XPost: alt.politics.elections, talk.politics.guns, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: drooler@gmail.com   
      
   A Democratic Brooklyn Assembly member is accusing his own county party’s   
   chairwoman of improper interference in judicial elections — invoking   
   former president Donald Trump’s war on the democratic process.   
      
   “Seems like we have our own Donald Trump in Brooklyn,” tweeted   
   Assemblymember Robert Carroll about fellow Assemblymember and Kings County   
   Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.   
      
   The broadside came after the city Board of Elections on Wednesday rejected   
   a challenge to a slate of judicial delegate candidates backed by the   
   county party.   
      
   The challenge asserted that the majority of signatures collected on   
   petitions for the candidates were invalid, citing suspicious handwriting,   
   signatures from residents who lived outside the district and other   
   deficiencies. The board rejected that challenge on a technicality, which   
   leaves the candidates on the primary ballot intact.   
      
   The county-backed slate is running against candidates supported by Carroll   
   in his 44th Assembly District — an act of aggression in the escalating   
   combat between party reformers aligned with Carroll and a controlling   
   establishment led by Bichotte Hermelyn.   
      
   Multiple Brooklyn residents in another district have told THE CITY that   
   their signatures were forged on challenges linked to party leadership   
   seeking to throw insurgent candidates off the ballot — with one more   
   stepping forward this week.   
      
   Typically, it falls to each Assembly member and local officials known as   
   district leaders to select a slate of local residents to run for seats as   
   judicial delegates and alternates to serve at the Brooklyn Democratic   
   Party’s nominating conventions for judges.   
      
   Those candidates for judge almost always run unopposed in November,   
   ensuring their election once nominated by the delegates.   
      
   This year, however, a slate of competing candidates for judicial delegate   
   seats appeared on petitions in the 44th District — which includes Park   
   Slope, Kensington and nearby neighborhoods. All named the Brooklyn   
   Democratic Party’s law chair as the contact person.   
      
   Carroll’s team filed challenges to the competing slate earlier this month   
   with the Board of Elections — viewing the move as a heavy-handed bid by   
   party leaders to rack up votes to ensure their picks for judges will sail   
   through at this summer’s convention.   
      
   This week, the Brooklyn Board of Elections office staff refused to   
   consider the signature challenge filings because of what they determined   
   were errors in how the pages were numbered. Bichotte Hermelyn appointed   
   the BOE’s Brooklyn Democratic commissioner, who serves alongside her   
   Republican counterpart and is one of 10 commissioners in all for the five   
   boroughs.   
      
      
   The full board’s approval Wednesday of the Brooklyn office’s decision   
   didn’t sit well with Carroll.   
      
   “So I guess this now means in Bichotte’s BOE, she can challenge anyone and   
   no one can challenge her,” he tweeted. “She is breaking the Democratic   
   Party. Rules should be followed but she clearly doesn’t care.”   
      
   Asked to explain his basis for tying the board’s vote to Bichotte   
   Hermelyn, Carroll said he felt the board’s ruling had been so egregious   
   that he was convinced it had been politically driven.   
      
   “I can only make one assumption — that somebody politically influenced   
   those folks,” he told THE CITY.   
      
   ‘Xenophobic Effort’   
   Bichotte Hermelyn replied Wednesday night, also on Twitter — calling the   
   Carroll-affiliated petition challenge an “attempt to throw a slate of   
   people of color & first-time women candidates - off the ballot.”   
      
   She accused the Assembly member of “participating in what looks like a   
   xenophobic effort to stop Pakistanis from representing Little Pakistan.   
   #Hypocrisy…. On #Ramadan to boot?”   
      
      
   Some of those candidates issued a statement under the banner of a new   
   Twitter account called “Muslim Slate,” which appeared online on Wednesday   
   and used talking points similar to Bichotte Hermelyn’s.   
      
   “We are all Democrats who believe in the American Dream and everything it   
   promises,” the account said in a statement posted online. “Sadly, during   
   the holiest month of Ramadan, a group is trying to knock off our Muslim   
   slate off the ballot.”   
      
   THE CITY asked the “Muslim Slate” group for comment on who posts to the   
   account, which has three followers and has issued two tweets to date, but   
   received no reply. THE CITY also attempted to reach four of the candidates   
   listed in the slate but got no responses.   
      
   Spokespeople for Bichotte Hermelyn and the Brooklyn Democratic Party   
   didn’t respond to a request for comment, and a voice message left with   
   Bichotte Hermelyn late Wednesday yielded no response.   
      
   Signature Forgeries   
   The back and forth highlights the deepening power struggle between   
   controlling leaders of the Brooklyn Democratic party and a coalition of   
   dissident Democratic factions vying to gain influence in June’s primary.   
      
   In recent weeks, groups such as Rep Your Block and the New Kings Democrats   
   have accused the party leadership of playing a role in submitting forged   
   signatures to the Board of Elections in an attempt to kick some of their   
   candidates for low-level county committee positions off the ballot.   
      
   On Monday, the New York Daily News reported that the county party had   
   added two mid-level officials to its ballot roster — on top of the current   
   42 district leaders — by taking advantage of a redrawn Assembly district   
   spanning from Staten Island to Manhattan whose waterfront Brooklyn segment   
   includes a houseboat in Red Hook with four registered Democratic voters.   
      
   It was Carroll’s father, John Carroll, an attorney, who made an appearance   
   at the Board of Elections Wednesday seeking to knock the county party-   
   affiliated slate off the ballot. The challenges he filed were among a   
   group that were rejected outright, without a review on the merits, at the   
   beginning of the board’s hearing on Brooklyn matters.   
      
   Two Brooklyn BOE officials testified that the filings submitted by John   
   Carroll violated a board rule about how those documents should be   
   numbered, because they confusingly contained two sets of numbers at the   
   bottom of each page.   
      
   During the hearing, a BOE staffer in Manhattan said she similarly found   
   the pagination of John Carroll’s filings confusing.   
      
   But John Carroll argued that each page was clearly and sequentially marked   
   with a number appearing on the bottom-left. He said numbers placed near   
   the bottom-right of each page were informing board officials of the page   
   number of the ballot petition volume that was being challenged.   
      
   “I don’t see how there’s any possibility that it doesn’t comply with the   
   rules, and I frankly don’t see how there’s any possibility that there’s   
   confusion,” John Carroll told the commissioners. “I’m sort of aghast.”   
      
   Still, his weren’t the only challenges nixed based on the board’s strict   
   adherence to its own rules.   
      
      
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