Brooklyn votes today. In the southern half of the borough, the candidates spent the final stretch doing what candidates do: knocking on doors, working subway entrances and making calls. In the northern half, the Brooklyn Democratic Party is still fighting over who leads it.
City & State’s Sahalie Donaldson laid out the stakes in a detailed account on Monday, Oct. 26. Democrats are trying to flip four state legislative seats in southern Brooklyn, the part of the borough below Green-Wood Cemetery. Over the past several cycles, Orthodox Jewish, Chinese American and post-Soviet immigrant voters there have moved toward the Republican Party. Party leaders who could be organizing for those four races are instead busy with lawyers.
The four races
According to City & State’s list of legislative races to watch, the matchups are:
- Assembly District 46 (Bay Ridge to Coney Island): Democrat Chris McCreight, a former chief of staff to Council Member Justin Brannan, is challenging Republican Assembly Member Alec Brook-Krasny for the second time. Brook-Krasny is a former Democrat who switched parties after losing a 2021 Democratic primary.
- Assembly District 45 (Midwood and Gravesend to Manhattan Beach): Joey Cohen-Saban faces Republican Assembly Member Michael Novakhov in a rematch. Novakhov beat him in 2024 by 212 votes.
- Assembly District 49 (Sunset Park to Bensonhurst): Joyce Xiaoqiong Xie, a former budget director and community liaison for Council Member Susan Zhuang, is challenging Republican Assembly Member Lester Chang. Chang is a Navy veteran who flipped the seat in 2022.
- State Senate District 17: Larry He, chief of staff to Assembly Member William Colton, is challenging Republican Sen. Steve Chan. Chan won an upset over Democrat Iwen Chu in 2024. City & State reports the seat is one of about half a dozen that Senate Democrats are prioritizing as they try to win back a veto-proof supermajority.
None of the Republican incumbents is a pushover. Chang took his seat from a Democratic incumbent, Peter Abbate Jr., and Chan’s 2024 win was an upset. City & State notes that in these districts the candidates of both parties hold similar positions on the local issues that decide races: public safety, transportation, shelter placement and quality of life. Democratic strategist Trip Yang put it bluntly to City & State: “It is generally not to a candidate’s benefit in southern Brooklyn to lean into hyperpartisan(ship).”
The fight at the top
The party’s dispute has been running all year, and it is complicated. Outgoing Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and her chosen successor, Assembly Member Nikki Lucas, are on one side. On the other is a coalition of reform-minded district leaders called Brooklyn Can’t Wait, which says it won a majority of executive committee seats in the June primary. The reformers back Julio Peña III for chair.
At an August vote and again at a heated September meeting, party leaders passed rules that enlarged the executive committee. Reformers say the rules were written to keep Bichotte Hermelyn’s allies in control, and they sued. On October 4, despite a temporary restraining order, the party’s leadership held a meeting that elected Lucas chair. City & State reported at the time that the meeting appeared to violate the court order. Lucas has separately been sued over campaign debts, City & State reported.
The court fight continues. Reformers’ lawyers served Bichotte Hermelyn with contempt papers in October. Justice Peter Sweeney has since allowed Bichotte Hermelyn, Lucas and others to intervene in the case, but he has declined to vacate the restraining order. As of Monday, Oct. 26, the legal newsletter CityLand reported no contempt ruling.
Whose side are the candidates on?
The four challengers are themselves district leaders, which makes them members of the executive committee at the center of the fight. They have not lined up together. City & State reports that Xie, Cohen-Saban and He voted by proxy for Lucas at the October 4 meeting. McCreight, a member of the reform coalition, did not attend.
That has left both factions blaming each other. On October 20, the party’s official email account, which Bichotte Hermelyn’s allies still control, accused the reformers of “helping their Republican opponents” by bringing the three proxy voters into the litigation. “You are literally hurting Joey, Larry He and Joyce because Republicans are looking at us fighting internally and making fun of us,” Bichotte Hermelyn told City & State.
Mark Hanna, a district leader and lawyer for the reformers, said he warned party members that attending the meeting would violate the judge’s order. He added that the candidates do not need to appear in court; they are named only so they are covered by any judgment about their votes. Tony Melone, president of the New Kings Democrats, said the county party has done little for competitive races “in years.” Bichotte Hermelyn said Lucas has been supplying volunteers, phone banking and fundraising help, though City & State noted she could not provide evidence when asked.
The candidates’ own accounts are more useful than either faction’s. Cohen-Saban said “there’s not been one day where the office hasn’t been filled with volunteers,” and credited Lucas and Bichotte Hermelyn. McCreight was more careful: he said he is getting “the same support that we usually get in southern Brooklyn,” mostly from people in the reform coalition. Peña, meanwhile, has been canvassing for McCreight and for Mike DeCillis, the Democrat challenging Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.
The cavalry never came
Southern Brooklyn’s working Democrats keep making the same point: the county organization has never been the reason anyone wins or loses there.
“We’ve never relied on county for anything because the cavalry never came,” said Brannan, who represented Bay Ridge in the Council for eight years and is a critic of Bichotte Hermelyn. Zhuang has sometimes allied with Bichotte Hermelyn, but she said much the same. Voters in her district, she said, “care about how much they pay for their gas, how much they pay for their utilities, how much they pay for their food and the rent. They don’t care who is in the county.”
That may be the most important thing to understand about these four races. The infighting gives Republicans an easy line of attack; one anonymous Democratic district leader told City & State that a Novakhov mailer featuring Bichotte Hermelyn and “Kings County corruption” would practically write itself. But the incumbents are local figures with local records, and the challengers will be judged the same way.
The party’s quarrel matters for other reasons. It decides who controls ballot access, judicial nominations and a large urban political organization. On Tuesday, though, voters in Bensonhurst and Gravesend will be judging the candidates on their own doorsteps, not on how a judge reads a set of bylaws.
This story is based on public reporting by City & State and CityLand and on public court and party statements.
Featured image: Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn at the MTA unveiling of a new entrance at the Church Av subway station. Photo by Metropolitan Transportation Authority via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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