How It Works: Electing a Bronx County Leader

This is the kind of inside baseball that, in an ordinary year, wouldn't be of much interest except to the most inside insiders of Bronx politics. But this year Bronx County Democratic chairman Jose Rivera is likely to face a fierce challenge when the Bronx County Democratic Committee meets next (we hear it may be as soon as Monday at the Loew's Paradise but that hasn't been confirmed yet). So, here's how the process works.

By law, a meeting of the Bronx County Democratic Committee must take place within 20 days of the primary.

The County Committee has 2500 members, who come from every election district in the borough. Each election district gets 2 to 4 committee members, depending on the total Democratic vote in each district the previous gubernatorial election. At the same time that candidates petition for candidates for Assembly and district leader, they petition for County Committee slates. (There are 300 county committee members in the 81^st Assembly District which covers part of Norwood, for instance.)

At the County committee meeting, the county committee members elect 4 officers – the chairman of the County Committee (which is a different position than county leader), as well as the secretary and the treasurer. Those officers, along with the 24 district leaders (there is a male and female district leader elected from each district, though one Assembly district has two of each) form the executive committee and that executive committee elects three other people who also have seats on the executive committee– the counsel, the parliamentarian, and the chairman of the executive committee The latter is the county leader position.