By Christopher Alessi
The New Kings Democrats gathered last night in a frigid back room in St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in downtown Brooklyn for a civics lesson.
Fifty of the New King’s young activists – most of whom got their start in politics campaigning for President Obama in 2008 – filed into dusty folding chairs to listen to their elders within the anti-establishment wing of the Brooklyn Democratic Party give a lecture on the process of judicial selection to the New York State Supreme Court.
Matthew Cowherd, the president of New Kings, thinks reforming how judges are chosen is vital to challenging what he sees as a corrupt and static Democratic establishment. Last night’s meeting was an attempt to make the group’s politically savvy members equally knowledgeable about the ins and outs of a selection process that is much older than them. In short, to have these would-be reformers understand just how the system they want to reform actually works.
First and foremost, they learned it all comes down to one man: Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic County Chair or, as he is known around the borough, the “boss.”
“It’s insider baseball,” said Alan Fleishman, a district leader for Park Slope. “If you don’t know the Democratic Party establishment you can’t become a judge, it’s all electoral politics.” He was referring to a complex process by which judicial delegates, elected at the neighborhood level, choose candidates for the State Supreme Court. The judicial delegates are elected by State Assembly district, but are mainly chosen by party leaders and usually run unopposed. They then gather at the annual Democratic judicial convention where they cast their votes to choose candidates to run for the State Supreme Court—candidates that are all but certain to win the election in heavily Democratic Brooklyn.
“Judicial delegates are often insiders,” Fleishman explained. “They generally have something to lose if they don’t do what they’re told.”
Chris Owens, the former president of the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, is one judicial delegate who has been critical of the Democrat’s process for years. He told the group that at last year’s convention he had abstained from voting for every candidate who was presented to the delegation as a way of protest. He advised the New Kings to “play in this field” and challenge the whole procedure, about which most people know so little.
Marty Needelman, a legal services attorney who got his political start working with Lopez in the 1980s, was more blunt. He referred to the party machine as the “forces of evil,” eliciting nervous laughter from his colleagues. But he also cautioned the New Kings to understand the potential upside of the current system. “Early on, Vito supported progressive people, great candidates who we helped get judgeships,” he said.
For Needelman, it comes down to one question: “Who chooses, the good guys or the bad guys?” Years ago, Needelman said, Lopez was with the “good guys,” and so the system was working for “progressive” interests. That is not the case anymore, he continued, because Lopez now represents the establishment he once sought to reform. And, he added, the “boss” has only consolidated his power to choose.
The New Kings diligently took notes throughout the two-hour session, some nodding in agreement while others appeared perplexed. At the end, the speakers answered a range of technical questions about New York’s judicial system, attempting to simplify a numbingly convoluted scheme. Finally, Cowherd piped up. “But where do we activists begin?”
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