The truth about The Machine

The widespread notion that New York politics has become a running series of battles between bold, progressive outsiders and compromised, corrupt insiders — a movement versus The Machine — is a neat, dramatic storyline. But it’s mostly wrong.

Make no mistake about it: Tremendous changes, and dynamic new candidates, are rolling through our political system. But a great many local incumbents — and the political organizations they lead — are themselves veterans of progressive social movements.

It would be more accurate to note the first rule of New York politics: The supposed heroes are rarely all that good, and the villains usually aren’t entirely bad. A close look at the typical politician, protester or operative shows a remarkable, shall we say, flexibility when it comes to allies and enemies.

Take the recently-concluded dogfight over the Democratic nomination for Queens district attorney. It came down to a nail-biter between Melinda Katz, a longtime elected official, and Tiffany Cabán, a newcomer.

Cabán made a huge splash in her first

run for office, lining up support from the likes of nationally-known figures including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Progressives vs. The Machine, right? Not so fast.

Just a year ago, one of Cabán’s key allies, the Working Families Party, gave its ballot line and its full-throated support to Rep. Joe Crowley in his race against OcasioCortez. Remember that at the time, Crowley, the longtime chairman of the Queens Democratic organization, was the embodiment of The Machine.

Also last year, a string of labor unions had recently quit the WFP, including the United Federation of Teachers; Local 1199 and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the Communications Workers of America, the Transport Workers Union and the Hotel Trades Council.

All of these same unions endorsed Katz over Cabán — and so did Teamsters Local 237, AFSCME Local 372 and host of building trades and public sector unions.

Will the real working-class candidate please stand up?

After Crowley lost the congressional seat to AOC, he also quit as the boss of the Queens Democrats. So Team Cabán’s attacks on the horrors of The Machine were aimed at the new chairman, Rep. Gregory Meeks, a longtime congressman from Southeast Queens.

The loose talk about corrupt party insiders that came from Cabán supporters during the recount process rankled the Democratic district leaders, club presidents and other elected officials who remember the long, hard road they traveled to build political power.

Guy R. Brewer Blvd. in Queens is named after a black political leader who started out as a party official in Manhattan and left for Queens in the 1940s after a spat with white Tammany Hall bosses. Brewer put together his own political club — it’s still around — and mounted multiple unsuccessful runs for state Assembly before winning office in the late 1960s and serving in office for a decade.

One of Brewer’s proteges, Archie Spigner, became a longtime member of the City Council.

Another follower, Elmer Blackburne, leads his own club and holds a position in the county organization. His wife, Laura Blackburne, is a retired judge who once served as counsel to the state NAACP.

Anybody who thinks the generationslong battle for voting rights, civil rights and jobs in Southeast Queens wasn’t a vital, important, progressive movement simply doesn’t know their history.

It wasn’t that long ago that a group of black men were attacked — and one chased to his death — merely for walking through Howard Beach. The Queens neighborhood is now represented in Congress by one black congressman, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and has another, Meeks, as its Democratic chairman.

Part of the genius of the American political system is that, over time, political parties evolve as they encounter new policies, leaders and social movements. New York’s Democratic Party is doing exactly that, as it always has.

Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.