The founders of the Brooklyn-based grassroots political organization, the New Kings Democrats, were Rachel Lawler and Matt Cowherd. Following the 2008 election campaign, which saw Barack Obama become the U.S. President, those who made the victory possible felt it was time to get involved in community-level governance. The couple approached Vito J. Lopez, then the chairman of the Kings County Democratic Committee. After some brief negotiations, Mr. Lopez invited them to chat at his political club in Bushwick. Read more details about the creation of this grassroots political party in Brooklyn at brooklyn-yes.com.
The Idea to Form a Party
For Lawler and Cowherd, the meeting felt like something out of a gangster movie. The room was dim and dingy, surrounded by burly men. Lopez told them not to run for the District Committee. Instead, he invited Rachel and Matt to help hand out turkeys for Thanksgiving. The Democratic Committee Chairman then vaguely threatened them, mentioning that he knew the loft they lived in in Bushwick was not up to code. The conversation left the couple in shock.
Following that encounter, Lawler and Cowherd took a closer look at how the Brooklyn Democratic Party was run. The Kings County Democratic Committee is one of the five committees in the city—one for each borough of New York. These committees represent the Democratic Party at the local level, selecting local judicial candidates and nominees for special elections.
The Brooklyn District Committee is supposed to organize voters and recruit people to represent their districts. If all seats on the Kings County Committee were filled, it would consist of approximately 3,000 members, led by a 42-member executive committee. These executive members elected the County Leader, or, as the position is known in Brooklyn, the “Party Boss.” Mr. Lopez was that boss in 2008.
What his actual duties were was unclear to the public. He simply had some unknown people on the ballot for party offices under his leadership. They were party loyalists or activists that the average voter knew nothing about. Most people don’t know who their Assembly Member is, let alone who their District Representative is. Yet, the head of the District Committee wields enormous power; they can independently choose candidates and prevent people from participating in primaries.
Starting with Necessary Reforms
Lawler and Cowherd realized that at least half of the 3,000 positions on the Kings County Democratic Committee were unfilled, and those that were filled were often held by people who didn’t even know they were on the committee. Some of them, incredibly, were deceased.
They decided to organize around the County Committee, educate people on how to get on the ballot, reform it, make it more inclusive, and bring a new group of citizens into the work.
Seven years later, members of the New Kings Democrats, including Lawler, found their way into the Mayor’s office and other official government posts. Meanwhile, others were actively participating in the September 12th Democratic primary, supporting candidates like Council Members Carlos Menchaca and Antonio Reynoso.
But the organization’s core mission remains unchanged: to reform the Democratic Party in Brooklyn.
About 75 people showed up for the first New Kings gathering in 2008. The turnout surprised them and gave the group momentum. Lawler compared their approach to how the Tea Party started small and local, capturing school boards and local Republican parties, before moving on to clean the “Augean stables” from the bottom up.
First Victories
One of the newly formed party’s first victories was the election of Lincoln Restler as a District Leader. He ran on a platform that challenged Mr. Lopez, was a New Kings member at the time, and later worked as a Senior Advisor to the Mayor. Battling Mr. Lopez was complicated because not everything he did was bad; there were, of course, good things too, especially his support for senior citizens and affordable housing. New Yorkers later learned that Mr. Lopez, who died in 2015, had been accused of sexual harassment and abuse of female staffers, leading to an ethics investigation.
Lawler, who worked in Mayor de Blasio’s administration, could no longer be part of the New Kings leadership, but she tried to attend meetings and continued to follow the organization’s achievements. The party has changed somewhat since then, but its main appeal—its focus on reform—has remained constant. Mr. Lopez’s successor as the Democratic County Leader, Frank Seddio, implemented significant changes to the organization’s structure when scandals forced Lopez’s resignation, allowing for increased participation from Brooklyn citizens. However, these positive innovations would hardly have been possible without the involvement of the New Kings. Notably, many consider Frank Seddio to have informally held that position for quite some time before officially taking the role.
Nevertheless, the New Kings Democrats was and remains a progressive grassroots political organization striving to ensure transparency, accountability, and inclusive democracy within the Kings County Democratic Party.