Dissent Magazine has a long an honorable tradition of intellectual discourse on the social democratic left, even if, during its heyday in the late 50s through early 70s, some of its most compelling voices, like Irving Howe, were often culturally a bit reactionary (see, for instance, Howe’s vitriolic critiques of Philip Roth).
Well, one can no longer make that complaint. Nick Juravich’s: “The Mechanics: Brooklyn’s New Kings Democrats and the Machine” shows Dissent is now at the cutting edge of the Brooklyn Hipster Cultural/Political Scene.
Let me be clear, as someone not unlikely to endorse the same candidates this year as New Kings Democrats (NKD), I feel compelled to say that Juravich’s rim-job of Lincoln Restler and company does have its heart in the right place, but often seems to have its head up its ass.
Let me count the ways:
1) Quoted by the author with approval: “A lot of folks on the left are very angry right now because they feel like the Democrats in Washington aren’t doing enough to fight for a more just and fair society. The truth is that folks in Brooklyn have felt that way about our elected officials for a long time.”
Although I am not one of the “things would be strawberries and cream if only we had someone strong like Hillary” crowd now growing more popular on the left, I must note that the guy we have in Washington is the one who was supported by most NKDers, an organization which grew out of the Obama campaign, while Vito Lopez supported Ms. Clinton.
2) “Ambitious progressive candidates before the NKD came around have broken with Lopez and still won, from City Councilwoman Diane Reyna to Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who is now angling for Towns’ seat in Congress. “
After running twice for the Assembly as an insurgent and losing, Jeffries finally won as Lopez’s candidate; he now appears to be Lopez’s choice against Ed Towns (one does not get fundraisers thrown by the Zali Satmar Hasidim without Vito’s sufferance). Admittedly though, Jeffries is probably preferable to Towns from a “progressive” perspective” in every aspect but one: independence for Vito Lopez.
As to Reyna, she began politics as an aide to Lopez and was elected to the Council as Lopez’s choice against candidates supported by both Towns (openly) and Clarence Norman (covertly). It is a nice narrative to claim that Lopez was playing Geppetto to Reyna, only to discover one day that she could walk and talk on her own, but in reality, Reyna’s break with Lopez came when Lopez discovered that it was Christine Quinn, rather than he, who was now playing the role on Jiminy Cricket. The entire Brooklyn delegation, including Charles Barron and NKD favorite Tish James, voted against Quinn’s choice for City Clerk because they wanted a Brooklynite for the post; Reyna stuck with Quinn, hardly a favorite of “progressives.”
Though Lopez was usually a reliable Quinn ally, nothing infuriated him more than the idea that Quinn could obtain Reyna’s vote directly, rather than through his good offices.
Which makes Reyna independent (at least independent of Lopez), but does not make her “progressive. “
3) “There was a time in American politics, however, when urban machines were expressly designed to get out the vote and build participation among the urban electorate (to what ends, of course, is another matter). No less an expert than former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley made the case for urban machines by saying, “The rich guys can get elected on their own money, but somebody like me, an ordinary person, needs the party to get elected. Without the party, only the rich could get elected to office.” Daley was politicking, of course, but he was also right: for all the Tweed clones they promoted, machines also helped well-respected politicians like Al Smith rise from the Fulton Fish Market to the governorship. The current Brooklyn machine has put forth several competent, well-liked, and successful candidates. Machines, at their best, cultivated participation and gave ambitious, gifted leaders the means and resources to represent the interests of their communities.
It is this aspirational vision of urban, Democratic politics that New Kings seeks to make its own.”
I’m sorry guys, but NKD, which primarily represents the young and upwardly mobile (except, when like Lincoln Restler, they are already rich and well-connected enough to raise $60,000 from their friends, and are therefore in no need of upward mobility), are “the rich.” Restler got about 93% among voters with trust funds.
The author himself earned his progressive bones by being a white Ivy League grad student running for County Committee in a black area he was helping to gentrify by his very presence.
Maybe “reform;” arguably “progressive;” but aspirational, my ass.
4) “With a broad reform-minded coalition that includes the Working Families Party (a “fusion” party that often co-endorses Democrats, and which had an extremely successful year, albeit one where they did not battle the machine, in 2009)”
This understates the matter of the WFP’s role in 2009 to an extent which is almost Orwellian. The WFP endorsed two Council candidates against NKD’s choices in NKD’s zone of primary influence: Lopez’s Chief of Staff, Steve Levin and Lopez’s handpicked co-District Leader Maritza Davila (against Reyna); after losing the Democratic Primary Davila then ran a full scale campaign on the WFP line.
Arguably “progressive,” but “reform,” my ass
5) “What is unusual, however, is the road they followed after this first meeting. Rather than find other things to do until 2012, or create or join an independent political club or party to level criticism at urban bossism from afar, as the good-government “goo-goos” once did, NKD picked up a copy of the Kings County Democratic Bylaws, the soporific tract that governs the machine that is the County Committee, and went to work”
This “unusual” road of trying to beat the machine from within the party rather than without has been the NYC norm since the Reform Democratic movement of the early 60s founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Lehman which made its bones helping to elect the likes of Ed Koch (against former Manhattan Boss Carmine DeSapio) and Meade Esposito as District Leaders over the entrenched party establishment. It was also the modus operandi of the antiwar rebels in the late 60s and early 70s.
Unless one counts Rudolph Giuliani as a “progressive reformer,” one cannot find an example of such a movement operating outside the Party since the late sixties.
6) “Most of their candidates won, but Cowherd, who lives in Lopez’s Assembly District, was defeated after Lopez, State Senator Martin Dilan, and City Council Member Erik Dilan (Martin’s son) circulated mailers supporting Cowherd’s opponent. Clearly, New Kings had hit a nerve.”
Hit a nerve? It would be hitting a nerve if you made the leopard rearrange its spots. Endorsing the candidates being run by their clubs and appearing in mail on their behalf is generally what elected officials do to reward their loyalists. It is what Nydia Velazquez, Diana Reyna and Tish James have done for Lincoln Restler and Jesus Gonzalez. In 1998, it was what “reformer” Joan Millman did for a bartender from the Waterfront Alehouse she’d never met who I’d recruited as a County Committee candidate, who then had the bad luck to be slated against Millman’s Assembly opponent in his home ED.
7) At the 2010 County Committee meeting, New Kings and their allies held a press conference on the steps of Borough Hall…They brought carefully worded proposals—a regular quarterly meeting schedule, the creation of committees for voter registration and education as called for in the bylaws—and roared their disapproval at every proxy-supported vote for Lopez…Perhaps even more telling, Lopez’s allies successfully introduced a measure to the County Committee to create eleven “at-large” District Leader positions (to be appointed by the president) in addition to the forty-two elected ones, to join the Executive Committee. This is a blow for democracy within the Democratic Party, but it’s also a sign that Lopez is concerned about NKD strategy and is taking steps to ensure that he retains power even if independent District Leaders like Restler begin to win elections across the borough.
About that rally: After it, NKD marched down the block to the meeting, accompanied by the bull-horn wielding Reverend Taharka Robinson, who wore a long black, judge-like robe, and was quoted as saying, "If Lopez can make all these other clowns judges, why not me?” For two successive years, Robinson had gotten arrested during demonstrations involving the Party’s moderately highly regarded Independent Judicial Screening Panel — once in protest of Lopez having a candidate in his home area bypass the panel, and once in protest of the panel doing its job. Before joining and leading the NKD march, Robinson had more than once run candidates for judicial office who themselves had bypassed the screening panel.
This year, Robinson made a last minute deal with Lopez, sent his candidate (who, for a change, does seem qualified) through the panel, and has finally gotten the answer to his “why not me” question—he too can make someone a judge, with Lopez’s help.
Be wary of like-minded allies, not that NKD didn’t have sufficient warning about Robinson.
Well, at least they’ve learned. They are not backing Taharka’s choice.
The Rules proposed by New Kings Democrats at Brooklyn’s Democratic County Committee Meeting fell under the category of well intentioned, but lame.
A slyer leader than Lopez would have finessed the whole thing by including all this stuff in his own rules changes and avoiding the confrontation that NKD was just aching to have. What real difference would those rules changes have made anyway?
But Lopez, being Lopez, thought being sly was a show of weakness.
At the prior County Committee Meeting, Lopez had gotten himself the right to appoint five personally handpicked At-Large members of the Executive Committee, but the NKD proposals did not include getting rid of those members. Nor did they include automatically ejecting from the Executive Committee those who openly endorse nominees of another party against a Democrat (perhaps they were afraid of offending sometime ally Charles Barron).
Now, those would have been real reforms.
While NKD was publicly crusading for their bland proposals, the County Leader upped the ante. Instead of five At-Large members, the Executive Committee would now have eleven, which would mean over one fifth of the votes on the body which elects the County Leader.
The House was proposing to load the dice, while NKD was busy arguing that the felt on the table be changed from green to blue.
While NKD was among the reasons for Lopez’s somewhat cowardly pre-caution, it was clear he was even more wary of others—not merely “reformers” like Chris Owens, Jo Anne Simon and Joanne Seminaria, but dissatisfied regulars like the Towns Family and Lew Fidler.
When the damn finally burst at the 2010 County Committee meeting, it was because some of the regulars could no longer hold their tongues. Lew Fidler gave a speech boiling with outrage, attacking the effort as un-democratic and un-Democratic. NKD cheered, but it was not NKD who introduced the most important of the amendments to Lopez’s proposed rules. Fidler, the hero of the day was not a “reformer;” he was an “Irregular.”
8) “It is a model for reform that, if NKD keeps up their winning ways, could have implications for urban politics across the nation.”
It is a model for reform that could have implications for urban politics across the nation, if and when all urban areas gentrify.
9) In addition, there are so many minor errors and omissions that to cite them all would require far more commitment than the effort is worth, but here’s a few:
Restler beat an opponent even younger than he was; Jesus Gonzalez is not running as an independent, but as the boss-selected candidate of the powerful and much investigated Working Families Party Machine (which was previously in bed with Lopez); state legislators serve two year terms, not four; many highly populated election Districts elect two male and two female County Committee members; Assembly Districts elect two District Leaders, one male and one female; the actual title of a “District Leader” in Brooklyn is “State Committee Member;” Vito Lopez’s title is not “Party President;” except in extremely unusual situations, County Committee members do not nominate candidates for the bench.
Actually, Juravich could probably have gotten most of those minor points right, if he’d only run them by Lincoln Restler, who could surely point out several more that I missed.
In a way, I suppose this doesn’t matter, for as any hipster can tell you, getting the notes and beat right matters more than getting the lyrics down correctly; but I subscribe to a different belief: politics is an endless series of menial tasks, and if one gets all the little things right you can always claim the manifest destiny of your grand themes later, and even go back and overdub your missing notes in the aftermath of victory.
But anyone who won by 120 votes, in the manner of Lincoln Restler, surely knows the importance of getting all the little details right.