Kings County Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies rewrote the rules at the last minute to keep themselves in power. Will it stick?
John Teufel Sep 1
The Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club, an old-school political org that for decades has been perhaps the most influential collective in Brooklyn politics, is housed in a short, squat building in a lovely, green part of Mill Basin, bookended on one side by a Chinese restaurant whose “thing” seems to be year-round holiday decorations, and on the other by an extravagant massage parlor. I wish I could tell you what the inside of the Jefferson clubhouse looks like, but I can’t, because all press was banned during my visit last week.
I was there to see if Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the current Chair of the Kings County Democratic party, could engineer a daring coup, saving her own ass and locking her enemies out of power. As you have probably heard, she pulled it off, at least for now.
The Kings County Democratic Party machine bestows judicial nominations on connected insiders and using corporate and real estate funds to support establishment-friendly candidates in elections.
The long and the short of it is this: the Kings County Democrats are the last honest-to-god “machine” in New York politics, bestowing judicial nominations on connected insiders, using corporate and real estate funds to support friendly establishment candidates in elections, and appointing unwitting randos to party positions to fraudulently collect their proxy votes. For eight years, the party was run by Frank Seddio, a gregarious man – the spitting image of a charming yet oily party boss – who remains one of the most powerful individuals in Brooklyn politics. This is despite Seddio’s current involvement in two convoluted lawsuits involving a missing $2 million, which has grown to include federal indictments of multiple Brooklyn power players including a judge, a businessman, and a few lawyers.
Seddio resigned as Chair of the Kings County Democrats in 2020. His hand-picked successor was Bichotte Hermelyn, a strong Eric Adams ally turned Cuomo-endorser who has continued Seddio’s iron-fisted leadership and resisted calls for party reform. (Last February, in a display of her power, Bichotte Hermelyn forced the Kings County Democrats to hastily pull their prior endorsement of Kathy Hochul for governor because Bichotte Hermelyn was angered by Hochul’s choice of Queens native Adrienne Adams for lieutenant governor.) A sign of the Party’s weakness came in 2022, when three Brooklyn Assembly seats flipped from Democrat to Republican, after the Party spent almost no money or effort helping its candidates.
For almost 20 years, a group of Brooklynites called the New Kings Democrats have fought to reform the party. Their primary weapon has been winning district leader elections to try and gain a majority on the executive committee, which chooses the party’s chair. Finally, this June, NKD and their backers (including the influential Brooklyn Can’t Wait coalition) won enough primary elections to obtain that majority, and promptly announced that they would support longtime reform activist Julio Peña III for Chair. It looked like curtains for Bichotte Hermelyn and the old order.
For almost 20 years, a group of Brooklynites called the New Kings Democrats have fought to reform the party.
But it’s never that easy, is it? On August 19, Bichotte Hermelyn announced a plan to expand membership on the Executive Committee to include dozens of new voting members. Critically, Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies hold the proxy for many of these new members, who are largely uninvolved in the party and don’t attend meetings. In effect, Bichotte Hermelyn’s plan would leave her as the sole arbiter of who gets to be chair. The chair chooses the chair. If you want to call this corrupt, you’ll get no argument from me. (As an added bonus, another Bichotte Hermelyn rule change would grant voting rights to former Chair Clarence Norman, who was removed from power after he was found guilty of accepting illegal campaign donations.)
Bichotte Hermelyn called a meeting to vote on these rule changes for August 25 – before the new district leaders were sworn in, which happens in September. And that brings us to Mill Basin, and me standing outside the Thomas Jefferson Club waiting for the white smoke.
As I said earlier, press were not allowed inside, and not much was happening outside, though Julio Peña did come out to tell us that by disallowing press, the Party was breaking its own rules and the meeting was at least partly an open one. The desire for secrecy was so extreme that someone taped paper over the small window that let you see inside. Police meandered and chatted, security blocked the door, and at one point, someone tried to remove journalist Katie Honan from a public sidewalk.
Humorously, a few passers-by, noticing the cops, journalists, and rope line, stopped to ask what was going on, only to have their eyes glaze over as a member of the press tried to explain. Frank Seddio came outside and offered us food, but no food ever arrived. I largely stood by myself, awkwardly sipping an iced coffee. I did have a nice conversation with City & State’s Jeff Coltin, who appears to be one of those straight men with the dangly earring, which he pulls off.
Speaking of the press, the attendees included our great local outlets – Hell Gate, the City Reporter, NY1 – but no New York Times, which, based on my research, has not run a single story on Bichotte Hermelyn’s power grab, despite having time to run two pieces on one NYC-DSA leader in August alone.
After waiting around for two hours with no word, I left. By the time I got back to Queens, it was official: Bichotte Hermelyn had prevailed. Her reforms had narrowly passed. She left the meeting from a back entrance, without taking questions.
It is, in some sense, remarkable that Bichotte Hermelyn would be so determined to hold onto power. Her ploy has been condemned by nearly every elected leader in New York, including moderates like Kathy Hochul, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries. (That this powerhouse trio couldn’t stop her speaks to either the insincerity of their opposition, or their lack of real power in Kings County.) Her reputation is in tatters, and she has effectively guaranteed herself a primary challenge in two years. She may see this fight as existential, as socialists claim more power in Brooklyn politics against the conservative old guard. She may need to keep her position to prevent any successor from exposing more corruption. Or she may just enjoy being a big shot.
Since the vote, Bichotte Hermelyn has embarked on a bizarre victory tour. The Party posted a typo-ridden, partly AI video in which Bichotte Hermelyn described the rule changes as “progressive,” while unreadable citations to “extensive case law” scrolled over her. In a cynical use of raw identity politics, she racialized the vote, blaming “white men” for agitating against her (a line of attack she has pushed before).
Meanwhile, the New Kings Democrats and Brooklyn Can’t Wait are battling in court to undo the rules changes. Remember: district leader is an elected position. As such, while the Kings County Democrats can make their own rules, on certain issues, they must abide by New York State’s Election Law. The reformer’s argument is that under the Election Law, once district leaders lost their elections, they stopped having the legal authority to vote on substantive matters affecting the Party.
The struggle over the future of the Brooklyn Democratic party is emblematic of our current era when democracy is under increasing erosion every day.
I’ve read the reformer’s legal brief (you can too – go to the eCourts website and search for Index Number 532882/2026). I find their arguments highly persuasive, and supported by the equitable notion that New York State law should probably not be read to allow a sore loser to overturn an election result. But whether they can actually win – in a forum, the Kings County Supreme Court, that is at least in part controlled by Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies – is another question.
The fight over the Kings County Democrats was at one point a fight over machine politics vs. reform and openness. But now, thanks to Bichotte Hermelyn, it has become a fight over something much bigger: whether the second-largest county-based Democratic party in the country is governed by democratic law, or is a law unto itself. In our current era, when democracy is under increasing erosion every day, it’s hard to conceive of a more important question.
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