Bronx Democratic County Committee Meeting & Judicial Convention

Miguel Santana & Efraim Cruz Leaders
 of Bronx For Change at Training Session

The grassroots political organization; Bronx For Change is reminding residents of the up comming Bronx Democratic Learseship selection meeting and Judicial Delegate Convention.

The set of legally mandated biennial meetings, usually get little attention from constituents and is traditionally only attended by the most dye hard party loyalist. However following the rancorous meeting two years ago, ordinary grassroots and community activist have been paying more attention to it.

Since Bronx County is overwhelmingly a Democratic Borough the selection of the Bronx Party Leadership and particularly that of the County Leader plays a much larger role than other boroughs. Sadly under the new leadership of Assemblyman Carl Heastie Democratic voter participation has dropped dramatically under 45% percent.

In November 2009 Assemblyman Heastie's  first full year as Chairman only 145,279 Democratic voters cast ballots for the general election, as opposed to  381,322 in the November 2008 election,  Assemblyman Jose Rivera's last year as county leader.

Miguel Santana an organizing leader of BRONX FOR CHANGE calls on Bronx Democrats to "empower yourself: The convention is your opportunity to see Democracy in action."

Bronx Democratic Party County Committee Meeting

Wednesday 9/22/10 at 6:30 PM

Eastwood Manor, 3371 Eastchester Rd., Bronx, NY

Judicial Convention

Thursday 9/23/10 at 6:30 PM

Villa Barone Manor, 737 Throggs Neck Expx Way, at Phillip Avenue

DEMOCRATIC COUNTY COMMITTEE

By law, a meeting of the Bronx County Democratic Committee must take place within 20 days of the primary.

The County Committee has 2500 members, who come from every election district in the borough. Each election district gets 2 to 4 committee members, depending on the total Democratic vote in each district, during the previous gubernatorial election. At the same time that candidate's petition for for Assembly and district leader, they petition for County Committee slates.

At the County Committee meeting, the members elect 4 officers – the chairman of the County Committee (which is a different position than county leader), as well as the secretary and the treasurer.

Those officers, along with the 22 district leaders (generally there is a male and a female district leader elected from each assembly district) form the executive committee.

The Executive committee then elects three other persons, who become members and in fact leaders of the Executive Committee– The Counsel, The Parliamentarian, and the Chairman the latter is also know as the County Leader.

JUDICIAL CONVENTION

Every assembly district is allotted a certain number of delegates – anywhere from five to eight people – based on the party turnout from the previous gubernatorial election.

Delegates run on the slate with the district leaders, who are party officials, and they go to the convention.

The judicial delegates, either by voice vote or hand vote, determine who wins the nomination for Supreme Court justice.

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Castro Defeated the Bronx Political "Machine" and Calls for Unity

At appx 1AM this morning in a room overflowing with energized community activist and democratic partisans of his West Bronx District, Assemblyman Nelson Castro claimed victory in yesterday's Democratic primary and called for unity amongst Bronx Democrats.

Celebrating the fact that his victory was the result of a grassroots effort he said to the crowd gathered before him; "this is your victory, today you demonstrated to the so called political machine that the power of the people can not be overturned by outside influence, political tricks, intimidation, slander and innuendo." 

This elections stands out because the Bronx County Democratic Organization had target Assemblyman Castro for defeat. They marshaled all of their forces and employed all strategies (many of which were to lowest ever seen in Bronx politics) against Castro with little effect.

Striking a tone of mature leadership Castro quickly called for Democratic Unity and invited his opponent, the Democratic County Leader Carl Heastie, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, and all other elected officials in the Bronx to a victory/unity rally.

"This fight within our democratic family is over! and it is our responsibility as the winners in this contest to invite back, our dissident democratic brothers and sisters including the county leader the borough president (Assemblyman Heastie & President Ruben Diaz Jr.) and all democratic leaders and activist who felt compelled to remain at the periphery of this contest." said Castro last night. 

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