Issue 142

November 20, 2019

“Not everyone’s ambitions will be world domination or Carnegie Hall, but we should be driven beyond what we know and feel safe doing.”

☛ Stacey Abrams

Art by Anita Tung

? Rage against the party machine ?

Last night, The Broad Room hosted a bomb training—#REPYOURBLOCK: Running for County Committee—with our fave Brooklyn rabble rousers, New Kings Democrats. TLDR: County Committees are our secret weapon against the entrenched Democratic Machine. Couldn’t make it and want to find out more? We’ll give you the skinny in today’s memo—and we urge YOU to run for County Committee!

The most local level of NY Dem Party governance is the County Committee—a voting body that chooses the party’s leadership and priorities in each borough. Every election district (a few square blocks in each neighborhood) has 2-4 seats, and when all seats are filled, there are ~3K-5K members of the borough County Committee at large. News to you? Yeah. Same. And because this little known body is so...little known, not enough people run for it, leaving empty seats up for grabs for County control (think Joe Crowley and Melinda Katz). Without proper representation, these committees are the epitome of political machines: where old white dudez run the show.

It’s our party, we’ll run if we want to. County Committees select our party leadership, advance resolutions to reshape the party, and most important choose the candidates on the Dem ballot in special elections. PSA: Special elections MATTER. As an incumbent in NYS, you're more likely to die in office or be indicted for corruption than lose re-election, and ~1/3 of NYS reps are elected in special elections! But County Committee leaders are often the dudes behind the curtain working to keep the status quo in office. Which means amazing progressive women like AOC and Tiffany Cabán have to start monumental movements in order to break up the party and make meaningful change. Not cool. We need YOU to step up and run.

Progressive reps in our County Committees help change the culture & ultimately elect more broads and POC. So what can you do?

RUN!
—Find which Election District to run in. The next chance to petition for the Democratic Committee in BK starts February 25th.
—Collect 20-50 signatures from your neighbors. Easy peasy.
—Most of the time, that's it! But if you're in a competitive election, New King Dems will help you run a mini-campaign.