At the Brooklyn Democratic County dinner earlier this year, Democratic county leader Vito Lopez made two things clear. He’s backing Marty Dilan and that he expects the Queens county organization to join him, much the way they teamed up to pick a Speaker for the City Council.
With only 26 senate Democrats, whoever gets 14 of those votes becomes the next minority leader. If all the senators from Brooklyn and Queens got together, that would be 13 votes right there. Theoretically.
Now, the buzz — nicely documented by Ben and Liz here and here is essentially all about Senator Malcolm Smith being on the verge of declaring victory.
So what happened to the Lopez plan?
“Vito Lopez is 100% behind Marty Dilan,” Lopez’s spokeswoman, Alison Hirsh just told me. “And Queens and Brooklyn made a commitment to work together one way or the other.”
— Azi Paybarah
