THE CITY
Five years after she joined the state Legislature, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte (D-Brooklyn) is all but set to take over the cash-strapped Kings County Democratic Party.
And
she’s bringing with her a campaign fundraising record unusually
prolific for a junior lawmaker — fueled, in part, by donations from
groups her bills have aided.
Bichotte pulled in more cash than all but one Brooklyn
Assembly Democrat in the first half of 2019 — beating out 17 other
lawmakers, many of them senior to her, with a haul of $112,095 in an
off-election year.
Overall, Bichotte had $411,702 in her campaign coffers as of July. The party she’s expected to soon lead, meanwhile, has only $32,833.95 in the bank, state filings show.
Key
to her numbers are entrepreneurs who benefit from her actions as chair
of the Assembly’s minority- and women-owned business subcommittee. She’s
also drawn support from anesthesiologists battling to preserve their
place in the operating room and players in Brooklyn courthouses with a
stake in the county Democrats’ nods for judgeships.
Bichotte,
who would become the first black woman to head a county Democratic
party in the city, told THE CITY that repairing the group’s finances is
essential — and she vowed to pursue “big donors and small donors.”
“I’d
certainly like to raise money for the county to help our candidates, to
help the Democratic Party,” said Bichotte, who became the first
Haitian-American elected to the New York state Legislature when she
arrived in 2015.
“I’m
very particular about making sure that the treasury is healthy for the
purpose of helping out candidates and also getting more civilians more
engaged and included in our processes,” she added.
She was also the only elected official in New York to endorse Mayor de Blasio's farcical presidential run
