Frank Seddio resigns from chairing Brooklyn Democratic Party

Gothamist


After nearly eight years as head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, Frank Seddio has stepped down. "Good riddance to Brooklyn’s dirty, undemocratic Democratic boss," the Daily News editorial board proclaimed on hearing the news of Seddio's retirement.

Seddio was criticized during his tenure for perpetuating Kings county's powerful political machine, which is responsible for endorsing judicial candidates, choosing nominees during primary elections and setting party rules. So-called proxy voting plagued how meetings operated when they were held, and reformer club New Kings Democrats perpetually pushed Seddio to make the party operations more transparent.

"Let me just say that if I were any more transparent, I would be arrested for lewdness," Seddio told Gothamist in a phone interview on Monday. "I don't know what else to do. Should I take off my underwear and let them see the rest of my body?"

Despite how disgusting that would look, yes.

Maybe getting frogmarched out of his house in his britches by the feds might be in the future regarding his embezzlement case in New Jersey and where the money went from his debt in chicken restaurants in Kentucky.

 

The Kings County Machine in action, screwing over citizens in plain sight

True News Investigates the County Committee

Featuring Kings County Democrat leader Frank Seddio, lawyer Marty Connor and Mayor de Blasio's best buddy and Brooklyn Democrat Party Committee lawyer Frank Carone

How they do things in Brooklyn

From Crains:

In 2008, Daniel Squadron clawed his way into the state Senate with a hard-fought upset in the Democratic primary, earning 12,688 votes to longtime incumbent Martin Connor's 10,757.

This weekend, Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh effectively won Squadron's seat with 32 votes to Paul Newell's 66.

Welcome to democracy—Albany style.

Kavanagh won the Democratic nomination to succeed the resigning Squadron by virtue of an obscure, backroom process. He defeated Newell, a Democratic district leader, despite the latter's capturing a majority of the vote Sunday of the Manhattan county committee—the panel of party insiders charged with handpicking the candidate.

The reason: one of Kavanagh's 32 supporters was Kings County Democratic Committee Chairman Frank Seddio. Party bylaws empowered Seddio to back the candidate of his choosing without a vote of the county committee that represents his borough's portion of the Senate district. Seddio's endorsement carried the weight of the Brooklyn contingent as if it had voted unanimously.

From bad to just as bad?

From the Daily News:

If Frank Seddio of the Brooklyn machine, Joe Crowley of the Queens machine, Keith Wright of Manhattan’s barely-a-machine and Carl Heastie of the Bronx machine succeed in installing Heastie as speaker without so much as a public look-see, New Yorkers may one day look back on Silver’s reign as a golden age of good government.

The four overlords are driving Democratic Assembly members from each of their boroughs into voting for Heastie, never mind that, in deposing Silver, everyone in Albany swore that the Corruption Caucus was dead.

[Carl Heastie] happens to be a featured name in the files of the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, for having failed to properly account for $25,000 in campaign spending.

He also claimed almost $21,000 from the Assembly’s notoriously lax travel expense account during just the first six months of 2014 — more than any other member — while otherwise keeping a low profile in Albany.

As for the progressive paragon’s Assembly record, Heastie sponsored a 2013 bill that would have allowed check-cashing outlets to make loans to low-income New Yorkers at interest rates up to 200%. The check cashers had dumped $10,000 into his party accounts.

One of Heastie’s rivals for the speakership, Rochester-area Assemblyman Joe Morelle, raised an alarm about the “rush to judgment” while meeting with this board Thursday. Give him credit for taking a grilling, including on his loyalist first response to Silver’s arrest: “We have every confidence that the speaker is going to fill his role with distinction.”

Meet the new Boss...same as the old Boss

From the NY Times:

...when Mr. Lopez’s reign as the most powerful political force in the borough ended last week amid allegations of sexual harassment, reformers and progressives in Brooklyn used the situation to call for a clean break from a legacy of patronage politics harking back to the era of Tammany Hall. Almost immediately, a leading candidate for the position emerged: Frank R. Seddio, a friend and protégé of Mr. Lopez.

The pasta-loving patriarch of the Thomas Jefferson Club in southern Brooklyn, Mr. Seddio, 65, was the machine’s pick to become a state assemblyman and later a Surrogate’s Court judge, through a much criticized process that sidestepped the usual electoral vetting. He resigned from the bench in 2007, just 17 months into a 14-year term, amid an ethics inquiry into the tens of thousands of dollars he donated to Democratic leaders and organizations before he assumed the post with the party’s backing.

Though the position of party chairman might seem obscure to many voters, it would give Mr. Seddio significant control over judicial nominations, vacant legislative positions and hundreds of lucrative jobs that have historically been doled out to party insiders and their relatives. And if recent experience is any indication, the post could allow him to influence the next mayoral election, in a borough that is 71 percent Democratic.