Members of the Brooklyn Democratic Party's reform bloc filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court Monday seeking an injunction to halt the current party leadership's scheme to rewrite its voting rules to hold on to power.
Reformers within the Brooklyn Dems had emerged from the primary election in June confident that, after years of effort, they had finally elected enough district leaders to seize control of the party and oust its current leadership team, headed up by chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. But last week, Bichotte Hermelyn unveiled a scheme to expand its leadership rolls. Reformers howled that this was a last-ditch effort by a rump leadership team to pack the party leadership with its own loyalists, negating the results of the election and thereby hanging on to power. A parade of Democratic elected officials condemned the ploy, but it wasn't clear what, if anything, opponents could do to stop the proposed rule change from being voted forward at a hastily called meeting scheduled for Tuesday.