Jose Rivera’s fate as the Bronx Democratic County Leader will be decided at a meeting of the party’s executive committee at the Paradise Theaters at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 28, according to a Bronx source.
The vote is crucial to Rivera’s future, because he’s facing major backlash from a group of Bronx elected officials that call themselves the "Rainbow Rebellion." They say Rivera has not been an inclusive leader and has been mostly interested in helping his own family members and other Puerto Ricans.
This source, aligned with Rivera, said there are 10 votes in the executive committee, and that most of them are with the current chairman. Here are the members of the executive committee, and the number of votes they have to cast:
Assemblyman Jose Rivera
Executive Committee Chairman-2 votes
Assemblyman Carl Heastie
County Committee Chairman-1vote
Assemblywoman Aurelia Green
Secretary-2 votes
Jerry Schwier
Treasurer-2 votes
City Councilwoman Maria Baez
Vice Chair-1 vote
Luis Sepulvera
Counsel-1 vote
Angel Cruz
Parlimentarian-1 vote
According to this source, most of these votes are currently with Rivera. The only way to change the makeup of the executive committee is in a meeting of the county committee, and there’s only two ways that can happen.
The first way is if the county committee chairman, Carl Heastie, and one quarter of the current executive committee vote to have a meeting. Since most of the executive committee is aligned with Rivera, it’s unlikely to happen, according to this source.
The alternative is to gather signatures from enough county committee members to force a meeting. But those signatures would be subject to legal challenges from Rivera supporters, meaning the whole issue could be thrown into legal limbo just long enough for the executive committee’s September 28th meeting to go off as planned.
In other words, it doesn’t look like Rivera is going anywhere.
UPDATE: I should be reading Jordan Moss much closer.
Here are two important parts of the process I didn’t put into the item. First, four members of the executive committee will be up for election and votes will be cast by members of the county committee. Those four positions– county committee chair, secretary, treasurer and first vice-chair–represent six votes. A person I just spoke with said the election of those four officers is automatic, and there’s no procedural obstacle to prevent this.
Those are the only four members of the executive committee who vote on the chairman of the executive committee. But there are 22 district leaders in the county, representing 44 votes, who also vote on the chairman of the executive committee.
So, for those counting votes, there are more of them to consider than I previously thought.
