A Democratic Committee Meeting to Remember

Just a smattering of the participants in tonights meeting(s) lining up
to sign in the lobby of the Paradise Theater. (All photos by Jordan Moss)

It's Sunday night at 10:15 p.m. and I've just gotten back from the Utopia (formerly Loew's) Paradise Theater on the Concourse where the Bronx County Democratic Committee met to to elect a chairman.

I wish I could just simply report to you who was elected chairman but it is a tad more complicated than that.

There were basically two meetings tonight. In the first one, Council Member Maria Baez presided over the meeting, ignoring those challenging Jose Rivera for the chairmanship. Assemblyman Carl Heastie, Rivera's challenger, sat quietly at a table with Stanley Schlein, the party lawyer, who severed his long-time allegiance to Rivera recently and joined forces with the so-called Rainbow Rebels. The word from the Rebels who were milling around the audience was that they were just patiently waiting for the end of what they considered an illegal meeting to begin their meeting, which is exactly what they did.

Council Member Maria Baez presiding over 'first' meeting.

Baez, and later Council Member Larry Seabrook, asked for a voice vote on the leadership motions, but they only acknowledged the ayes. They ignored the no votes, even when they were significantly louder than the yeses. Rivera gave a brief, defiant acceptance speech and then led all of his supporters out of the theater.

Then the Rainbow Rebels took the stage and went through a number of procedural motions which ended in the election of officers, including Assemblyman Carl Heastie (east Bronx/Wakefield) as chairman of the executive committee, which is the county leader position. Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, one of the architects of the takeover, was elected chairman of the county committee, which is the position Heastie held previously. Assemblyman Michael Benedetto was elected treasurer, and Assemblyman Michael Benjamin was elected parliamentarian; Assemblywoman Aurelia Greene retained her position as secretary.

Assemblyman Carl Heastie, Rivera's likely replacement, and lawyer Schlein.

This will certainly end up in court tomorrow or sometime later this week, but it's hard to imagine a judge siding with Rivera. Though he had hundreds of supporters in the hall, very few of them had the yellow wristbands that identified them as registered members of the County Committee and authorized them to vote in the deliberations. Dinowitz, Heastie and Assemblyman Michael Benedetto had bused in hundreds of registered committee members who signed their names in registration books supplied by the Board of Elections -- much like a registered voter would in a regular election or primary. Committee members run on slates with district leaders and Assembly members, but while an Assembly district might have 300 or so slots for County Committee members, many of these slots go unfilled in some Assembly districts, and that seems to have been the case in many of the districts where Assembly members sided with Rivera.

Heastie supporters raising their wristbanded hands during the "second" meeting.

A sample of the registration books, held by Rebel Dem lawyer Stanley Schlein.

At one point there was a scuffle on stage over the registration books. It seemed that at one point Rivera's supporters had taken possession of them, but eventually Schlein got them back -- a little rumpled and worse for the wear but intact -- with the help of some security guards.

Without the registration books or any official record of the first meeting, Rivera will have his work cut out for him. The Rebels, on the other hand, had the registration books in their possession, a stenographer's record of the proceedings (they wisely hired one for the occasion) and a previous court ruling (the one that prohibited them from scheduling their own County Committee hearing at Co-op City last week because the venue wasn't large enough) that reportedly authorized Heastie, the Committee Chairman, to run the meeting.

Other observations in no particular order:

-Pedro Espada, a newly minted Democratic nominee for state Senate, showed up for a while but didn't appear to take sides.
-Assemblyman Dinowitz apparently got in the middle of a scuffle over those registration books and his eyeglasses were visibly scratched.
-Baez called her meeting to order around 7:15 while lines of people were still lining up outside to verify their signatures in the registration books.
-Benedetto said he couldn't remember a county meeting this raucous since the 1970s when the reform movement clashed with the regular Dems.
-Politics creates strange bedfellows. One of the fathers of that reform movement and a favorite of the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club, Council Member Oliver Koppell, stood apart from the 150 or so Riverdale-area committee members Dinowitz and the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club bused in for the vote. This is Koppell's core constituency and one he will surely need if the change he proposed in the term limits law allows him to run for another term. Koppell told us at the Jerome-Gun Hill BID Street Festival on Saturday that his differences with Dinowitz and his Club were awkward. But, the veteran lawmaker told us, "I just like Jose."

Allies Oliver Koppell and Jose Rivera outside the theater just before the meeting.

-a lot of time in court could have been avoided if the judge or some kind of special master was in attendance to oversee the proceedings. Everyone knew there was going to be controversy. Why not head it off at the pass?
-the most organized of the Assembly members in the rebel camp had their supporters decked out in t-shirts that read "Team Dinowitz," "Team Diaz," and "Team Heastie." Benedetto didn't have shirts but hired 3 buses to get his 100+ supporters to the theater. Where does the money come from for all this? Benedetto said he could only speak for himself, but that the money came from his campaign account.

A Dinowitz supporter and Rivera opponent poses for a souvenir photo with a pro-Rivera sign.