara Souffrant and Emily Gallagher. NKD affiliated district leaders were also elected in several Assembly Districts.

The old-line reformers, already moved left by their fears of being displaced from their positions, to the point where some were already in the process of Finlandization, were now in full tilt. It would have been tough to make them stick, as most of them had, to a County Leader most of them had liked, most of the time.

But truth be told, the new County Leader was one most of them actively disliked; possibly more than NKD did. And, even those old-line reformers who probably still liked Bichotte were now too afraid of their left flank to admit it.

Former Seddio reform allies like Josh Skaller had abandoned ship, while former County stalwarts like Maritza Davilla and Lori Knipel were now joined to NKD in a shotgun wedding.

And this was important. Power in Brooklyn Democratic politics had always emanated from the Party’s state committee people, who were de facto district leaders and constituted the parties’ executive committee. But, technically, the Party rules were controlled by the County Committee, who were members elected from every local election district around the County. Usually, the rules which empowered the District Leaders were enacted in scripted County Committee meetings. In recent years, those meeting had become heated and disruptive, but the Party regulars had enough proxies from their districts to ultimately carry the day.

But they no longer did.

NKD, energized by its successful “Rep Your Block” campaign, had expanded its county committee footprint, while many regular clubs, caught by surprise by the early end to petitioning necessitated by the pandemic, had very poor performance. Many Assembly districts controlled by regular clubs had filed few, if any, County Committee Members.

County, realizing it might not be able to control the next meeting, and the rules emanating from it, started enacting rule changes. Some were foolhardy. It enacted a rule allowing District Leaders to cast the votes for County Committee members from their District, unless the members notified the Party otherwise. But, this change mostly inured to the benefit of old-line reformers no longer in County’s camp.

Other rule changes though, were not in the Executive’s Committee’s power to enact. They tried to postpone any County Committee meeting until after the pandemic, allowing the Executive committee to legally organize the Party in its place. This was a violation of State Law.

Abrams Fensterman’s prime legal argument for doing so was that the intersection of the Election Law and the Governor’s pandemic Executive orders, made such a meeting impossible, even though Queens and the Bronx managed to have one. Their argument about the combined effects of the law and the orders was familiar—I had made it myself in an election law case against the County Organization in the spring, only to have Abrams Fensterman argue successfully in the Appellate Division that an Executive Order could only override a law, if that law was specifically named in the Executive Order. I gave my copy of the Abrams brief from the spring to the NKD lawyer, who proceeded to stuff it down Abrams’s throat. There was now to be a County Committee meeting.

Abrams and County, to the extent they are different entities, also made other preposterous arguments. They said a Zoom meeting would make participation by the disabled more difficult, even though County was previously prone to have its meeting in location virtually inaccessible to mass transit. They cited difficulties which might be encountered by the hard of hearing and foreign language speakers, even though County had never provided sign interpreters or any language translations during their meetings before.

Then County desperately tried to allow leaders to fill their vacancies and seat new members before the meeting, rather than to elect them at the meeting and seat them afterwards. It was a naked grab for power which blatantly violated the election law. The devil in some of the details was even worse, as one regular told me that Rodneyse tried to stick over 100 of her own people into his district’s committee. And then, they tried to wrap the power grab in the pink ribbon of gender non-binary rights. Once again, the courts shot them down.

By the time the meeting, which turned into a 13-hour shit-show, NKD had the support of a whole raft of allies, to enact their rule changes and their slate of officers. Some of these allies would normally not have embraced every one of the rules changes, or that particular slate of officers, but either because of furiously mounting disgust at the existing order, or simple expedience, NKD had a working majority. But whether by accident or design, County could not or would not master the voting procedures and it took until after midnight for the Party to acknowledge the truth that their previously announced narrow victory was really a narrow defeat. The NKD rule changes were enacted. Then, exhausted, NKD finally agreed to adjourn.

But, the adjournment already signaled a new pitfall, as Lori Knipel deserted NKD on the initial adjournment vote, which NKD opposed, and instead abstained.

Over the next week, intrigues abounded. The Exec Committee chose a new Chair for the meeting, lame duck Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright, rumored to be seeking a vacant judicial seat. Asked by NKD allies to back a move to install Josh Skaller at the meeting instead of Wright, Knipel demurred.

Further intrigues emerged to have the Party change the rules so that the County Committee would choose the Party Leader instead of the executive committee, the practice in most counties outside the City.

Strangely, this idea emanated not from the radicals, but rather from the most establishment- oriented members of the anti-County coalition (as well as a few county allies eagerly waiting to jump ship), and strangely, it was shot down by the leadership of NKD, who were uncomfortable going for the whole ball of wax without a “broader-based” (read: “less white”) coalition.

And when the meeting reconvened, Wright cut off the sound of every speaker trying to bring up the issue of the meeting’s presiding officer, and anything else she declared to be non-germane. A new parliamentarian was installed who declared every rule change previously passed as void. Then, the voting began and NKD and its allies no longer had the votes.

As what was happening over the course of the 14-hour massacre slowly became clear, NKD allies apparently went ballistic while conversing over the meeting’s chat function, and Wright and the parliamentarian started naming names and making police reports. Eventually, NKD virtually walked out of the virtual meeting.

“The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” was defeated by “The Gang Which Refuses To Do So.”

Back to the Courthouse we go.

Wright promised that a full summary of the votes would be released, but as of this writing, it has not been. Some in the NKD coalition doubt the validity of the vote count, but the more likely scenario is that one or more of NKD’s more establishment allies jumped ship. All eyes are being directed at Knipel, who had twice shown herself to be a reluctant ally. This may be unfair, but if people are coming to an unfair conclusion, it is because County refuses to share the data with them which might prove otherwise.

Meanwhile, Wright, a perfectly decent Assembly member with an impressive CV, has, if she does seek a judgeship, likely brought herself a primary challenge. In the past, NKD and DSA have studiously ignored judgeships, such that a candidate backed by many individual NKD leaders last year lost a race in an NKD stronghold to a candidate backed primarily by folks who all lost their positions to NKD candidates. I suspect though, that this year, NKD, whose allies have shown formidable strength in the affected judicial district, may be loaded for bear.

But, in reality, this is a lot of sound and fury signifying very little; the party’s over; what we have here is a dead shark. Kurt Vonnegut once defined a “granfalloon” as “a proud and meaningless association of human beings.” But, it is unfair to call the Brooklyn Dems a “granfalloon,” because that would imply that they are “proud,” and the evidence for such a proposition is entirely to the contrary.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

District Leader Lori Knipel has objected to the paragraph where I said that she was the prime suspect for switching sides at the County Committee meeting. This was the view of several prominent leaders among the rebels, given, among other things, her reluctance to join with them on two other matters cited in the article.

Let me be clear that the article never says it was Knipel. At the meeting Tremaine Wright promised to release a full summary of how the votes were cast, which they have yet to do. It is only this failure that has caused the speculation, which I explicitly noted may very well be unfair.

Since that time I received the following message from Knipel.

Lori: “For the record Howard, I walked out of the CC meeting with NKD and did not cast any votes  in the election. You can check with Marianna and Doug. So before you point a finger at me please confirm your accusations. Thanks.”

I responded that it would be corrected after I saw how the 44^th AD proxies were cast. As of press time, county had not released the votes (and has yet to do so).

Lori then responded she walked out “prior to the votes.”

The charitable explanation is that she is confused. She refers to the vote on officers, but the vote which the article discusses is the procedural vote on Robert’s Rules, which set the stage for the walkout. She could not have walked out “before the vote” because the walkout was after “the vote.”

I still have no idea whether Ms Knipel or someone else jumped ship on the procedural vote, or it something nefarious occurred instead, because County still refuses to fulfill Ms Wright’s promise and release the vote.

This is wrong. I hope Ms Knipel joins me in calling for release of the vote in question, and I hope the vote, once released, proves the doubters about her commitment wrong.