Been thinking about the Brooklyn Surrogate race and many people have been talking to me about it. I know to non-insiders this seems like a minor thing, but in reality the Surrogate Judge, and all judges, are important elected positions and the fact that the machine's lock on appointing judges has majorly slipped is a very big deal.

My post-primary piece might have been a bit overly pessimistic, though I think fairly accurate. But the reform clubs are celebrating and for good reason. I put down the reform clubs a bit in my last piece, but honestly they did help swing the race for Diana Johnson and did hand Vito Lopez a solid defeat.

And it really was a solid defeat. Diana Johnson won with almost 60% of the vote. That means Vito Lopez and his machine lost about as decisively as you really ever expect in a judicial election. There was a time when Surrogate Judge was the machine's to give away like a plum. It was one of the bigger plums the machine could give.

Vito Lopez has lost BOTH Surrogate Judge seats. The first time Margarita Lopez-Torres squeaked by to a narrow victory, causing Vito to demand recount after recount until it all finally was decided in court. This time Diana Johnson won with 60% of the vote. Vito couldn't even call for a recount. Now the fact that Diana Johnson was Vito's candidate against Lopez Torres the first time around and then was the reform candidate AGAINST Vito Lopez is one of those strange twists of Brooklyn politics that just make you shake your head. But that doesn't change the fact that Vito was handed one defeat in a Surrogate race, just barely. Then just 2 years later he is handed a solid, decisive defeat in the other Surrogate race. And there aren't going to be any more Surrogate races for 12 years.

That is reform. Voters, not Vito, decided who would be Brooklyn's Surrogate Judges. And, in the process, Margarita Lopez-Torres's victory led to a lawsuit that has ruled Brooklyn's judicial conventions, one of the main ways the machine controlled the selection of judges, unconstitutional. That court decision is currently under appeal and has gone all the way to the US Supreme court. If upheld, it would weaken Vito's hold even further.

As an aside, in an earlier article I wrote that once the Surrogate race is over, keep an eye on who gets the next court appointment by the machine. Well, that next court appointment will be decided this coming Tuesday when what might be the last of the probably unconstitutional judicial conventions will be held to fill a vacant state supreme court seat. The real decision will be made in a closed meeting on Monday where Vito will make his pick know. Remember I said to watch who gets rewarded for taking a fall in the Surrogate's race. Tuesday we will see one of the people who Vito wants to reward. Rumor has it Simpson will get her reward later. Tuesday will be someone else's turn.

So Johnson's victory is widely seen as a victory for reform clubs in Brooklyn, a view put forward by many newspapers including the NY Times in their post-mortem of the primary. Again, as I said in my post-mortem, the victory for reform is slightly soured by the fact that when Johnson turned reform, she never fully broke from her machine connections, maintaining some rather unsavory connections left over from the Clarence Norman days. But that doesn't change the fact that the reform clubs ALL chose Johnson and they won.

Another sign of progress, if not necessarily reform per se, is the fact that Brooklyn, one of the most diverse communities on earth, has two Surrogate Judges. Now one of those judges is Hispanic and the other is black. And race, per se, was never a major issue in the elections. That in itself is something to be proud of, given that both judges are fully qualified. One racial issue that did come up is that Vito Lopez decided he wanted to choose his own black candidate to run rather than listen to a fairly unified Brooklyn black leadership who backed Johnson. I believe many black leaders felt Vito's decision to pick his personal black judge rather than respect the wishes of black leaders in the community was insulting. But there was no question that it was fully appropriate to have two qualified minority Surrogates. Race, per se, was not an issue.

Finally, a friend pointed out another reason why it was a reform victory. Tons of money, in addition to influence, was poured into the race on Simpson's side. The big money lost. My friend compared it to Yassky's loss despite having the big money. Now having money doesn't mean you're bad, but two years in a row, in the biggest election of the year for Brooklyn, the big money lost. As a progressive, I have to have a soft spot for an underdog candidate winning. And, in the case of the Surrogate race, the underdog won big.

So, even though, as I discussed before, we are left with unqualified, homophovic Judge Noach Dear, the horrible garbage dumped on the 5th Civil Court by Vito Lopez and Marty Markowitz (a judge who has never practiced law and failed the bar twice???), and even though Judge Diana Johnson may not have been the ideal reform candidate, all in all it really was a win for reform in Brooklyn. And the reform clubs deserve to be celebrating.

But what about the future? Vito is not going anywhere, and his hold on the county party seems as strong as ever. When Vito Lopez nods his head, almost all district leaders in Brooklyn pretty much say Amen and vote his way. Almost no district leader has the guts to stand up to Vito on anything of substance. Maybe, just maybe, with the Surrogates and the judicial convention lost to Vito, the time has come to start taking district leader positions more seriously. Perhaps reformers and progressives should be eyeing challenging some of Vito's tame district leaders. I hear DFNYC and other progressive organizations wants to do a big progressive push in Brooklyn in 2009. But the truth is this will be very difficult as long as Vito Lopez dominates the party. Resources and money flow where he wants it, and the stronger he is, the harder it will be for progressives to do their big push. Perhaps DFNYC needs to pick a few district leader positions to target in 2008 to strengthen their hand when they go up against the machine in 2009.

And this gets to a key thing: the reformers and progressives may have just won, but as I wrote earlier, that is not enough. Let me just quote from Jonathan Hicks' article in the NY Times on the Surrogate race from Sept. 20th:

Mr. Lopez might well be encouraged because the forces opposing the party organization are not particularly unified. In fact, those coalitions tend to form on a contest-by-contest basis, with the characters changing from one race to the other.

That really hits the nail on the head. We have to stop acting on a contest-by-contest basis, fighting ourselves as much as we fight the machine. We have to have a more unified front, a more coherent agenda that more clearly outlines the alternatives we offer to the machine. And we have to apply that agenda, using it as a wedge to weaken Vito's power on all level, from district leader on up. We've made a start, and I must say we did it in an excessively divided and haphazard manner. I would suggest the 2008 district leader elections may be a chance to test out a more unified, more agenda-driven strategy. How about it DFNYC? How about it LID and CBID and, I hope, IND?

In this context, I should address one rumor I am hearing that bodes ill for reforming the district leadership. Rumor has it that one of my district leaders, Alan Fleishman, may resign as district leader. Now Alan and I have not always seen eye to eye, but what is clear to me is that he is probably the strongest voice of opposition against Vito Lopez in all the closed door meetings of the machine, including the judicial conventions. Given the fact that the reform movement has successfully won both Surrogate seats from Vito and may well have taken the judicial conventions from Vito, it seems like a foolish time for the strongest voice of opposition to Vito to resign. Come on Alan! I know it's an uphill battle, but do you quit right when we've won two or three big battles? Furthermore, if Fleishman resignas as district leader, the decision of who would replace him would ultimately fall to Vito Lopez himself. The voters would be deprived of their choice and you can be sure Vito's annointed choice would not be as strong a voice of reform as Alan. I am hoping Alan does not want to let Vito, rather than the voters, select his successor.

Hang in there, Alan. You've just won one. Enjoy it for awhile rather than leaving just when things might be getting better.

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