At the Oct. 12th Meeting VID voted upon November 7 Ballot Endorsements
VID voted to oppose proposal #1 and approved proposals # 2 and #3. For City Council District 1 there was no endorsement.
On the first of the November 7 ballot endorsements asking for a majority vote for a Constitutional Convention, VID unanimously rejected the proposal and thus agreed with the opinion of the New York Civil Liberties Union at the September meeting. Question #2, “Allowing the Complete or Partial Forfeiture of a Public Officer’s Pension if He or She is Convicted of a Certain Type of Felony,” and question #3 “Authorizing the Use of Forest Preserve Land for Specified Purposes” received unanimous approval at the October meeting.
You can see the full text of all three proposed ammendments here.
Because VID’s primary endorsed candidate, Christopher Marte, was defeated by incumbent Councilperson Margaret Chin, the membership then took up the question of whether to make a second endorsement for the General Election. Mr. Marte, as a result of several write-ins on the Independence Party line, moved to take up the option to running as an Independence Party candidate. After a lengthy debate, that considered whether a Democratic Club should endorse an Independence Party candidate at all, the membership voted to make no endorsement with 19 votes. Marte received 11 votes and Chin 5.
November 7 ballot endorsements were not the only topics of the October 12th meeting, however.
After reports from District Leaders Keen Berger and Arthur Schwartz (who announced that he was leaving the Village Reform Democratic Club), County Committeeman and County Committee Secretary, Ben Yee reported on the status of several rules changes that had been introduced at the County Committee meeting in September. Though anticipated to be reviewed by the Rules sub-committee, they have not. The Executive Board, which had met before, decided to table the resolutions. The County Committee will reconvene in three months to review certain resolutions–in particular, one asking Keith Wright to step down from one of his positions, and also one asking the IDC to rejoin the Democrats or not get support from the party. Ben applauded Rachel Lavine’s work with the Progressive Caucus as very important. You can read more about the NYS Progressive Caucus here.
And get updates from Ben Yee here.
Laurie Hardjowirogo briefly of her campaign in CD 19 against John Faso. Both Laurie and Jen Hoppe announced coordination with the Keep VA Blue initiative, Nov 4th with a bus leaving NYC for an overnight in a tight district in Pennsylvania to get out the vote. Tony Hoffmann and Laurie discussed VID palm cards to be distributed at every polling place in the district letting voters know ofour opposition to the Constitutional Convention. The Supreme Court nominees must be endorsed, but because of time limits, he asked for permission for the Executive Committee to make the endorsement. This passed unanimously.
The last item on the agenda was a visit from Marc Fliedner, running against Cy Vance for NYC District Attorney. He offered a summary of his background and qualifications–30 years of criminal justice experience, mostly prosecuting hate crimes, and sex crimes. He has since found a Manhattan residence, so he will qualify for the ballot. Erik Bottcher spoke up for his work in the LGBTQ community.
You can read the full minutes of the October 12th Meeting here.