What do campaigns for obscure party positions have to do with trespassing? Read on to find out!
On June 28, 2022, Brighton Town Councilmember Robin Wilt won the primary election for the female State Committee position in the 136th Assembly District. The State Committee is extremely influential in setting policy: currently comprised of only 455 members representing 11 million Democrats, the State Committee decides the Party platform, sets the Rules, and designates statewide candidates such as Governor and U.S. Senator. Downstate, State Committee members are known as District Leaders, and they exert a great deal of influence in the community.
The State Democratic Committee has two members (one male, one female1) per Assembly District; for Assembly Districts that intersect more than one County, there are two Committee members per County2. Some Assembly Districts have as many as a dozen State Committee members; AD136 only has two, since it is entirely encompassed within Monroe County. A complicated weighting system intended to approximate “one person, one vote” is used to ensure that State Committee members’ representation is proportional to the number of Democrats in the jurisdiction they represent, along with those Democrats’ involvement in the (little-d) democratic process. Turnout in the Gubernatorial election, for example, is a factor in the weighting system.
In Monroe County, it is not commonly known that party positions such as State Committee can be contested by primary election, and that was part of the reason Ms. Wilt ran in the first place. Too many important policymaking positions are decided by party bosses; there is no open recruitment or designation process for State Committee, or for most other party positions, for that matter.
It would be an understatement to say that the Democratic Party establishment in Monroe County did not want Ms. Wilt to win this election. At a social event, an influential County Committeemember in the City of Rochester told Ms. Wilt that her candidacy was “controversial,” and declined to elaborate. Dave Garretson, former MCDC Chair and a frequent Facebook commenter on Monroe County politics characterized her candidacy as “election weirdness” and wrote that “[State Committee is] largely an honorary office. Not much happens in State Committee.” He summarized the campaign as follows:
The designated candidate (and incumbent) is Patrina Freeman. She serves on Town Board in Irondequoit. The challenger is Robin Wilt, who serves on Town Board in Brighton. They are the only two women of color serving on town boards in Monroe County. Pitted against one another in a primary. Why? I don’t know. Robin?
In a subsequent comment, he wrote: “It’s still unclear to me why anybody would campaign for State Committee.” Mr. Garretson may wish to ask Ms. Freeman, who printed palm cards, was knocking on doors in the City of Rochester, and sent two (2) 6”x11” mailers (too big for postcard rates); or Brighton Town Supervisor Bill Moehle, who was canvassing and posted endorsements of Ms. Freeman to his personal Facebook page and three different Brighton-themed Facebook pages.
Contrasting Mr. Moehle’s involvement in this 2022 election with his behavior in last year’s 2021 election provides useful insight into how establishment Democrats are more effective at organizing against progressives than against Republicans. Last year, many Brighton officials, including Ms. Wilt, fellow Town Councilmember Christine Corrado, Town Clerk Dan Aman, and Supervisor Bill Moehle, were up for reelection; but as the only unopposed candidate, Mr. Moehle did little to help Ms. Wilt or her running mate, Ms. Corrado, even though they were in a contested primary election and a contested general election against Republican Patrick Reilly. Mr. Moehle entered 2021 in a strong financial position, with about $35,000 in the bank and, despite being unopposed, raised another $5,000 or so in a fundraiser; but his financial support for his colleagues in government appears to have been limited to a single $250 donation to Ms. Corrado.
Besides Mr. Moehle, other Democrats who endorsed Ms. Freeman include: Rep. Joe Morelle; County Executive Adam Bello; County Legislators Rachel Barnhart, Linda Hasman, Albert Blankley, Yversha Roman, Ricky Frazier, and William Burgess; and MCDC Chair Zach King. If we know anything about this election, we know that the Democratic Party establishment pulled out all the stops to oppose Ms. Wilt’s candidacy. It would seem to belie the claim in Garretson’s Facebook post that “Not much happens in State Committee.” If that were true, why work so hard to control its composition?
Mr. King, the MCDC Chair, deserves a dishonorable mention for his behavior running up to the primary election. On June 19, Ms. Wilt’s eldest son, an active duty servicemember currently posted at Fort Drum, was unable to vote at an early voting event; the Board of Elections had removed him from the voter rolls in May, saying that a postcard sent to him at the Wilts’ address in Brighton was returned[3]. MCDC has a process to support voters who were incorrectly removed from the rolls: volunteer attorneys assist the impacted voter in preparing paperwork at MCDC headquarters, then file a petition with an on-call judge who can order the Board of Elections to correct their records and allow the voter to cast a ballot in the election in question. This process is open to any voter; but since the impacted voter was Ms. Wilt’s son, MCDC Chair King told the Wilts that they were “trespassing” and that they would have to fill out the paperwork off site. During the heated conversation that ensued, Mr. King admitted that there is no designation process; since the 136th Assembly District seat is currently held by a Democrat, they allow that Democrat (Assemblymember Sarah Clark) to decide the Party’s candidate for State Committee. Furthermore, he made it clear that MCDC would allow any voter, including a Republican, to avail themselves of the re-enfranchisement process – but not the son of a candidate contesting a primary election.
Here is a picture of Zach King standing over the Wilts as they waited for the paperwork to be completed.
We do owe Mr. King a debt of thanks for giving us the perfect metaphor for what the Party thinks of Democrats who buck their system of patronage and corruption: they are trespassers.
Both the campaign literature for Ms. Freeman, and the Facebook posts by Brighton Town Supervisor Bill Moehle, echo the well-worn stratagems used by New York politicians to reify the status quo.
The literature reiterated spurious claims that Ms. Freeman was the “more experienced” candidate:
Ms. Freeman has about half the experience of Ms. Wilt at serving as a Town Councilmember, having served as an Irondequoit Town Councilmember since 2020. Furthermore, Ms. Freeman was appointed to the State Committee in February 2022, and may have attended one (1) meeting before the Party began circulating designating petitions. Having even the most inexperienced politicians run as incumbents (and using language like “keep,” “re-elect,” or “continue serving”) is, of course, another tool used by establishment politicians in New York to tilt the playing field.
Bill Moehle’s Facebook post read as follows:
A number of people have asked me about the Primary Election for NYS Democratic Committee on Tuesday. The State Committee is the governing body of the Democratic Party in New York. Irondequoit Town Board member Patrina Freeman is currently on the State Committee. I have worked with Patrina in the State Association of Towns and in local government. I have seen Patrina leading the way towards equity and inclusion in Irondequoit, and I support Patrina Freeman for Democratic State Committee, representing Democrats in Brighton, Irondequoit and part of Rochester. (emphasis added)
Mr. Moehle’s mention of Ms. Freeman’s work toward equity and inclusion in Irondequoit must be considered in the context of Ms. Wilt’s creation of the IDEA Board (Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Advisory Board) in Brighton, which she campaigned on in 2017 and spent her first term implementing. It is disingenuous, at best, to credit Ms. Freemann for work that is following in the footsteps of her opponent.
It is not known how much money was spent to support Ms. Freeman’s candidacy for State Committee; her PAC has only submitted the 32- and 11-day pre-primary reports, showing less than $1,000 raised or spent. There is no July periodic filing on record with the New York State Board of Elections. An educated guess, based on printing and mailing costs and the number of prime Democratic voters in the district, would estimate the cost of each of the two mailers at about $4,000 each.
When all was said and done, Ms. Wilt prevailed over the Democratic establishment’s no-holds-barred effort to prevent her from winning the State Committee seat. The whole exercise amounted to a stark illustration of how effectively Democrats organize against progressives, as compared to how well they fight Republicans.
What’s Next?
The State Committee will reorganize in late September, and only members who were petitioned on, or who won their primary elections, will be eligible to participate[4]. The reorganization process, which affects County Committees as well as the State Committee, will be described in a later blog post.
A future aspiration for progressive political organizers should be expand the number of primary contests for party positions. The same petition that was used to get Ms. Wilt on the ballot could have had many more names and addresses across the top: a male State Committee candidate; up to 13 Judicial Delegates; and up to 13 Alternate Judicial Delegates. Judicial Delegates select the Party’s nominee for State Supreme Court, in a process described in detail by the Brennan Center as having two levels of undemocratic process: the Judicial Delegates are selected by Party bosses without fanfare, almost never facing primary elections, and the judicial conventions where they nominate their candidate(s) rarely consider meaningful choices between candidates. Since Supreme Court judges serve 14-year terms, the stakes are high; it is imperative that we make the process of selecting these candidates more (little-d) democratic.
Footnotes
[1] The next edition of the Committee will provide for nonbinary members, and stipulate that the two State Committee members must have differing gender identities.
[2] Interestingly, it is the Rules of the Democratic Party, not New York State Election Law, that governs the jurisdiction represented by State Committee members and, hence, the number of State Committee members. The Working Families Party allocates State Committee members per Congressional District, not per Assembly District.
[3] Ms. Wilt’s eldest son has only ever been registered to vote at one address: the Wilt family home they have owned since July 2003.
[4] Interestingly, when the state/local primary (previously contested in September) was consolidated with the federal primary elections in June, the timing of the reorganization was left in the fall. The reorganization was required by state law to be within 15 days of the primary election for State Committee, and within 20 days of the primary election for County Committee. Essentially, the powers that be wanted the “lame duck” phase of the incumbent Committees to be several months long, rather than 2-3 weeks.