Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn is leaving the post after six years, with control now open after a last-minute rule change and a reform wing’s primary gains.
New York Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn said Monday evening she will not seek another term leading the Brooklyn Democratic Party, ending a six-year run marked by internal conflict and a failed bid to lock in her hold on the organization.
She made the announcement on NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” framing the exit as a proud handoff. The decision comes after reformers won enough district leader seats in the June primary to threaten her grip, and after she pushed through an expansion of the executive committee that drew fire from the mayor, the state’s top Democrat in the Senate, and other party leaders.
The Post reported that her departure leaves the Brooklyn chairmanship up for grabs after years of machine-style control and a bitter fight over who gets to pick the next leader.
Bichotte Hermelyn, who represents central Brooklyn in the Assembly, cast the move as the start of a new chapter rather than a retreat.
She told NY1:
“I’m now up to my next chapter in life, and I’ve served as the Brooklyn Democratic Party chair for over six years. And I’m very proud of what we’ve done. We’ve built a very strong organization,”
And she added:
“So, I’m just really excited that I am leaving the party in that capacity, a stronger, more inclusive, more transparent party and I’m just really excited,”
That message landed against a different record. About a month before the announcement, she pushed a last-minute rule change that raised the number of voting members on the executive committee from 42 to 68. Those members help choose the next party chair. The changes won the support needed and were adopted.
She described the expansion as a way to make the committee “more inclusive to have every day Brooklynites participate.” Opponents called it an attempt to dilute the reformers who had just won at the ballot box.
In the June Democratic primary in Brooklyn, the reform-oriented New Kings Democrats captured 22 district leader seats, a swath large enough to oust Bichotte Hermelyn if she had stayed and fought.
That result set up a direct clash. New Kings Democrats sued over the attempt to rewrite the party rulebook and asked a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge to halt the move. The change still passed.
Democrats at multiple levels slammed the timing. State Party Chair Jay Jacobs and New York Attorney General Letitia James were among those who hit the eleventh-hour revise. So did Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Schumer said:
“Given the clear results of the June Democratic primary in Brooklyn, the party should not change the rules in the middle of the game,”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the same line on Aug. 24, before the rule change was locked in.
Mamdani said:
“I very much oppose these proposed changes, by the current Brooklyn Democratic Party chair,”
And:
“I oppose them because they are an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters.”
Party leaders who preach democracy when it suits them suddenly objected when a local chair tried to revise the map after voters had already spoken. The sequence is plain: reformers win seats, the incumbent expands the committee that picks the next boss, then walks away once the fight turns costly.
The chair fight sits on top of a longer pattern. A Post probe found that Bichotte Hermelyn, her predecessor Frank Seddio, and allies collected $190,000 in campaign contributions and payments from more than 90 judges and judicial candidates since 2012, the year Seddio took control of the local committee.
Critics have described that flow of money as a pay-to-play pressure system on people who need party backing to move up on the bench. The reporting ties the totals to events and tickets connected to the organization.
Ben Weinberg, public policy director at the government watchdog group Citizens Union, put the institutional cost in direct terms:
“The public’s confidence in the courts is undermined when judges appear dependent on party organizations for political support, endorsements, or advancement,”
When judges look like they need a party machine for advancement, voters are right to wonder whose interests the courthouse serves. Brooklyn’s Democratic organization spent years at the center of that suspicion.
Bichotte Hermelyn’s choice not to run again ends one chapter of leadership. It does not erase the incentives that produced the rule fight, the lawsuit, or the judicial money trail.
New Kings Democrats forced the issue at the ballot box and in court. Countywide figures from Schumer to Mamdani to James lined up against the midstream revise. The chair still got the expansion through, then stepped aside and claimed a stronger, more transparent party on the way out.
The next fight is over who inherits the gavel and whether the enlarged executive committee becomes a tool for genuine openness or another layer of insider math. Brooklyn taxpayers and court users live with the results either way.
Democratic machines talk reform when they lose primaries and revise the rulebook when they still hold the gavel, and Brooklyn just watched both moves in one season.
