Here is an article from September in the Daily News by Errol Lewis showing the embedded corruption in the Dem Party. The NY Times has also been covering the story in Queens and Brooklyn.
Sep 30, 2018 - At a Brooklyn Democratic county committee meeting, progressives tried to ... Frank Seddio, left, after a six-hour meeting of the Kings County Democratic Committee meeting ... In NewYork City, many Democrats looking for ways to become ... where The New York Times found that candidates running for 21 ...
Aug 24, 2018 - In Queens, Democratic bosses run candidates without their consent for a ... are the very blades of grass of grass-roots politics in New York, the worker ants ... There are more than 1,100 Democratic committee members in Queens alone, most .... no notification, making it impossible for them to decline in time.Aug 27, 2018 - The Queens Democratic Party machine seemed to be nominating candidates without their consent. I needed to find them. But how?
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-fight-the-democratic-machines-20180924-story.html#
Fight the Democratic machines: Insurgents are democratizing the party; New Yorkers should join them
U.S.
Representative Joe Crowley (D-NY) meets with the NY Daily News
Editorial Board on Thursday, August 31, 2017. (Jefferson Siegel / New
York Daily News)
If
we’re lucky, the same progressive wind that swept away nearly all of
the state senators of the former Independent Democratic Conference will
keep blowing for a good long while — and rid New York of the shady
dealings of the city’s Democratic machines.
No
sooner had progressive grassroots groups unseated Sens. Jeff Klein,
Jose Peralta, Marisol Alcantara, Jesse Hamilton and Tony Avella than the
machines resumed their usual backroom B.S.
Party insiders instantly began steering court and government positions to favored insiders, the public be damned.
New York’s county organizations aren’t as all-important as they once were, but they still wield a great deal of power. About one-third
of all state Assembly members and approximately 19% of the Senate first
entered office through special elections after an incumbent died,
retired or got indicted.
In
addition to filling vacancies, the county organizations act as
gatekeepers, sending lawyers to file challenges that result in insurgent
candidates getting thrown off the ballot. And the parties exercise
close control over the nomination and election of state judges, who earn
six-figure salaries, serve for 10- or 14-year terms, and wield enormous
power over civil and criminal cases of all kinds.
A
special plum guarded by each county machine are the five Surrogate’s
Courts (one in each borough), which handle the disposition of assets
belonging to people who die without leaving a will.
So
who controls the county machines and the courts matters a great deal.
And the folks in charge squeal when activists and the media point out
their shenanigans.
In
Queens, boss Joe Crowley, who just lost his House seat in a party
primary, called a meeting of the county’s executive committee at a diner
during work hours, a time and place that few elected officials in the
borough even knew about. Crowley was re-elected as chairman.
Dissenters
noted that Crowley actually lives in Virginia and was turned out of
Congress by voters. A recent New York Times article noted that the
Queens organization regularly fills positions with the names of people
who have no idea they’ve been nominated.
A
reform group called the New Queens Democrats has launched a campaign to
open the process and recruit new committee members. Interested New
Yorkers should contact them at newqueensdems.org.
In
Brooklyn, the Democratic organization led by Frank Seddio got some
post-election heat when Yasmeen Khan, a reporter from WNYC, turned up a
letter being circulated that asked committee members to give their proxy
vote to Seddio. The letter bore the names of three reform-minded
Democratic district leaders who had, in reality, not given permission to
have their names used.
Join the New Kings Democrats (newkingsdemocrats.com) if you want to see change to one of the largest Democratic organizations in America.
Up
in the Bronx, according to my NY1 colleague Zack Fink, the Democratic
organization nearly pulled off a multi-stage seat-swapping scheme. A
plan was hatched to deliver a judgeship to Klein, who was unexpectedly
unseated by Alessandra Biaggi in the state Senate primary earlier this
month and will be looking for a job come January.
But
it turned out that the judgeship had already been slated to go to City
Councilman Andy Cohen, whose vacated council seat was promised to Eric
Dinowitz, the son of Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz, who apparently wants to
go into the family business.
Media
scrutiny scotched the deal for now. But it’s another reminder that
progressives who want to see change are at the start of a long,
difficult battle against insiders who have long treated public
institutions like a private playground.
Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.
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