MCDC: Tectonic Shift or Power Grab?

NOTE: This article discusses how the Monroe County Democratic Committee membership changed between October 2019 and November 2020: who petitioned themselves back on, who dropped off, who was added after the 2020 organizational meeting, and so on. A comprehensive list may be found here.

 

As political junkies in Monroe County know, there has been unprecedented ferment in Democratic political power over the last year. The 2020 kerfuffle over the Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner, the racialized schism within the Democratic caucus of the Monroe County legislature, and the incident in which the new Monroe County Democratic Committee leadership called the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the previous leadership are just the latest examples. But less visibly, a great deal of drama also has been unfolding within the Monroe County Democratic Committee (MCDC), the lowest level of party position provided for in State Law.

A key function for members of MCDC is to vote in “designating caucuses” that determine which candidate will receive formal support from the Party, in the event of a primary election (an election between Democrats to determine their candidate for November). Candidates who receive the designation get a modest reputational and financial boost, but the main benefit of designation is to secure ballot access, since candidates who are not designated must organize successful petition signature drives in order to appear on the ballot.

Who Comprises the County Committee?

Despite spurious references to County Committee members as the Party’s “grassroots,” they are indisputably the political elite within the Party – the literal 1%. Per state law, each election district, containing a few hundred voters, can be represented by at most four (4) members of the Democratic Party. Currently, 1,881 members of MCDC represent 206,820 Democratic voters (0.9%). The County Committee is made up of Town Committees such as Pittsford and Brighton in the suburbs, as well as Legislative District (LD) Committees in the City of Rochester.

Typically, Democrats join the County Committee by appointment by the MCDC Executive Committee, which is composed of the officers (Chair/Secretary/Treasurer) plus the Leaders of the Town and LD Committees. Democrats interested in joining the County Committee usually do so by attending a few meetings of their Town/LD Committee and joining that Committee, then having their name brought to the Executive Committee by their Town/LD Leader. The newcomer is not an MCDC member until they have been added by the Executive Committee; in fact, as will be detailed later in this document, the Executive Committee can add MCDC members without bothering with the pretextual meetings.

But there is another, more democratic (little-d democratic) mechanism by which Democrats can become members of the Democratic Committee. In fact, after being appointed, incumbent members of the Committee are required to follow this process in order to remain on the Committee. As the lowest-level “party position” provided for in New York State Election Law, Committee members are considered candidates for public office and must gather petition signatures during the petitioning period (currently roughly late February through early March, in even-numbered years). Committee members then serve a two-year term, roughly from the fall of the year they petition on until two years hence. The number of petition signatures to gather is modest: only 3% of the Democrats registered in an election district must sign, in order for a Committee member to gain ballot access. 

Ballot access? The astute reader may wonder why Committee members need to be on the ballot. Remember that New York State Election Law only provides at most four (4) Committee members per election district. If more than four people petition themselves onto the Committee for a given election district, the final Committee membership is decided by primary election: the top four vote-getters on Primary Day in a given election district are seated as Committee members. If four or fewer would-be Committee members petition themselves on, as is customary in most jurisdictions across Monroe County, no primary is needed. As an aside, earlier this year, WXXI shed some light on this process when they ran a story on how George Moses, who had been indicted for fraud, had been petitioned onto the Committee. Perhaps in part because of that story, Mr. Moses was not one of the top four vote-getters, so was not seated when the Committee was re-constituted in August 2020.

Petitioning in 2020

A third of incumbent Committee members failed to petition themselves back on.

As putative candidates for public office, Committee members are responsible for petitioning themselves onto the ballot during the petitioning period specified in New York State Election Law. Petitioning must be done in time to secure ballot access for the primary election – now typically late February through early April. Exact dates are not known until the New York State Board of Elections publishes its election-year calendar.

In 2020, petitioning  was deeply affected by the COVID pandemic. The election calendar had called for petitioning to run from February 25 through early April, but Gov. Cuomo ended it about two weeks early (March 17) and also reduced the signature requirement by 70%. For Committee members, who only need signatures from 3% of the registered Democrats in an election district, that reduced the signature requirement to 0.9%. Despite this much more modest signature goal, fewer than 1,300 Committee members who were members in October 2019 petitioned themselves back onto the Committee in early 2020. The Town of Irondequoit, the epicenter of political power for Congressman Joe Morelle, County Executive Adam Bello, County Clerk Jamie Romeo, and others, was a standout in losing Committee members, dropping from 187 members to 72.

So, hundreds of incumbent Committee members neglected to petition themselves on, dropping their numbers from 1,785 to 1,278. But 1,627 members were seated in August 2020 and voted in the organizing meeting. Where did the hundreds of new Committee members come from? It turns out about 350 people who had not been Committee members in October 2019, petitioned themselves on. In the Town of Brighton, progressives (full disclosure – I organized some of the signature-gathering) had petitioned 18 new members onto the now-123 member Committee). But this phenomenon was replicated County-wide, with the 21st Legislative District and the Town of Henrietta leading the change. In LD21, which had 101 members in October 2019, 51 members – over half – were new as of August 2020. In Henrietta, the change was even more significant: In October 2019, the Committee was comprised of 90 members. In August 2020, only 57 had petitioned themselves on, but 130 members were seated! 73 Democrats who were not incumbent members of the Committee – well over half – were brand new members who had petitioned themselves on, and many of them were the winners of primary elections (in other words, even more people had petitioned themselves on, but only the winners of primary elections were seated).

What is going on in LD21 and Henrietta? A detailed analysis will have to wait for a subsequent article, but superficially, the best explanations have to do with wrangling over designations that occurred in 2019 and 2020 for the 21st Legislative District seat in the County Legislature and the 138th Assembly District, respectively. In 2019, County Legislator Rachel Barnhart won a primary election after losing the LD21 designation in a process that, according to news reports, participants said was unfair. For its part, Henrietta is included in the 138th Assembly District seat, where Harry Bronson was not the designated candidate even though he is a longtime incumbent.

This degree of turmoil and shift in power within the Party, with significant turnover of Committee membership and designations not being awarded to incumbents, would have been unheard of in years past.

New Leadership, New Committee

With Chair Brittaney Wells having decided not to run for a new term, the new Committee seated in August 2020 had an opportunity to choose new leadership. As it happens, a slate (“The New Democratic Monroe”) led by former Congressman Joe Morelle staffer Zach Palleschi-King ran uncontested, with him serving as Chair, Stephen DeVay as Vice Chair, Ebony Dukes as Secretary, and Beatriz LeBron as Treasurer.

One of Mr. King’s first acts as Chair was to pack the depleted ranks of the Monroe County Democratic Committee. He did not have much time. The principal prize that the Committee controls is the designation, and per the MCDC Rules, only Committee members seated 75 days before the County Designating Convention are eligible to vote in the designations. Given that the bylaws of most Town/LD Committees require prospective members to attend a few meetings before being brought to the Executive Committee, undue haste was required to seat Committee members in time to be eligible to vote in the designation.

The Executive Committee started slowly, adding three new members to MCDC on October 1. Two weeks later, they added a staggering 233 new members. Finally, on November 25, the final tranche of 56 new members was added. Notable additions to the Committee include the following:

• An astonishing 121 new members of the Irondequoit Democratic Committee, bringing their total membership from 71 to 191 (one member was dropped between August and November);
• Adam Bello, Monroe County Executive;
• Jamie Romeo, Monroe County Clerk and former MCDC Chair;
• J.W. Cook (who ran as a candidate for the 24th Legislative District in Monroe County, but recently withdrew);
• Zachary Palleschi-King, the newly-elected Chair of MCDC.
• Tom Flaherty, the Webster Town Supervisor who recently announced a party switch from Democrat to Republican.

Everyone listed should have known better than to fail to circulate petitions to remain on the Committee, but candidates running for County-wide office deserve special recognition for the combination of entitlement and hubris needed to gather thousands of signatures to run for County-wide office, yet not bother to secure the dozen or so signatures needed to remain on the Committee.

In total, 283 new Committee members were added between August and November, increasing Committee membership from 1,628 to 1,881. (If you are checking the arithmetic and scratching your head, note that a few dozen members were dropped between August and November, presumably because their voter registration had changed in a way that made them ineligible to continue to represent the election district that appeared on their designating petition. Comprehensive lists of all different types of members – incumbents who dropped and added back, those who were petitioned on and dropped, and so on – are given in Appendix A.)

The Executive Committee’s additions were not limited to correcting Committee members’ oversights in petitioning themselves back onto the Committee. Of the 406 incumbent members who failed to petition themselves on, only 156 members were added back. At least 120 were added who had not been members of the Committee in 2019. It is not clear how the Executive Committee decided who should be added, or which incumbent members should be re-added.

Tectonic Shift or Power Grab?

There is no question that the 2021-2022 edition of the Monroe County Democratic Committee has undergone significant turnover from its predecessor. The Committee started its new term with 1,628 members, of whom only 1,252 were incumbents. This newly-seated body was the one that elected Zach King as Chair of the Committee. The new Chair added 283 new members, but only about 150 of them previously had been incumbents. Some Town and LD Committees underwent a turnover of 50% or more. It is not an understatement to describe the changes in Committee membership as tectonic.

Why the haste in adding these new members? One explanation would be to enable the new members to vote in upcoming designations. Designation can be hotly contested, as evidenced by the designation contest between incumbent Assemblymember Harry Bronson with his eventual primary opponent, Alex Yudelson. When the Democrat and Chronicle covered the designation contest, they characterized Bronson as having “lost the backing of the local Democratic Party.” Bronson’s was just the latest of recent bitter designation contests, with the designation for the 21st County Legislative District being called unfair in 2019.

There are two caveats to the rush to add members in time for designation. First, the weights determined by State Election Law are computed based on the members petitioned on. By failing to petition on so many incumbent members, for example, the Irondequoit Democratic Committee locked in a low weighting for the duration. As a result, although new members’ votes can influence the weighted vote of their Executive Committee member at designation time, the weight of that Executive Committee vote does not change.

The second caveat concerns the benefit of winning the designation in the first place. After all, the loser of a designation can win the Party’s ballot line in the general election by successfully contesting a primary election. Recent election results suggest that winning the designation is no guarantee of a primary win: the designated candidate in the aforementioned LD21 County Legislature seat did not win in 2019, and in 2020 two designated candidates for Assembly were defeated by primary opponents in the 137th and 138th Assembly Districts.

The emphasis on winning designations may just be more evidence of Democratic Committee members’ elite (read: out-of-touch) status.

 

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