Old met new last night as Kings County Democratic Party Boss Frank Seddio traveled from working-class Canarsie to gentrified Bushwick to face the wrath of the New Kings Democrats (NKD), the borough’s self-professed keepers of progressive politics within the party.
NKD President Brandon West led the question-and-answer session with Seddio before a packed room full of young and eager attendees at Mayday Space, 176 St. Nicholas Avenue.
The night’s questions seemed to focus on the controversial proxy voting system that governs the party.
The issue of how to handle proxy votes has been one of the most contentious for the party, drawing intense criticism from some “progressive” Dem clubs like (NKD) who want to reform the system. That’s because each assembly district has dozens of Democratic county committee member seats, many of which are vacant and some of whom hardly care, have time for or know about upcoming meetings and decisions made by county party leaders.
“So we feel that this isn’t an immediate change but a long-term effort that I think is important because it will eventually lead to how the politics of this one party city operates,” said West.
“Frank always says that he’s into ‘evolution not revolution,’ but we don’t think these reforms are revolutionary. These are basic accountability structures that any organization or non-profit or business you have stock in would do. And we are just not doing it here,” he added.
The issue came to a head at last year’s Kings County Party Committee Meeting, in which each side drew criticism over their approach for gaining proxy votes.
The party, under Seddio’s control, sent out mailers misrepresenting district leaders asking for county committee members proxy votes, which drew criticism among many. Meanwhile the NKD were accused of undercutting district leaders of color by going into largely black neighborhoods and trying to usurp their leadership to control proxies for their “progressive” agenda.
The night opened up with a question of the party’s commitment to follow rules and hold individuals accountable who break them.
“As a political organization we care about process and we care about the rules of the party. As members we feel that the rules of the party can be used as a tool to stop changes from happening, depending on how you interpret them, how you enact them. Can a party truly be accountable to its members, if it’s not held accountable to its own rules?” asked West
One attendee, Carey Tan, 33 from Prospect Heights, specifically cited Seddio’s connection to the mailers, questioning, “I wanted to know if you had any more remarks regarding the letter or series of letters, that supposedly went out on behalf of district leaders asking for proxy cards, that only had your name on it?”
Seddio responded he asked a group of people to set up a system to go get proxies and unfortunately they screwed it up. “They were supposed to call each of the district leaders and ask them if it was okay, they called a lot of the leaders. The ones they did get, they didn’t bother to follow up with and instead sent out my name and one of the, I think, other District Leader names.”
“The whole thing was a failure by the way. The whole thing maybe produced 20 proxies,” added Seddio,
Seddio acknowledged the lack of procedural accountability and promised to do better.
“When the rules are a hundred years old, like our’s are, a lot of people have not really read them and most people count on that one or two people who know the rules to tell you what they are. But it’s a matter of educating leaders. So I’m working on that to correct what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s just a nuisance. I apologize that that happened. I apologize to the leaders that were involved and didn’t give their permission,” said Seddio.
Morenike Lambert, 32, from Prospect-Lefferts-Garden, later followed up with a question regarding Seddio’s 2-for-1 office in Canarsie that functions as the party’s headquarters and his private practice.
“I have spoken to your office about the discrepancy on the proxies how it listed your office as the address for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, which I find problematic,” said Lambert.
Seddio fired back, “why?”
“Because that isn’t the headquarters of the party. That address is actually in downtown Brooklyn, that address is for your personal law practice. Can there be some sort of degree of separation” responded Lambert.
“That is not only my personal law practice. A lot of what happens in the county is run out of my office, which is for my convenience, so I don’t have to go to Downtown Brooklyn all the time,” remarked Seddio.
Lambert went on to question Seddio’s outreach to the county committee and district leaders, specifically commenting on the lack of active participation from members.
“Is there any sort of accounting of the people who are from county in your district who are active participants and not just there in name, because we do have an issue with people just being appointed,” said Lambert.
“Not in my district. Everyone is an active member. Not all of them get signatures, some of them are older, but they did in the past. We have a 2,000 member organization remember. I have no problem finding people to be on county committee, other districts do,” said Seddio.
Seddio said every district leader has the responsibility to be engaged in the community so that it is more representative of the people that live there. “It’s part of their agenda, in their own political district. When they go collect signatures to identify members. That job is really their local responsibility. Many do well and others don’t do well,” he said.
Another attendee, Andrew, a resident from Park Slope, questioned the party’s ability and commitment to improving engagement across party members
“I look around this room and I look around Brooklyn. We have a borough full of incredible talent, passion and engagement in the Democratic party. Which makes me wonder, what is your position and the executive committee’s position on reaching out to that talent to help the party with the problem it is clearly having right now?,” asked Andrew
“I like what your saying. And your right, it’s something we need to talk about. We need to reach out,” said Seddio.
The monthly meeting culminated in the unanimous passage of a series of reforms including a three-pronged approach to changing the proxy system:
- Rules guiding the use of proxies should limit how many each KCDC member can hold.
NKD is open to various methods of achieving this.
- Party leadership should notify members about any scheduled votes prior to a meeting,
so that proxy givers can provide voting instructions to their proxy holders.
- Party leadership should ensure that all proxy holders are notified of how many proxies
they have been designated at the outset of any County Committee meeting, and make
known to the entire Committee how many votes will be ‘in person’ vs. ‘by proxy
“I think it’s absolutely necessary for the Kings County Party and it’s a thing we usually talk about. How reforming the way politics is run, it has a long term impact because it affects policy. It affects leaders who get in positions of power and that in turn affects outcomes of people’s lives,” said West.
