Political Craziness in The Bronx

Are you interested in how the folks who set your tax rates, authorize increases to your water bill, help developers change the way your neighborhood looks, write laws and pick the judges who rule on them are chosen?

Then check out this blog post. It's a run-down of video I shot on Sunday at the bi-annual meeting of the Bronx Democratic Party.

Getting elected at that meeting is a statement of political clout. The Bronx Democratic County Committee, as it's called, has its own purse strings, and can dole out money to different folks trying to get elected. The party leader, who was supposed to be elected at that meeting, controls those purse strings.

The committee's officers, also supposed to be elected at that meeting, can organize the elected officials from a particular borough to present a united front on legislative issues. This means that the borough's electeds could set an agenda in their legislatures — Bronx Assembly members making a stand on how state money is spent to support projects like the new Yankee Stadium, for example. Bronx members of the City Council could present a united front on term limits, and vote in a bloc, trading support on that issue for some other concessions — like more member-item money to spend on non-profits in their borough, say. Let's go a step further and suggest that this non-profit is a music venue that throws concerts you want to see, or a Little League where you could coach, or, alternatively, the pet project of a Councilman's cousin, where he's making a six-figure salary. This is all purely hypothetical, but these are examples of how these power brokers have dramatic influence on your life in this city.

The meeting described in video above is where some of those power brokers, who move behind the scenes to get legislators on the same page about specific issues and expenditures, were supposed to be chosen. But — as I report in this week's issue of The Riverdale Press and as others have already reported — it got loud, and rowdy, and two separate groups in the Bronx are claiming they're the borough's real political leaders.