More than two years before
a Brooklyn state senator named Jesse Hamilton defected to a conference
of breakaway Democrats now infuriating rank-and-file progressives, one
of their co-founders considered the move a fait accompli.
“Jesse Hamilton was successful in Brooklyn and Jesse Hamilton will be a member of the IDC,” State Senator Diane Savino predicted at Hamilton’s election night party in September of 2014.
The startling claim, made just after Hamilton triumphed in a Democratic primary, was largely forgotten until he defected from the mainline Democrats last November,
bolstering an Independent Democratic Conference that would, by 2016,
grow to eight members. Savino, perhaps the IDC’s boldest and brashest
defender, was proven correct. The IDC, which has an indefinite power-sharing agreement with the Senate Republican majority, had won again.
But
Hamilton, along with two new members of the IDC, made the mistake of
joining the conference in the age of President Donald Trump, when New
York Democrats are rightfully desperate for novel and meaningful ways to
resist Republican incursions. Queens State Senator Jose Peralta, who joined the IDC just last month,
was repeatedly heckled at a raucous town hall and is all but guaranteed
a primary challenge. Manhattan State Senator Marisol Alcantara, if not
yet the target of the type of wrath Peralta endured in Queens, could
struggle against a single, strong primary challenge.
Now Hamilton may get the Peralta treatment.
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Source: The Village Voice (via The Empire Report)
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