Bronx Dems Keep Sidelining Women
FOR Democrats, this year was supposed to be the Year of the Woman. The Women’s March in January — which brought 400,000 protesters to a dreary Washington, DC — was supposed to kickstart a political revolution.
Democrats like former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, DNC chair Tom Perez and others were encouraging women and young activists to run for local offices from school board to city council to the state legislature.
My former colleagues in The Bronx Democratic Party aren’t buying it.
There are three Bronx council districts (8, 13 and 18) whose incumbents are termlimited out of office. So far, The Bronx Democratic County Committee has endorsed Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez and state Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. for two open seats currently held by Hispanic women — Melissa Mark-Viverito (8) and Annabel Palma (18), respectively.
Bronx Democrats later snubbed a female district leader to endorse a third male state lawmaker in Council District 13.
Surprisingly, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. broke with the committee to back borough native Diana Ayala, Mark-Vi- verito’s ex-deputy chief-of-staff. (Cynics say he has pending projects needing MarkViverito’s support.)
Nor is this Bronx women’s first brush with the boys club. Last year, the party selected former Community Board 2 district manager Rafael Salamanca Jr. to replace Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who resigned in December 2015 to take a position with the nonprofit social services giant Acacia Network.
Three councilwomen replaced by three men.
Yet you’d never know it by Bronx Dems’ lip service to the forward march of progress. In the run-up to the Women’s March, the Bronx Dems posted a recruiting flyer emblazoned with the words, “Forward ever, backwards never” (incorrectly crediting Patrice Lumumba).
Is there a tangible commitment behind the Democrats’ rhetoric? Or is it simply political pap for the masses? The answer appears to be the latter. It wasn’t always this way. In the mid1990s, the Bronx Democratic organization began focusing in earnest on diversifying the judiciary, supporting more women for civil court and Supreme Court judgeships. And in 2015, they picked Judge Darcel Clark, an African-American, to become the county’s first female district attorney — after Robert Johnson resigned to run for state Supreme Court.
But whither “backwards, never”? In January 2014, the City Council boasted a record 15 councilwomen and its second female speaker. It has since dwindled to 13 female incumbents, and could fall further — to as few as seven next January.
The Bronx council delegation, which once boasted four women (Mark-Viverito, Gibson, Arroyo, Palma), may only have one come Jan. 1, 2018.
National Women’s Political Caucus/NYC president Sharon Nelson said Dems should be “incubating new talent” like Marjorie Velazquez, a NWPC member and Democratic district leader passed over by Bronx Democrats in favor of Assemblyman Mark Gjonaj in district 13.
Morgan Pehme, a supporter of a nonprofit seeking to elect at least 21 women to the council’s 51 seats in 2021, says that if county leaders “don’t genuinely sign on to the goal of gender parity [and] as long as the county leaders continue to hold sway over the system there won’t be parity.”
Amanda Septimo, former district director for Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), pointed out that the women Dems passed over are “all exceptional and politically connected with deep community roots who in a sense [had] checked all the boxes.”
She should know — the Vanderbilt University grad ran unsuccessfully in the February 2016 special election to replace Arroyo after being passed over by Bronx Dems.
Women winning and serving in elected office in larger numbers is healthy for our democracy. No one in The Bronx is arguing for token representation or quotas (although political consultant Alexis Grennell pointed out that some countries have gone down that road). But Bronx Dems can’t plausibly argue there are no qualified women for these spots.
The rising tide of bold, independent women candidates may eventually be too strong for Bronx Democrats and other county organizations to resist. But that won’t absolve today’s Democrats for standing athwart history shouting “stop!”