布鲁克林民主党内斗：福特汉姆粉发风波与党机器权力之争

She considers different colors. Green, no good for her facial structure. Blue, problematic.

And Anna heads back to school for her junior year. And she's instantly recognizable, getting just the kind of attention she hoped for.

It's great.

A year passes. This fall, Anna gets back to Fordham for her senior year.

What a difference a summer makes. Suddenly Anna's seeing all these people running around campus with pink hair. Her pink hair.

Anna is sure they're copying her. Just the timing, there's no other plausible explanation.

And copying, while she doesn't love it, she can live with it. After all, she originally copied that other girl. But when Anna copied, she said so, directly to the girl's face. These copycats, they're not admitting it, and it's driving Anna nuts. It's a small campus. She walks by these fresh pink hairs every day.

We're sitting on a bench on the quad. I tell her I plan to do some fact-checking. To her credit, Anna's fine with that. She's game, actually. We both start scanning the lawn and the paths for pink hairs.

But why pink, I ask her?

What else is there to say?

You know.

I saw that girl and I thought I was like, "That's cute hair." Be like

That's really convenient, isn't it?

I don't.

I don't believe her.

I can't be happy for them. I'm sorry.

From Serial Productions and The New York Times, this is Metro. I'm Sarah Koenig. And this next story, well, just swap out pink hair for politics. Let's see what happens.

The midterm elections were just a couple of days ago, and holy cow, astounding news across the country. Democrats everywhere losing their minds, celebrating.

But in Brooklyn, New York, something else is going on.

Instead of linking arms, they are at each other's throats.

This was a recent meeting I went to of fellow Democrats.

And it was

I mean, I used to be a political reporter. I have got through hundreds of public meetings, no joke, but this one was extraordinary.

This was, if you can believe it, an organizational meeting. The biannual organizational meeting of the KCDCC, the Kings County Democratic County Committee.

For our purposes, they're the Brooklyn Dems, who in theory represent the values and priorities of Democrats in Brooklyn, a borough that is deeply blue politically and also huge. More than 2 and 1/2 million people live in Brooklyn, more than in any other borough.

So, Brooklyn's Democratic Party has heft. It's the second biggest county party in the country, in fact. You'd think it would have its act together, especially in the run-up to a general election, where Republicans have gained ground in Southern Brooklyn.

Post-primary season, parties are supposed to come together, right? So, what gives?

What gives is that this organization is on the brink of a takeover.

You've heard of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, the party machine based in Manhattan, synonymous with self-dealing and patronage politics.

That reputation got more or less cleaned up in the last century.

The Democratic parties in Queens and the Bronx, they have their quirks and scandals, but they are functional organizations.

Brooklyn's party, not so much.

I'm not saying it's as bad as Tammany Hall, but it is a machine, and it is the biggest, wildest, least functional party in New York City.

And there's never been a decisive overhaul

until maybe right now.

Right now, a takeover by self-proclaimed reformers is a foot.

The bedlam I witnessed at that organizational meeting, that was either the death throes of a party machine or the quashing of a rebellion.

No one in that room, I don't think, was entirely sure.

So, I wondered, inside New York City's most entrenched political party, what does it take to take over?

All right. So, let me introduce you to our combatants. In this corner is the party establishment, which most people just call County.

In the other are the reformers, the revolutionaries, the firebrands that County is trying to beat back. People like this guy, Tony Malone.

I'm just noticing I'm recording 44.1 24-bit. Do we Do you prefer 48?

So, he asked around among like-minded progressives, "What's the Brooklyn Democratic Party doing about that?" The answer, he thought, was weird.

Historically, that is what party machines were good for, or at least good at, getting people jobs. Especially in pre-social safety net New York, the machine could help serve the needs of sidelined ethnic communities. Sure, you wanted to win elections, but the real value of the machine was the power and influence it could corral and then dispense, mostly in the form of patronage.

But in the modern political era, the primacy of the machine had shriveled. So, that by 2016, Brooklyn's Democratic Party was no longer a citywide powerhouse.

And to Tony, the priorities of the party leadership seemed to be, "How can I make sure my friends and family get paying jobs in government, in the courts, at the Board of Elections?" And that's pretty much it.

I think is is is is kind of what got us here.

Tony's president of an organization called the New Kings Democrats. Nearly two decades ago, well before Tony got involved, the New Kings had already registered all the same complaints that Tony had, and they set out to change the way the party operates. Reform it, they said.

What they wanted, well, they wanted a bunch of things, but what they wanted most was for the party leadership to turn itself outward. Instead of focusing on their own fiefdoms, they wanted them to spend more of their energy and more of the party's money campaigning for Democratic candidates, not just in Brooklyn, but all over the place. More robust organizing, getting out the vote, bussing volunteers to where where wherever up state, Pennsylvania, Ohio. They're the biggest Democratic county organization this side of the Mississippi, after all. They should be out there throwing their Democratic weight around. That was the idea.

For its part, County was initially pretty hostile to the New Kings, but eventually they said, "Okay, we hear you, but you are just one faction inside a broader party. We're willing to make some changes, but as one party leader said, evolution, not revolution."

New Kings, though, they wanted revolution.

To make that happen, they realized they'd have to change the party leadership, oust the party chair. A tall order.

The chair is pretty powerful, especially when it comes to city jobs. The chair has a huge say in who becomes a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge and who works for those judges, who works at the Board of Elections, who works at the polls. That influence and the way the party bylaws are structured to protect that influence, it cements your position. So, ousting a party chair, not so easy.

Which didn't stop the New Kings from trying and failing.

By 2021, after a couple bruising efforts, they settled on a strategy. Take over the party's select leadership body, called the Executive Committee. That was the only sure-fire way to get the reform they wanted. Get a majority on the Executive Committee.

They're local party leaders who represent a certain electoral district. In Brooklyn, there are 21 such districts. Actually, they're technically 22, but one's a houseboat, long story, so functionally there are 21, anyway. Each district elects two leaders for a total of 42 district leaders.

The next election is 2022. They get close, but it's not quite enough. 2024, they do even worse. They get 14 reformers on the executive committee. They need at least 22 for a majority.

County knows what's up. Each election cycle, County is trying to kick the reformer candidates off the ballot, occasionally successfully, by challenging the signatures on their candidate petitions, which entails an excruciating review of each signature at the Board of Elections. It's a whole thing.

By early 2026, Tony had been president of the New Kings for over a year, and he was thinking, it's now or never. Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who was not endorsed by the Brooklyn Democratic Party in the primary, had beat out the establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo and won the election for mayor. Clearly, a lot of Democratic voters were fired up for change. That was the now part. The never part was, I'm not sure I can keep doing this.

They got to get anti-county candidates to run for district leader in places like Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, where County had held sway forever. And Tony knew people like him weren't going to cut it in those districts. White, privileged people originally from, say, Rhode Island. Tony's from Rhode Island.

They needed people from those same communities, black people and other people of color, to make common cause in a coalition, which they were calling Brooklyn Can't Wait.

Tony knew County was going to put up a fight, try again to get these candidates kicked off the ballot by challenging their petition signatures. They'd done that for years, but this year

But what County was saying was that every single signature for at least four of the reform candidates was fishy. So maybe 8,000 signatures didn't match the signatures on voter registration cards. What that assertion was based on, who knew?

Regardless,

Um and you know, a couple candidates a couple candidates in our coalition almost got kicked off the ballot just because of that.

It was honestly like terrifying to be there and and watch their number of signatures go down as like one by one, you know, the referee would rule, "Oh, this is not a good enough match. This is not a good enough match."

So, the coalition sent volunteers rushing back to the voters' addresses. In some cases, they weren't home, so they'd have to wait around or come back until they could get them to sign an affidavit saying, "Yes, this is my signature, and yes, I want this candidate on the ballot." It was a nail-biter.

But, once again, they did it. All nine reform candidates made it onto the ballot. Now, they just had to win.

Election day comes, June 23rd. Tony is feeling okay.

Tony worked the polls all day worrying about all the people he'd roped into this thing. People who'd agreed to run, sure, but they didn't know they were going to get dragged into court over petition signatures or called names online. All to run for an unpaid party office.

And what if, after all that, they lost?

9:00 p.m. when the polls closed, Tony gets on a bike and cycles from Central Brooklyn north to Bushwick to join his compatriots at a bar. And by the time he gets there, he's the last to hear the news. Everyone's already hollering. They won. Eight of the nine races. Which meant reformers would occupy 22 of the 42 district leader seats. A sliver of majority, but a majority nonetheless. They'd control the executive committee. They could choose a new chair.

And finally, after nearly 20 years, attend to their wish list, which included hacking back on the patronage, opening up the process for choosing judicial candidates, make voting at party meetings more transparent, and most important, prioritize getting Democrats into elected office.

Um, but also, we didn't know what they were going to do, but we expected they would try something.

I mean, we didn't know how extreme it was going to get.

But lucky for us, Rodneyse does make videos.

Two months after the New Kings Coalition won a majority on the executive committee and were poised to take her out, Rodneyse released a video announcing her counterpunch.

And they'd voted in a bunch of amendments to the party rules, which would, let's say, change the way the party chair is chosen.

And most of the new additions, the everyday people, would be chosen by Rodneyse.

The new Kings majority, in other words, had just been vaporized.

But this wasn't simply a continuation of the party machine. This was another animal entirely.

Under this scheme, the reformers wouldn't just be outnumbered, they'd be crushed, permanently. Under this scheme, the party chair would be untouchable, could control every decision, every judicial nomination, every vote.

Rodneyse, of course, is a Democrat talking to other Democrats, Brooklyn Democrats no less. So, she defends the rules changes using the vocabulary of progressive politics. Community, inclusive, a seat at the table.

While also acknowledging, "I know some people aren't on board."

Fellow Democrats

From what I can tell, Rodneyse came into the party chair position with a fair amount of goodwill. She presented herself as open to all comers, not beholden to any faction.

She was the first black woman to serve as party chair, first woman period, which was a welcome change. I mean, the roster of previous Democratic Party Chairs, all dudes, could fill a Crime Stoppers bulletin board.

Rodneyse was the daughter of Haitian immigrants, better known as a state lawmaker who championed black maternal health.

She was a politician, for sure, but most people didn't figure her for an iron-fisted machine hack.

But over the past 6 years, her critics said she'd resisted reforms, behaved vindictively at times, and now this. Rules changes that were, people said, more audacious, procedurally speaking, than anything her predecessors had done.

But in Rodneyse's walk with me while I explain something dull style of politician video, de rigueur in the Mamdani era, she is assuring Brooklyn that all is normal.

Tiger aside, it was stunning, this whole thing. The chutzpah.

The New Kings cried foul. She was subverting the results of the June primary, they said. The word authoritarianism got thrown around. "These rules changes," said one New York City official, "would make Donald Trump blush."

A week later, in another video, Rodneyse took a victory lap.

This time she dropped the progressive buzzwords, addressing the reformers directly, she even dropped the smile. It was more check and mate.

Focused,

unshaken.

Forward Brooklyn.

You're going to come with me after the break.

The Brooklyn Democrats County Committee is sort of the entry-level base of the party, a relatively toothless body with a couple thousand voting members. This year it's bi-annual meeting fell smack in the middle of the rules changes controversy.

And as it happens, one of the county committee's basic functions is to vote on the party rules, usually a perfunctory thing. But this time no one I talked to knew quite how that vote would go down.

The meeting took place in downtown Brooklyn in a big auditorium.

How were these two sides going to come together in an auditorium of all places, a room for listening? How would they bridge the gap when their realities were so far apart?

One side believed it had won the right to take over the party. The other believed it had every right to stay in power. Would they discuss?

The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., but just before we go inside the auditorium, I'd like you to spend a minute with me out here in the lobby to take in the disorganization of this organizational meeting, which was spectacular.

Instead of a registration process, it was a registration mosh pit. Nobody knew where to be.

Over there.

Who knows why?

Excuse me.

But that would have demanded a level of coordination that seemed to me doubtful because nothing was organized. For hours they couldn't even hand out clickers which meant no one could actually vote. At one point they called a meeting to order and then had to uncall it to order. I had never seen that happen before.

They'd asked reporters to register but the press sign I saw was untethered to any sign-in protocol.

I heard the sentence I'm not in charge so many times they should have had t-shirts made. On the welcome poster Rodney Eason's last name was both missing a T and sporting an extra O.

Who cares you ask? Well, by the end of this day the sloppiness would bite County in the behind in a way no one saw coming.

For County the goal of this meeting was not to discuss. It was to codify Rodney Eason's new rules guaranteeing County stay in power. If they got the entire plenary body all however many thousands to vote them in, that'd be a stamp of broad approval which could maybe shore up County's legal strategy. They'd be able to show the judges, "See, everyone's fine with this."

I'm hoping I'll get to see Rodney Eason action, maybe talk to her. No one seems to know where she is. Inside the auditorium on stage there's a long table with a blue tablecloth and nine placards with people's names on them including one for Rodney Eason.

This 10:00 a.m. meeting kicks off at 3:30 in the afternoon.

The parliamentarian opens with a helpful note on time management.

Because there are actually close to a thousand other people voting at today's meeting. Nameless, faceless, bodiless voters. I mean, presumably they exist on paper, but to the naked eye, invisible. Because they are proxies.

Proxies are key to maintaining the party chair's power. In large part, because proxies are linked to patronage, the coin of the realm.

The proxy system, which is unusually ridiculous in Brooklyn, is one of the things reformers say they want to change. Here's how it works. If you can't be present at these party meetings, but you still want to participate, you can sign a document that says you're handing your vote over to another member. If you don't specify who, the default recipient of your vote is the party chair, Rodney's.

Why would people give Rodney's their vote? Well, they might not care or really even understand what they're signing. Or they might like and trust and support Rodney's. Or they might not want to cross her.

Because under the current regime, Rodney effectively controls who is chosen to work the polls in Brooklyn. These are paid positions working for the Board of Elections. Hundreds and hundreds of jobs that can earn you upwards of several thousand dollars a year.

And while that extra dough might not mean a lot in Brownstone, Brooklyn, it does mean a lot in the less affluent areas, which is most of Brooklyn.

To get poll worker shifts, it helps to be in Rodney's good graces. You might be asked to go door-to-door to gather a certain number of petition signatures for candidates that county wants on the ballot. Or you might be asked to vote a certain way come meeting time.

Case in point. Before today's county committee meeting, one of Rodney's lieutenants sent a text to a bunch of poll workers. Poll workers that this person had the power to appoint or to ice out, urging them to either go to the meeting and ratify Rodney's new rules or to hand over their proxies to Rodney's and Rodney's only.

It was pretty clear from the text that their poll worker jobs depended on it.

In a counter move, the reformers sent out a letter urging county committee members not to give their proxy votes to Rodney's. Her loyalists, they wrote, may say you must support the current chair in order to get poll working shifts, but please note, "requiring you to do work on their behalf or to support specific candidates or policies in exchange for poll assignments is illegal. Do not let them intimidate you." Unquote.

The reformers know what they're up against. The last time this organizational meeting was held 2 years ago, Rodney's effectively controlled 680 votes.

Now the party secretary makes an announcement. There are 1,142 people in attendance, either in person or by proxy.

Since there seem to be fewer than 200 bodies in the theater, again, almost all of them reformers, that means something like 950 proxies are in play.

The first and longest batch of voting is relatively inconsequential. It's slate after slate of candidates to fill seats in this very body, the county committee. And it's instantly clear, the reformers are getting creamed. County's winning basically every vote by at least three to one, which isn't a surprise because proxies.

But strange things are happening. At least to me they seem strange, irregular.

For instance, some people had gotten voting clickers even though they weren't yet voting members of county committee. The guy running the meeting pauses over this for a second, asks a couple questions, and then just keeps going onto the next vote.

Also, it's not clear the meeting has been properly noticed. The party's supposed to mail a notice of the meeting at least 5 days before with information about any amendments and votes, but people are saying it hadn't happened. That complaint gets no traction either.

Also, the vote totals are strange. Someone rises to rather quietly point out, um, we were told there were 1,142 people voting today in person or by proxy, but that vote just now, the tally was 1,240 votes. Where are the extra votes coming from?

Whatever pinch of decorum the audience displayed up to this point is quickly dissolving.

I assume it's an empty threat. Still shocking, but empty. I mean, I know in theory people can get forcibly thrown out of meetings, but for raising what sounded like legitimate concerns at their own meeting? Nah.

But in a flash, security guys move toward her. People surround her to fend them off. The mood in the room cranks to 11.

This happens probably four times. The craziest one, there's a guy with a physical disability who's sitting behind me, and he is just relentlessly pissed off and screaming at the meeting chair, this meeting is fake. You're not recognized. Choke on a dick, dude.

And this time, not just plainclothes meeting security, but the facilities security hustle in. Officers with handcuffs and weapons, and people are losing it. What are you doing? He's disabled. He's disabled. Finally, even the main security officer is like, you guys really need to relax.

Yes, yes, she says the guy yelling is annoying.

Eventually, fractiously, after the meeting chair has bulldozed through dozens of interruptions, they get to the votes that actually matter.

First, ratifying Rodneyse's new rules. The rules pass, 76% in favor.

Now, chanting starts.

A slate of names is projected on the stage, candidates to fill seats in Rodneyse's new, expanded membership roster. They're about to stack the executive committee with her appointees.

And it's done.

That's how the meeting ends, with shouting. Even out on the sidewalk, a couple people are still scrapping.

I walk out with State Assembly member Jo Anne Simon. I ask her about Rodneyse not showing up, cuz she never did show up. Jo Anne's not surprised. She said Rodneyse had to know how acrimonious it was going to get.

Because these votes probably weren't going to stick. Even before this meeting, the reformers had already won a significant victory in court. A judge had declared Rodney new rules invalid. And not long after the county committee meeting, an appellate court agreed. So surely, case closed. Except, no, not so fast. Stunning developments kept on developing. An exciting new twist everyday.

First, there seemed to be genuine confusion among everyone, county, the reformers, the court, over who was actually in charge of the party. Because at that mess of a county committee meeting, it turned out county leaders had accidentally elected their nemesis, a reformer, to the second highest position in the party, county committee chair. They'd somehow forgotten, I guess, to list their own candidate's name on their slate, and so the reformer candidate won by default. And it wasn't some rando. It was a well-known US congresswoman named Nydia Velázquez, who'd been railing against the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine for decades.

County committee chair isn't as powerful as party chair. Nydia Velázquez wasn't replacing Rodney, but still, the position has some authority.

So that led to a second round of confusion. Whose lawyers would be fighting all this out in court? Nydia's or Rodney's? Who can legally call meetings? Who can spend the party's money?

Even so, it looked as if the reformers would likely prevail. Initial court rulings were breaking their way. And yet, county still did not give up. In fact, the whole thing got more baroque.

County leaders called a late-night meeting, conducted a murky late-night election of new party officers. Restraining orders were issued, a contempt of court hearing.

By this time, about a month in, the fun of watching all the accusations fly back and forth had worn off. The morass of intertwined legal filings made it hard to even distinguish one complaint from the other.

As I'm saying this right now, this fight is still not resolved.

And all this was playing out on the eve of the midterm elections. When Democrats were trying to take back four state legislative seats in Southern Brooklyn, competitive races where Democrats could be back Republicans and could probably use all the help they could get from the party, which was instead focused on fighting with itself. Not to mention they had to be bleeding money for the legal bills.

And for what?

Why?

One reason why came spilling out at that county committee meeting. It was an argument I overheard. We all overheard it actually. It was impossible not to. It happened toward the end during a brief break. We noticed a sudden commotion at the edge of the stage.

A Kalel came back to his seat. People asked him what was going on.

This plantation crack was evidence of a sentiment that had been bubbling up in various ways the whole day, either in person or by proxy. That the New Kings Reform movement is controlled by a bunch of white liberals, gentrifiers, who are trying to wrest control from a black woman, the first black woman to run this party. And by taking away her power, they are taking away hard-won power from all black people in Brooklyn.

Earlier in the day, in a quieter moment, I'd talked to Renee. And she didn't mince words.

And you're mad?

But their coalition's pretty mixed. Every district leader candidate who won those eight races in the June primary was black or Latino, which has complicated this argument.

From the stage, Renee followed a calendar where he was sitting. She said, "I stand by what I said."

This feeling, it's not confined to Brooklyn.

New York Times reporter Jeff Mays, who covers city politics, he told me it's a current running throughout New York City.

With Mayor Mumdani's win and the rise of DSA candidates, democratic socialists, who've gotten a lot of support in places like Harlem, say, historically black, now gentrified. Jeff says black leaders are worried about losing ground.

Um so, there's a sense of, you know, you weren't here when Brooklyn was not a fun place to be, you know, right. You know, and that's the Brooklyn I grew up in, you know, I grew up in Coney Island Uh, the end of the sort of crack cocaine era, uh, and I think uh, people feel like we were here during the bad times. You know, you the reason that young people can move here, artists can move to Brooklyn, is because we held it down when no one else wanted to live here.

I talked to him later about the altercation with Rodneyse. He said, "They use race when it's convenient."

And Rodneyse, he said, "She dwells in identity politics. If you're not a person of color and you criticize Rodneyse, it's because she's a black woman. If you're like him, black and Caribbean, and you criticize her, it's because she's a Haitian woman and you're biased against Haitians."

A Kal said he's not deaf to arguments about fostering and preserving black political power in New York, none at all. He just thinks that's not Rodneyse's mission. What Rodneyse is trying to preserve, he said, is her own power.

Again, Rodneyse didn't talk to me, but she did talk to Jeff Mays, who wrote about this whole fracas for the paper.

I asked him whether he thinks things really will change if the reformers take over.

He paused for a second.

I forgot about that.

Right.

Mhm.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay.

So, maybe

evolution, not revolution.

Metro's producing team includes Janelle Pyper, Daniel Guilmette, Brendan Klinkenberg, Corey Kilgannon, Ben Phalen, Phoebe Wang, Jen Guerra, Jessica Weisberg, Katherine Anderson, Abby Perpech, Mac Miller, Matt Nadal, and Walter Snyder. Nikita Stewart is the editor of The New York Times Metro desk. Susan Westling is our standards editor. Legal review from Jack Browning.

Special thanks to Jesse Edwards at Hellgate, my first generous guide through the world of the Brooklyn Dems and Brooklyn judges. Go look for her excellent reporting. And thanks to Gwen Hogan at The City Reporter who held my hand throughout that nutty meeting and to all the other Brooklyn reporters who helped me understand the lay of the land. Thanks also to Howard Graubard, Diana Gonzalez, Evan Stavisky, Lincoln Restler, Mark Hanna, and Maxim Axelrod.

Metro is a production of Serial Productions and The New York Times.