More seats that probably won’t show up on your June ballot

What are Democratic Party District Leaders and County Committee Members?

How the Democratic Party works

There’s the Democratic National Committee, which organizes the Democratic National Convention every four years to nominate President and Vice President. Under that, there’s state and county committees and district leaders.* All of these groups discuss and vote on the governance, policy, and strategy of the Party in their respective regions.

The Democratic Party has national, state, and local levels of participation

County Committee

County committee members are unpaid volunteers that are elected by voters in the Democratic Primary. But they don’t appear on the ballot if they are running unopposed-- and they’re usually unopposed.

There are 2-4 county committee members per election district, depending on the county party rules and Democratic turnout. Election districts are small. Each county committee member represents just 1-3 blocks. So there are over 3,000 County Committee seats in Manhattan and over 5,000 in Brooklyn. But there’s lots of vacancies– right now Manhattan has about 1,000 vacancies. You can find your assembly district and election district here if you’re curious how many vacancies are around you.

Why do we care about these people? 

When there’s a special election, county committee members choose the Democratic nominee.** So like when an elected official dies, resigns, gets appointed to a better job, or gets ousted for being a liar (e.g. George Santos) there’s a special election for someone to fill out the rest of their term. And because Republicans don’t matter in NYC (see my post on that here), choosing the Democratic nominee means choosing the winner.

According to the Manhattan Young Democrats’ Open Seat Project, about 30% of current New York Assembly members were originally appointed by County Committees.

County committee members do other stuff too:

• Elect party leadership

• Help fill judicial vacancies

• Vote on matters brought to committee, including party rules

How do you run for county committee?

In order to run for county committee, you need to:

• Be a registered Democrat

• Live and be registered to vote in the Assembly District you're running in. You do not have to live in the specific election district you will be representing. 

• Gather signatures. Usually around 25 and 60 signatures from registered Democrats, depending on the size of the election district.

If you’re going the signature route, get support from your local Democratic Club, block association, or other resources like Brooklyn’s Rep Your Block project. 

Since there’s so many vacancies, you can also just get nominated by a district leader. In Manhattan, at the beginning of each county organizing meeting (which happens every two years to adopt the rules and elect the county party officers), the district leaders provide a list of the vacant election districts with names of people interested in filling the vacancies. The chair reads out the list and then moves that they all be deemed elected by voice vote. 

District Leaders

District leaders are also unpaid party officials that are elected by voters in the Democratic Primary.*** Again, they don’t appear on the ballot if they are running unopposed -- and they’re usually unopposed.

There’s a lot fewer of them than county committee members– Manhattan has 70 district leaders. Brooklyn has 42. 

• In Brooklyn, it’s really straightforward to find out who your district leaders are, because there’s two per Assembly District. So find your assembly district, then find your district leaders. 

• In Manhattan and Queens, district leaders serve “parts” of Assembly districts. It doesn’t seem like there’s a good map of these district parts online, so I think the best way to figure out which part you live in would be to ask your local democratic club or county democratic party. Here’s the full district leader lists for Manhattan and Queens.

What do District Leaders do?

• Elect the Chair of the Executive Committee, commonly known as the County Leader

• Nominate one of 10 commissioners to the Board of Elections to City Council for a vote

• Nominating candidates for judgeships in Civil and Supreme Court

• Identify and encourage candidates for other party positions, such as county committee

• Even though district leaders have no legislative authority or budget, they are often successful in advocating for both legislation and funding related to community needs by working closely with neighborhood elected officials.

From what I can tell, it seems like Brooklyn and Queens have much more interesting District Leader political drama than Manhattan. In 2020, a group called New Reformers challenged establishment district leaders in Queens and won many seats. Brooklyn Democratic Party’s leadership has come under fire for both failing to support their candidates and also outright working against them.

District leader campaigns are more involved than county committee ones. You need 500 signatures and can spend thousands of dollars on campaign activities if you’ve got a challenger and the race is competitive (usually in the $5-10K range). And that’s 500 valid, unique, and legible signatures, which in practice means closer to 1500 signatures. New Kings Democrats has a good how-to guide for running for District Leader.

So what?

So you’ve got more micro-representatives than you think.

And if you wanted one more idea for how to get involved in your neighborhood, consider county committee. Last week, I mentioned that you can join your community board. Joining your county committee is way less work than that, and fewer meetings about liquor licenses.😂

*Each county democratic party runs their process slightly differently than the next. For example, in Brooklyn, their State Committee members are ex officio district leaders, and they do not separately elect district leaders.

**This process is dependent on the county party rules. Also if the election district encompasses more than one county, then the candidate is chosen by county leaders from the multiple counties.

*** District leaders are a New York City thing. All 62 counties across the state have county committee members, but not all have district leaders.