Power struggle in Brooklyn Democratic Party continues with election day looming

A months-long power struggle within the Brooklyn Democratic Party is threatening to drain the party’s finances just weeks before Election Day, raising concerns that the infighting could undermine Democrats’ efforts to reclaim three Republican-held Assembly seats in November.

The dispute between outgoing party chair Rodneyse Bichotte-Hermelyn and New Kings Democrats, a reform faction that won enough district leader seats in June to challenge her control, has produced a series of lawsuits, disputed leadership votes and increasingly bitter public attacks. With the party’s leadership still unresolved, reformers warn that legal expenses could leave Democrats with fewer resources to compete in closely contested races.

The stakes extend beyond the party’s internal politics. The Brooklyn Democratic Party is one of the largest county Democratic organizations in the country, responsible for nominating judges, organizing party activities and mobilizing voters across the borough.

According to New Kings Democrats President Tony Melone, the party already owes its longtime law firm, Abrams Fensterman, at least $300,000 in legal fees.

“[The party] hasn’t, as far as we can tell, spent anything on campaigning against Republicans,” Melone told reporters at a press conference prior to the September 23rd County Committee Meeting. “Now with this lawsuit and this appeal it is most likely spending tens or hundreds of thousands more. The party may have nothing left in its bank account to fight Republicans this year because they’re continuing to try to fight in court and deny the will of the voters.”

Three Assembly races are particularly relevant to that concern.

In the 45th Assembly District, Democrat Joey Cohen-Saban is again challenging Republican Michael Novakhov, who defeated him by just over 200 votes, or 0.8 percentage points, in 2024. The district had been represented by Democrats for decades before Novakhov’s 2022 victory.

In the neighboring 46th District, New Kings Democrats member Chris McCreight is seeking to unseat Republican Alec Brook-Krasny, who represented the district as a Democrat from 2006 to 2015 before switching parties ahead of his 2022 reelection bid.

And in the 49th District, first-time candidate Joyce Xie is challenging Republican Lester Chang, who defeated longtime Democratic Assemblymember Peter J. Abbate Jr. in 2022 after redistricting reshaped the district’s electorate. Chang ran unopposed in 2024.

The candidates are not uniformly aligned with either side of the party dispute. McCreight identifies with the reform faction, while Cohen-Saban and Xie both voted in favor of Bichotte-Hermelyn’s now-overturned executive committee expansion in August.

The party’s financial and political troubles stem from a legal and political fight over who gets to control its leadership. On Sept. 14, New York State Supreme Court Justice Jill Epstein ruled that changes to the party’s rules, approved at an Aug. 25 executive committee meeting, were illegal. The changes expanded the committee and gave voting rights to new members selected by Bichotte-Hermelyn’s allies, with outgoing district leaders participating in the decision. 

Epstein ruled that the outgoing leaders could not make such substantive changes after the June Democratic primary and voided the amendments.

“From the beginning, this conflict has always been over whether or not we respect the will of the voters,” said reform leader Julio Peña III. “The party chair’s attempt to pack the executive committee with loyalists in order to keep her seat—instead of respecting the election results—is an affront to our party’s commitment to democracy.”

Bichotte-Hermelyn appealed the ruling, but the Appellate Division, Second Department, upheld the decision. But the court fight was only one part of a chaotic series of events that left the party’s leadership in limbo.

At the party’s Sept. 23 organizational meeting, delays caused by long lines, confusion over voting procedures and problems registering proxy votes pushed the scheduled 10 a.m. start back by more than five hours. The meeting eventually lasted roughly eight hours.

Bichotte-Hermelyn did not attend. Her allies nevertheless pushed to reaffirm the executive committee expansion, despite the earlier court ruling. Reformers challenged the proceedings, and the meeting ended with another unexpected development: Bichotte-Hermelyn’s faction failed to nominate its own candidate for chair, leaving retiring Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez unopposed.

On Oct. 2, Kings County Supreme Court Justice Lisa Lewis ruled that Bichotte-Hermelyn’s term as chair had ended with the organizational meeting, giving Velázquez interim executive authority until a permanent successor could be elected.

Rather than seek another term herself, Bichotte-Hermelyn subsequently threw her support behind Assemblymember Nikki Lucas, a close ally who represents East New York, Canarsie and parts of Brownsville.

On the night of Oct. 4, Bichotte-Hermelyn convened a surprise virtual county committee meeting to elect Lucas as chair. Peña and fellow reform district leader Mark Hanna warned colleagues against participating, arguing that the meeting violated a temporary restraining order and the party’s bylaws.

Lucas received votes from just 13 of the party’s 42 elected district leaders. Bichotte-Hermelyn’s allies also counted votes from the expanded executive committee, including 21 votes from 26 members added under the disputed rule changes. Among those members was perennial local candidate Paperboy Love Prince.

Bichotte-Hermelyn’s faction declared Lucas the new chair, but reformers argued that the expanded committee’s votes were invalid.

Howard Graubard, an attorney representing Peña and other reformers, called the meeting “a grand combination of kabuki and contempt.”

Hanna subsequently filed papers seeking to hold Bichotte-Hermelyn and other participants in contempt of court. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 17.

For now, the party has competing claims to its leadership. With Election Day fast approaching, the prolonged dispute has left the party facing both a potential financial squeeze and also exposed the true chasm of a divide within the highest levels of the party’s leadership.  

“A lot needs to be done to unify this party,” Peña told The Red Hook Star-Revue. “Folks often say that we need unity and that we need to come together, but there’s real work that needs to go into that. There needs to be some real hard conversations in the coming months.”