How The 'Sham' Sausage Gets Made Inside The Brooklyn Democratic County Committee

Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Frank Seddio, center, before the start of the county committee meeting Thursday night

Amid nearly six hours of jeering and bouts of ecstatic applause, a raucous crowd of young, progressive-minded Democrats tested the Kings County machine at its post-election county committee meeting Thursday night, venting their frustrations with its opaque decision-making and Byzantine parliamentary rules. Nevertheless, despite a series of attempts by insurgent reformers to change party leaders and procedure, the Brooklyn Democratic Party hierarchy remained intact.

Reform groups, principally the New Kings Democrats (NKD), had sought to challenge the often-preordained elections of favored committee executive officers and civil court judges.

“There’s a lot of new blood, a lot of interest, a lot of grassroots activism that’s coming,” said NKD president Brandon West, before the meeting. “There will be a larger voice for that at this meeting and I think that will be amplified in the future.”

New York City’s county committees are local political groups that set out rules for political parties, select leaders, and control the budget. But they also have unique powers to nominate judges in often-uncontested elections and to elect special election candidates whenever an elected official vacates office early—for a resignation, another elected office, or due to an indictment—which is remarkably common.

As West had hoped, attendance was high. In fact, it appeared that party officials struggled to deal with the numbers of committee members involved in the event—a total of 1,370 including proxies and in-person attendees. So many, in fact, that the proxies were not all counted before the meeting began and party officials updated the tallies as the night progressed.

As hundreds of committee members filed into the 700-seat Kingsborough Community College theater, Democratic county boss Frank Seddio and newly-minted Democratic nominee for attorney general Letitia James sat in a dark corner off to the side. Seddio told Gothamist he didn’t expect any surprises. Then he leaned over to gladhand a party official—“we should be good,” Seddio said with a gruff smile. Moments later, James climbed the stage to warm up the crowd, railing against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination and President Donald Trump in general.

The meeting had the feel of an unruly pep rally, complete with signs and noisy protestors, the various factions of Brooklyn’s dominant political groups packed into venue. On the surface, control of the meeting appeared to be an oratorical tug of war between former state senator Martin Connor, who was leading the proceedings from the podium, and various challengers clumsily employing Robert’s Rules of Order to challenge the chair.

Beneath the surface, however, control of the county committee meeting had already been determined by how many county committee members had signed over their votes to faction leaders—effectively allowing those leaders to wield the weight of dozens or even hundreds of votes via these so-called “proxies.” In that way, despite the hours of uproar to follow, the battle for control was over before the meeting began.

Shortly before the meeting was called to order, Seddio told Gothamist that the NKD’s proxies were done improperly. “New Kings sent out a proxy and theirs are invalid. They have two mistakes on them.” Nevertheless, Seddio said that he had agreed to allow NKD’s proxies to be tallied and considered valid. “We’re going to let them count for the purposes of the meeting,” Seddio said.

Ironically, just days before, it was Seddio who was accused of making a serious mistake on his own proxy letters, requesting committee members cede their votes to his control, while falsely claiming that certain local representatives had endorsed the move. Assemblyman Robert Carroll’s name was used. “It was bull," Carroll said. “It was deceptive and I’m not happy about it.”

The Daily News decried it in an editorial slamming the “Kings of corruption.”

Seddio waved off the mailing controversy and bad press. The proxies were still being counted, but, he said with a little laugh, “We have more than them.” Hundreds more, as it turned out. As of 9:45 p.m., Seddio had 602 proxies, West held just 121, and eight other leaders held less than a hundred proxies collectively. That vote gap was crucial, as Seddio’s proxies gave him control of the night’s most important decisions.

Democratic county committee staff scanning in proxies (Frank Runyeon / Gothamist)

When the slate of executive officers came up for a vote, Seddio cashed in his votes to support his candidates, overwhelming resistance from what appeared to be a majority of committee members physically in attendance.

“This is a sham!” one woman yelled. “Shame, shame,” some chanted. Others jeered.

Connor announced the results. “All those standing, plus the proxies held by Mr. Seddio...” he began, as he was interrupted by a chorus of boos. “You don’t even know the results yet.”

A reformer heckled him: “You knew the results before we voted!”

Connor continued. “...Is 600 to 491. The slate is elected.”

Boos and cheers erupted. Recently-defeated state senate challenger Blake Morris turned to his supporters, saying, “Lost by 109. Not bad. It’s never been this close.”

Later that evening, three county-favored civil court judges were also nominated with no resistance from reformers: Anne Swern and Jill Epstein by their districts and Rupert Barry by the executive committee. Not one faces an opponent in the election.

But the night was not without small victories for reformers.

Carroll made an impassioned pitch for proxy voting reform, submitting two changes to the party rules committee to limit the ability of the party boss to garner hundreds of proxy votes before a county committee meeting. One added clarifying language explaining what signing over your vote means and another limits who a proxy vote can be ceded to—only to a member in that member’s Assembly District, as opposed to allowing a party boss to collect proxies from across the county, as Seddio did that night.

Last night's crowd (Frank Runyeon / Gothamist)

West was also invited up to address the committee from the podium—a first for the NKD leader. He used his remarks to say he had been working with the county committee to bring greater transparency and an improved process to the Brooklyn Democrats. On his list of things to fix, West casually noted that the executive committee had not been taking minutes of their meetings and that some executive committee officers did not even know that they held those positions.

“Democracy isn’t bad,” West said, tongue in cheek. “Elections aren’t always the wrong thing to have.”

Curiously, party officials said they did not have the certified election results for who officially won the county committee seats at the time of the meeting, which means that they had no way to be sure that duly elected committee members were the ones voting. It’s not uncommon for the certified results in low-vote races to declare a different winner than the unofficial election night results.

The final results for this month’s primary election were only just approved by the New York City Board of Elections that afternoon, but a county party official on-site said they did not have a paper or electronic copy, so they used unofficial results instead.

However, it appears that those who voted in the committee meeting can now check the certified election results—if only to double-check that they should have been voting at all.