NEW ROCHELLE, NY (February 22, 2023) — In a response to a public statement by Westchester County Legislator Damon Maher, the leadership of the New Rochelle Democratic Committee has posted a statement on the New Rochelle Democrats Facebook Page and circulated the statement on the New Rochelle Dems Google Group.
The public statement was posted in the name of Rhiannon Navin and Dale Barbaria, Co-Chairs of the Democratic City Committee of New Rochelle and Suzanne Berger, Chair of the Westchester County Democratic Committee.
The statement is primarily a technical explanation of what transpired in the 36-hour period leading up to the New Rochelle Democratic Committee convention on February 16, 2023.
Not posted to Facebook nor circulated on the New Rochelle Dems Google Group listserv are replies to the statement from Damon Maher, Gene Tozzi and Tim Idoni, each seen by Talk of the Sound and referenced below.
The public statement says, “no committee member, candidate or elected official had a role in determining how the EDs would be reconfigured by the BOE or in calculating or assigning the weighted votes.”
This statement is fundamentally misleading as it does not address who assigned District Leaders and how that was done. The too-clever-by-half wording has all the classic earmarks of a Bramson disinformation operation.
It is not binary: the new weighted vote totals can come from the Board of Elections, but who controls those new weighted vote totals comes from the local Committee, and the Committee’s elaborate technical explanation does not address this determinative point.
Jovan Richards, based on the Idoni and Maher emails, appears to be their Exhibit A on this point. Richards is a Ramos-Herbert supporter, who, according to Idoni, did not carry petitions in the past but “landed in a newly formed district under the new system”. Richards represents ED29 (near Isaac E. Young Middle School); under the new system, he was allocated 460.5 votes. That amount is more than 4 times the 99.5 votes assigned to Maher, an elected official with a long track record within the party of carrying petitions; and over 100 votes more than the combined total of 355 votes covering four Election Districts represented by Jean Anderson, Patricia Carter, former Council Member Bee Brown, and former Mayor and County Clerk Tim Idoni — each of whom has carried petitions in New Rochelle for decades. Idoni wants District Leaders who do not carry petitions like Richards stripped of their positions.
It is not simply that the Westchester County Board of Elections redistributed new weighted vote totals for 34 of 76 Election Districts — some were split up, some were eliminated, others relocated — but how who gained or lost positions as District Leaders was determined and who ended up controlling the new, often significantly increased weighted vote totals. While that process is opaque, the outcome is not; of those new District Leaders with newly enlarged weighted vote totals, none were Maher supporters at the convention.
The New Rochelle Dems internal statement concludes by attributing this publication’s characterization of the Maher statement that the convention vote was “rigged” to Maher himself. In what could be seen as a shot at former Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton or former Georgia Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams, the party leadership wrote:
Falsely attacking a process as rigged, instead of graciously accepting defeat, is a tactic straight out of the election denial playbook and has no place in New Rochelle or in the Democratic Party.
The Talk of the Sound article referenced by the co-chairs of the New Rochelle Democratic Committee does contain the word “rigged” but was not contained within Maher’s statement, was not in quotes, was not attributed to Maher, was not placed near the Maher statement published in block quote — and the actual phrase was “amounted to a rigged election” where amounted reflects the characterization by this publication not Maher.
Maher addressed this point in his response to the public statement.
I didn’t attack the process as “rigged.” I just laid out the facts and called the process “deeply flawed,” which is, in essence, what Gene Tozzi and Tim Idoni says in their emails today. You drew an inference that I was accusing you of misconduct, possibly confusing my statement with the commentary of an independent journalist who reviewed the facts and came to whatever conclusion he came to. In any event, I am sure that you understand, as a general matter, that a rush to push a matter forward without full transparency is the seedbed of conspiracy theories.
The technical explanation from the leadership of the New Rochelle Democratic Committee follows:
The Westchester County Board of Elections (BOE) recently redrew New Rochelle’s Election Districts (EDs) to conform with the new City Council and County Legislative district lines. These changes were necessary to administer this year’s elections, and they will affect every aspect of the political process, from assignment of polling places to political party organizing. The majority of New Rochelle’s EDs (42 out of 76) remained unchanged. Sixteen EDs, which had been split due to City and County redistricting, were assigned to the appropriate legislative districts. Several other EDs were either eliminated or relocated to a different part of the City for the purposes of improving election administration.
Political parties throughout New York State are required to use Election Districts as the basic component of their committee structure. Each ED is assigned a weighted vote, usually based on the number of votes on the Democratic line in the previous gubernatorial election. In years following redistricting, the BOE recalculates weighted votes for any ED that has its boundaries adjusted. These new weighted votes (until the next gubernatorial or State Assembly election) are based on the number of enrolled Democratic registered voters in the ED. This procedure is regulated under NYS Election Law § 2-104, which is posted online here: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ELN/2-104.
The BOE sent information regarding this year’s reconfigured EDs on the afternoon of February 15th. Because voters can now update voter registration to change party enrollment through February 14th (instead of a cut-off in the Fall, as was done historically) the updated weighted votes could not be calculated by the BOE until this time.
Upon receipt of this information, the New Rochelle Democratic Committee leadership was tasked with confirming the ED assignments of committee members, updating the assignments of committee members who had represented eliminated or relocated EDs, and sharing the final committee member list with the Democratic county committee and members of the New Rochelle Democratic Committee. This task was completed in under three hours from the moment the information was received from the BOE.
In accordance with the Election Law, committee members representing reconfigured EDs received new weighted votes from the BOE. No committee member, candidate or elected official had a role in determining how the EDs would be reconfigured by the BOE or in calculating or assigning the weighted votes.
It is important to note that this process is not unique to New Rochelle, but is occurring in towns and cities in Westchester County and throughout New York State, where there has been local redistricting since November 2022.
At the New Rochelle committee endorsement convention on February 16th, 2023, one of the candidates for mayor expressed concern regarding the calculation of weighted votes and asked the committee not to proceed with endorsing a mayoral candidate. The candidate was given a full and fair opportunity to present these concerns to the New Rochelle Democratic Committee. After hearing these arguments, the overwhelming majority of committee members voted to proceed with the endorsement. City Councilwoman Yadira Ramos-Herbert won the committee’s endorsement for mayor. It is evident based on public expressions of support and proxies that the limited change in weighted vote had no material impact on the outcome.
Falsely attacking a process as rigged, instead of graciously accepting defeat, is a tactic straight out of the election denial playbook and has no place in New Rochelle or in the Democratic Party.
Westchester County Clerk Tim Idoni, a New Rochelle Democratic Party District Leader, responded to the statement to explain why he agreed with Maher in supporting a one-week delay of the convention.
Idoni qualified his remarks by saying he did not believe any conspiracy was in play to “fix” the convention, and the results accurately reflected the will of the committee.
He said he believed a one-week cooling-off period to deciminate (sic) how this flawed system came about would have gone a long way (sic) insuring peace within the committee while the results would have probably been the same.
Idoni wants a rules change at the local party level to strip position leaders of their post if they fail to carry petitions and a change in the law at the State level to preclude delivery of weighted votes changes twenty-four hours prior to a convention.
Idoni noted that because the New Rochelle Democratic Committee did not receive weighted vote information from the Westchester County Board of Elections until about noon on February 15, no one had the ability to confirm the numbers were correct as assigned.
“As we witnessed in the 3rd Council District vote,” said Idoni, “one District Leader’s changed vote in the second round determined the outcome of that District’s vote.”
“I believe fairness should always be the basis for all our votes. The earning of a District leader post by carrying petitions was basically turned on its head by the State. For example, district leaders Bee Brown, Jean Anderson, Patricia Carter and Tim Idoni, who have each been carrying petitions for over thirty years had a total vote count frozen under the old system at a total of 355 in four districts. Jovan Richards, a great guy, who did not carry petitions, landed in a newly formed district under the new system and wound up with 460.5 himself as a result of the BOE decision. Good luck to Jovan getting 47 signatures next month.
“More than a few district leaders – some with official titles – got large weighted vote increases under the new formula, without a clear explanation of why. There was nothing improper here but a week to explain the changes would have helped.
“Most district leaders have always participated in greater numbers when the mayor’s office is on the program. By waiting a week to have this all sorted out, we would have increased the number of district leaders who would show up to the county mini-convention, ensuring a more satisfying result in the county legislator races and total confidence in the mayoral outcome on the night of the vote.”
Gene Tozzi, a New Rochelle Democratic Party District Leader, responded to the statement by explaining why he supported Maher’s call for a one-week delay of what Tozzi called a “contentious” nominating convention.
Tozzi wants to require the Westchester County Board of Elections to change its policy to calculate the weighted vote to give a more “appropriate” weighted vote than what occurred last week, then goes on to define what “appropriate” means.
He wants a change in State law on how weighted vote totals are calculated to avoid disproportionate outcomes and to provide more time in the political calendar between the close of registration changes and the start of petitioning, so local Boards of Elections can make the information available in a timely manner.
Tozzi observed that what he called the “astounding result” of the calculation of weighted vote totals may have been a function of not having contested seats in the years after redistricting following the past two censuses.
Damon Maher took issue with the public statement, explaining not only why he supported a one-week delay of the nominating convention but why he deserved better both from the Committee and his opponent, and pressed for explanation by Committee leadership as to who assigned District Leaders and how that was done.
Maher offered two illustrative examples of unexplained changes made by the Committee not the Board of Elections.
ED12 (Fifth Avenue Heights) has been eliminated. Donna Harris-West, one of two District Leaders for ED12, had 10.5 weighted votes. She has been reassigned to ED 45 (across from Young Israel of New Rochelle) and now has 52.5 weighted votes (a 500% increase). Noam Bramson was the other District Leader for ED12 and had 10.5 weighted votes. He was reassigned to ED35 (the Wykagyl apartments) with 159.5 weighted votes (a 1,500% increase).
Maher says he does not even know the location of the new Election Districts, as he was never provided a map with the new EDs.
You could have fully explained this confusing, illogical and actually very weird process, in writing and given me and others the opportunity to review the law, as well as the process for calculating the new numbers and their reallocation among the District Leaders (with or without legal counsel), and still held the Mayoral vote on 2/22/23 at the same location where all the same people are scheduled to choose preferences for the two County Legislative seats, again personally or via our apparently robust proxy system.
If a one-week delay was unacceptable, Maher says, there was no need to hold a vote at all because there is no legal requirement or party rule which says that the local Committee needs to make an endorsement in every campaign.
Why should you if the process for doing so seems to be so blatantly unfair, as it does to me and to Gene and Tim, in actually diluting the voting strength of neighborhoods where a lot of people take the time and interest to vote while increasing the influence of registered Dems who don’t make that effort? (We have a nickname for them too when we canvass; actually not a nickname, but more a term of art among our data analysts: “Lazy Dems.”). It is not just unfair, but as a practical matter it would seem less likely to produce a Democratic candidate with the strongest support in a general election.
Maher disputes the claim that the reallocation of weighted votes had “no material impact on the outcome.” He says he would have campaigned differently if he had known which District Leaders suddenly had hundreds of more weighted votes, and that the margin of the weighted vote count could impact the viability of a campaign going into a primary.
Maher adds an interesting claim, that some of his supporters gave proxy votes to Mitchell Tarnapol, a longtime supporter of Noam Bramson and a Ramos-Herbert supporter at the convention, but those votes “then got assigned to non-supporters by some process I’m still not aware of.” He asks, “What instructions did those proxy grantors give?”
Both Maher and Ramos-Herbert are attorneys. Maher says she should have honored the “common courtesy” among lawyers to stipulate to brief adjournments where there is no harm in doing so. As there was (and still is) a second convention scheduled a week after the first, a one-week delay, he says, would not have delayed the primary process.
And how much courtesy for an adjournment might I presume to receive from the Committee? I expected more. How many doors have I knocked on, both petitioning and canvassing, on behalf of myself and all Dem candidates? How many times have I climbed up and down the steep hills of Tuckahoe in the wind and snow during the now-defunct Feb/March Village election schedule? How many scavenger hunts have I been on, with my Notary stamp, to get signatures for “Independence” and WFP for other candidates (including IND signers in years when my opponent had an IND endorsement in my race and I didn’t)? How many mornings have I spent on train platforms for my own campaigns and others? How many phone calls have I made for myself and others? How many postcards have I written to all parts of the country at the Committee’s request in my “free time”?…
Maher emphasizes that he believes he has not been treated fairly by the leadership of the New Rochelle Democratic Committee, which includes his former campaign manager in his County Legislator races, and that this is an animating factor in his decision to primary Ramos-Herbert. He says he intends to make transparency a central issue in his primary campaign.