When Brooklyn Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn rushed to the criminal court arraignment of City Councilmember Susan Zhuang after Zhuang appeared to bite a police officer during a heated protest against a proposed Bensonhurst homeless shelter, it made for a head-scratching spectacle.
Bichotte Hermelyn had railed against neighborhoods that pushed back on hosting shelters, especially in southern Brooklyn. Yet she stayed at Zhuang’s side for days, even meeting with Mayor Eric Adams to plead the Council member’s case. (Zhuang has pleaded not guilty to assault and other charges.)
But to Brooklyn Democratic Party insiders, it all made perfect sense. By collecting petition signatures, Zhuang had played an instrumental role in helping Bichotte Hermelyn oust two district leaders on Zhuang’s turf. In their place, Bichotte Hermelyn installed party loyalists who will help the Democratic leader piece together enough likely votes to secure her re-election for party chair come September.
“It’s entirely the fact that Susan delivered two district leaders,” said a South Brooklyn political operative who spoke under the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from party leaders.
Brooklyn has 42 district leader positions, one male and one female, in each Assembly district — elected by voters where there’s competition and otherwise anointed by party leaders. Those district leaders almost unanimously voted in Bichotte Hermelyn as party chair in 2020, as the handpicked successor to former party boss Frank Seddio.
She quickly became a polarizing figure, criticized for deploying strong-arm tactics. When her term as party boss came up for renewal two years ago, she came within an inch of losing her post, garnering the bare-minimum 23 district leader votes.
Now heading into her third election, Bichotte Hermelyn has a stronger hand than last time, won through a combination of new alliances like the one in Zhuang’s district, converting some former critics into allies, and successful efforts to oust would-be opponents, party insiders say.
But Bichotte Hermelyn’s critics describe a leader more interested in settling scores within her own party and staying in power than fending off Republicans in the borough’s few swing districts as the GOP gains seats.
“She doubled down on her strategy of attacking fellow Democrats and really doing nothing against Republicans,” said Lenny Markh, a longtime party hand whose former employer, Assemblymember Steven Cymbrowitz, lost to a Republican challenger in 2022. “It paid off.”
Her defenders have a different take.
“She knows how to be a diplomat,” Seddio told THE CITY, who is still a district leader in the 59th Assembly District which spans parts of Canarsie, Flatlands, and Marine Park.
Asked about Bichotte Hermelyn’s odds ahead of her September re-election, Seddio estimated she now has the support of 27 district leaders, comfortably above the majority she needs to win.
“She’s reached out to people who have worked with them and tried to gain their support and she has,” he said.
In an emailed statement, Bichotte Hermelyn confirmed to THE CITY she is “proudly seeking reelection as Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair to keep uplifting all Brooklynites.”
“District leaders choose to support me, Brooklyn’s first woman and Black Woman leader, because I fight for fairness and inclusivity to lead our Party forward with Democratic values,” she said.
‘Swatting the Flies’
Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies have been locked in an escalating battle with challengers to her rule, some of them stemming from a coalition of reformers, including members of New Kings Democrats, Brooklyn Young Democrats and Lambda Independent Democrats, under the umbrella of Brooklyn Can’t Wait.
In an unusually aggressive move, the Kings County Democratic Committee used party funds in at least seven races this spring to oppose district leaders who have taken on the party establishment, HellGate reported.
That effort garnered the opponents some new seats in Greenpoint and Bay Ridge — but the party was able to also able to claw some district leader spots back, including from Akel Williams, who’d defeated Bichotte Hermeyln’s husband Edu Hermelyn two years earlier in Crown Heights, and Robert Camacho in Bushwick, who got kicked off the ballot before the election.
In that seat-by-seat ground battle to secure district leaders who could be counted on to vote for a third Bichotte Hermelyn term as county party chief, Zhuang played a crucial role in the 49th Assembly District, covering Bensonhurst and Sunset Park, in tandem with party lawyers.
The effort dislodged an opposition leader along with another incumbent and installed two all but assured to support Bichotte Hermelyn come September. Astonishing party veterans, it also left the district with no Democrat on the ballot for state Assembly this November.
“Susan was someone who was really leading the charge and that has benefitted Rodneyse,” said one Brooklyn Democratic insider familiar with the petitioning process in the 49th district, who spoke anonymously to avoid party backlash.
Their target was Tori Kelly, who as female district leader mounted a leadership challenge against Bichotte Hermelyn two years ago that roused the ire of the party bosses. This year Zhuang collected petition signatures to assure new candidates would be on the ballot to oppose Kelly and her male district leader counterpart.
Meanwhile, a party lawyer went to court and successfully challenged Kelly and the other incumbent district leader’s petitions, getting them thrown off the ballot. Thrown off with them was Peter Abbate, who was running for his old Assembly seat representing Sunset Park and Bensonhurst.
That leaves the Republican incumbent, Assemblymember Lester Chang, running unopposed come November.
“It’s a disgrace,” Abbate raged to the New York Post. “It’s the first time in my memory — and I’m 75 years old — that there will be no Democratic candidate for an Assembly seat in Brooklyn.”
Seddio, the party’s former chair, said power struggles within the Brooklyn Democrats are nothing new.
“If you’re not supporting the leader of the party, the leader of the party certainly has, at least in their own minds, an obligation to get somebody who would be supportive of them,” he said. “I’m doing this 55 years. That’s been going on, 60 years.”
In the 59th Assembly district, where Seddio still serves as male district leader, reformers unsuccessfully backed a candidate to oust his co-district leader, State Sen. Roxanne Persaud. Seddio said he did what he had to do to beat the challenger.
“Someone decided that this is America, this is what they should do. So it’s America and I have to do what I have to do,” Seddio said. “When you got a fly flying around in the kitchen, what do you do? You have a fly swatter. What do you do? Swat it. So that’ll be my next step, swatting the flies.”
Asked about the situation in the 49th Assembly District, Bichotte Hermelyn said Brooklyn Democrats had “supported Asian communities during the petition review to ensure their voices were heard,” saying they’d found “widespread fraud” in petitions supporting Abbate and Kelly.
The election attorney who represented both Abbate and Kelly, Howard Graubard, acknowledged: “There were problems with the petitions that kept them from getting on the ballot,” explaining the company they hired used people to gather about 300 of the signatures who were not registered Democrats. He added: “Fraud was not among the findings of the court.”
In a statement, Bichotte Hermelyn called Joyce Xie and Tony Ko, the new district leaders who are poised to take over in the district ahead of her reelection vote as party boss, “fearless, dedicated community servants,” who “made history as the first Asian District Leaders to represent the 49th Assembly District.”