S2E09: Sustainable Banking in Southeast Asia with UOB's Eric Lim

Before AT&T Business Wireless, it was hard to keep our deliveries on track. Missed turns and delayed routes will quickly impact the business. One day, our driver even had to make a 14-point turn just to get back on route. A 14-point turn. Now, with AT&T Business Wireless, routes updating real-time and deliveries arrive on schedule, which means we can spend less time dealing with disruptions and more time focused on running the business. When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T. Get AT&T Business at ATT.com/5GNetwork. [MUSIC] It's the Bryan Lair Show on WNYC. I'm Kusha, Navadar, filling in for Bryan. Now, we turn to some infighting in the Brooklyn Democratic Party. And it's kind of a tale as old as time, a fight between the old guard and the new guard, stalwarts versus reformists, state assembly member Rodneys Bishat. Hermlin has been in the Brooklyn Democratic Party chair since 2020, when she won the seathandily as an ally of the old guard. But there's been a growing faction of reformists who say the party is in desperate need of new leadership. In June, the reformist party successfully ousted eight members of the executive committee, which meant they had the necessary majority to vote in a new leader of the party. Just a couple of months later, Hermlin launched an ambitious scheme to change the rules. The new rules would likely allow the existing party leaders to take back the majority from reformers, who seemed poised to push Hermlin out and usher in new leadership. The rule changes were approved in a contentious committee vote last week, despite several prominent Democrats, essentially calling it an "undemocratic" power grab. That includes House Speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Chuck Schumer, Governor Hoekle, Brooklyn Burrow, President Jumani Williams, Brad Lander, and Mayor Mom Donnie. That's a pretty broad coalition of Democrats who opinions were overridden. The story itself gets pretty in the weeds, so we will try to keep it legible. But in a macro sense, the party infighting brings up a lot of questions about the role of local party chapters and people's political lives. And it seems especially relevant, given that New York City's chapter of the DSA has been thrust into the spotlight for their growing influence on local elections. So for this segment, we're going to dig into how the Brooklyn Democratic Party has been meeting the moment, or as some would argue, has not been meeting the moment. And we'll hear from listeners about their own relationships with their political parties. And I am lucky to be joined in the studio by two journalists who've been covering this saga, Gwen Hogan, a senior reporter at the City Reporter, High Gwen Welcome Back to WNYC. Hey, it's good to be back. And Jeff Colton, the editor in chief of City and State, High Jeff Welcome. Thanks for having me. Been following this for years. It's just this is like the biggest Brooklyn Dems news that we've seen in a long time. It's really something. Yeah, and as somebody who lives in Brooklyn, it is very interesting to me. And I'm hoping that we can lay out why it's interesting to folks wherever they find themselves geographically. So Gwen, let's lay out some of the background first before we get into the recent rule changes. So what have reformists been saying needs to change about the Brooklyn Democratic Party? That's always such a good question when you kind of boil it down to reformers and old guard. But I think like, you know, the start of this goes back many years now, sort of to the election of Barack Obama in 2008. There was sort of all these young people that were inspired by that grassroots campaign. And they were like, I live in Brooklyn, like, let me get involved. And they were kind of brushed aside by party leadership at the time. And so some of them, you know, like some of them are now council members. Antonio Reno, so Lincoln wrestler. These are people who were kind of at the beginning of the formulations of New Kings Democrats, New Kings Democrats, who were sort of inspired by Nidia Velasquez, the outgoing Congresswoman, who was kind of the first anti-Brooklyn machine person that rose to the Congress. And they kind of started building their own little party organization where they were trying to get more grassroots involvement, trying to, you know, get candidates elected. And, you know, flash forward many years, this fight has been going on. And like you said, when Rodneyse was elected, she actually had a majority of support. She had unified the party after many, many years of fighting between these two factions. But that all kind of fell apart. And I think sort of the criticism of her tenure in the past six years is she spent a lot of time and energy fighting the left wing of the party, including, you know, backing lawsuits to try to get these reform district leaders off the ballot as opposed to fighting Republicans in Southern Brooklyn where the Democrats have been seeding ground. And that's sort of the main contention that has bubbled up is this party should be activating people and helping get people elected. And in the dearth of that, we've really seen, like you mentioned, the DSA, the Working Families Party, fill a lot of that void and be able to get candidates elected, whereas we see Brooklyn Democratic Party, you know, really focused on judge appointments and poll worker jobs and board of election jobs. So not to be too reductive here, but what I'm hearing you say is that the reformists that kind of came up from the Obama era, just to put a point on it, we're looking for more grassroots movement, getting more folks elected within the Democratic local chapters, and the old guard was more interested in keeping power and even taking some reformists off the ballot versus focusing on policies that maybe they have to take against the Republicans. Is that a fair summary of what I heard there? Yeah, I think when laid it out, exactly right. I mean, the party right now is so focused on just electing judges. That's like their main power. And that is quite a power electing judges, but it's also very insular. And Bashat Hermel and the current leader, she always talks about, you know, we're the Brooklyn Democratic Party, we're the biggest Democratic Party in the nation, which isn't technically true, but it's one of the biggest Democratic parties in the nation, and it does not act like it. There are like one and a half million Democrats in Brooklyn, and most registered Democrats in Brooklyn have absolutely no contact with the party. They don't touch them, they don't hear from them. Nothing, they don't use it as an organizing tool. And the argument from the reformers is that like, we're just leaving a lot of opportunity on the table here. It should be a more organized party. It should be getting out the vote. It should be helping elect Democrats. And that instead they say the current leadership is just too focused on, you know, surrogate's court and kind of insular stuff. I'm happy you brought that up because my next question to you, is just like on a super basic level, Jeff, what does the local party do? Like, what are they responsible for? Well, in theory, they should be responsible for, yeah, like promoting the Democratic Party in Brooklyn. And you know, that means like helping candidates get on the ballot and helping set up the elections. The polls are actually specifically bipartisan. So the Democratic Party does have a role in appointing poll workers. That's a very serious thing about, you know, making sure that our elections are carried out freely and fairly. So that's part of it. And then also they do play a huge role in appointing judges. That is a big piece of this because judges are not elected. They're done through judicial, delegate committees. I wish I could even explain it. I don't legitimately can't. It's like a very internal process and it's handled by the party. Judicial, judicial, judicial. I thought you were about to say that. That would have been good. Yeah, take that one for next time. Listeners, we want to hear from you. What is your relationship with your local party chapter? Are you involved or do you want to be involved? Maybe you've struggled to figure out how to get involved and wish there were, I don't know, a little more transparency. Has the recent growth of the DSA made you think, maybe I want to have more of a say in how my own party functions. Especially if you're from Brooklyn. We want to know what you think. But those questions are also for everyone. So this is a conflict that isn't unique to Brooklyn. So give us a call. Send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Okay, so I want to set this scene a bit for the vote that took place last week because it was pretty contentious. They didn't let reporters into the committee meeting and there were some aggressive encounters outside the room. Here's a clip from a video that you actually took, Jeff, of a reformer talking to Frank Cedillo. He's a member of the old guard who was the party chair before Hamlin took over. You've been excluded people like Munchaka. You've been excluded people like me. So I know you, Frank. You were clowned and going. You're doing a clown show right now? No, no, no, no, no, no. Because you lost the election. I'm not a clown, I'm not a clown. I'm not a clown. I'm not a clown. And here's another short clip of Frank Cedillo entering the clubhouse as reformers ask him question. This one was taken by Katie Hounen who works with you, Gwen, at the city reporter. You won't even know the inside of this clubhouse. If you're too good. Okay, so we do have, I believe, somebody who was at the meeting that we're actually referring to, Julio in Sunset Park. Julio, do we have you on the line? Yes, I'm here. Hi, Julio. Welcome to the show. Thanks for hopping down with us. Give us your impression of the party. What you think about when you're listening to those clips. I'll be honest, it's a little triggering hearing that again. I think what transpired last week was really a dereliction of duty in our Democratic Party. And just further, instilled fear in people who want to access our cardigan, and it gives us reason why so many people stay home. Can you tell us why you were there? I think you're a part of it, right? Yes, I'm a Democratic, uh, Democratic District leader. I represent Santa Park from my folk. Um, so I was there to, uh, speak an opposition of the proposed changes to our party rules. You so much for joining us, and, and when I want to bring this to you, so you hear some very contentious, intense vibes in the meeting, can you tell me about the vibe outside the vote on, on Tuesday? I'm actually going to put that to Jeff, because Katie was there for us, and I was, I was writing the story of. So Jeff, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. That was, that was exactly the scene. It was really a old school politics. Uh, there was some, uh, you know, discussion back and forth on the street about whether this was on Democratic, Democratic. It was, it was really, uh, scene, but actually most of the scene was, uh, eight or so reporters just sitting outside while Julio and the rest of the district leaders were inside behind lock doors. They blocked off the windows with pieces of paper so that the reporters outside couldn't see in. Uh, that was frustrating. And, uh, we just were waiting. We were waiting and inside they were voting on 10 amendments to the party bylaws. And, uh, you know, I believe every single one of those amendments passed very narrowly. And, uh, Bishat Hermelon, uh, got her amendments to the party bylaws. She got what she wanted. And now Julio and his allies are suing. That's, uh, that's kind of the next step. They're going to try and take this to court and say that, uh, what happened in the meeting was illegal and illegitimate. Gwen is the footage that we heard typical, like, is that generally what the internal communications look like within the party? Is it always that confrontational? I feel like there have been moments like, like, Hellgate covered the judicial convention and there was a, uh, an instance where Rodney's was hiding behind a tablecloth to try to avoid reporters, you know, at the end of this event, she went out a back door and got in a car without speaking to people. I mean, I, I remember there was controversy with controversy with the board of elections. I believe I can't remember exactly what year. And, uh, Courtney Gross, a reporter at New York one tried to ask Rodney's the question and she like ran into like a traffic and like crossed a median. So I've just, I feel like, you know, every two years there's some, seems to be some sort of wild thing that happens where you're like, whoa, like what is going on here? And I think, I think, you know, the video's coming out that night. I sort of saw people who had no connection to Brooklyn being like, what is happening? Like, but yes, for reporters who've been covering it, there have been sort of some, some, you know, strange things that happen every two years when this party gathers before their big, uh, big convention. Yeah. And I want to make a quick correction. We said the Jumein Williams is burrow president. It's actually Antonio Reino. So Jeff, I'm wondering for you, there's been a lot of reporting recently on the growing influence of the DSA and even just how the DSA functions on a basic level as kind of a community space. And I don't think we see that kind of reporting about the Brooklyn Democratic Party or about local chapters of the Democratic Party in general. Why is that? Yeah, not at all. And I think that DSA has been able to grow in part because of that, because local Democratic clubs are not playing the role that they once did, you know, around the middle of the century, even more recently, you know, the 80s and the 90s, Democratic clubs were a bigger deal. Now, they've shrunk in the leadership or the membership is very old. Most Democratic Party club members are, you know, elderly. And DSA has been picking up the slack there. They are meant to be, you know, community organizations and people coming together and talking about how to elect, you know, the assembly member for their district and their senator, like all of that. There's a real, it's supposed to be the absolute lowest grassroots level of the Democratic Party, but it's atrophied so much across the city, across the state. And places like DSA are picking up the pieces that said that's what the reformers are arguing should be happening. I mean, they're arguing that the party should be coming together. There should be a growth here. This should be a place that regular Democrats feel like they can have a voice and come together and meet and try to, you know, advance the Democratic agenda in Brooklyn. Jeff, I want to ask about some of the people that came out in opposition to the rule changes because we mentioned a lot of folks on there. And it seems pretty remarkable that all of these national figures could come out against these changes. And then a state assembly member still got them over the finish line. Do you think that opposition made a difference? And if so, why not enough of a difference? It made a difference in that that got this a bunch of attention. I mean, this went from just a internal battle between two factions of the Brooklyn Democratic Party that maybe didn't get much attention to, oh my goodness, you know, Hakeem Jeffries and Kathy Hocal and the Latisha James, all of them were on the side of the reformers, which is notable because the Brooklyn Democratic Party kind of exists to like support these elected officials, you know, like their entire thing is like we helped Latisha James become Attorney General. And so now she's on the other side of Rodney, Spachot Hormelon. So it's very notable. This was a huge wind beneath the sales of the reformers to have all of these moderate leaning party leaders on their side, including also Zaron Mamdani was also saying we don't support this change. So they were all there behind them, and it's then particularly notable that Bashat Hormelon and her allies still despite all this pressure from all the most prominent Democrats in the state, we're still like, yeah, you know, we're just going to go forward with these bylaws with these rule changes. They felt like they could do it. And you know, their argument is that this is actually more progressive. This is actually opening up the party to more people, which is like technically true. It is opening up the party to more people, but in practice, it was a lame duck rule change that was done specifically to keep Hulio Pena the third and his allies in the New Kings Democrats out of power. Okay. In that, my follow-up then is what's the backlash or like what's the response from people who are responsible for a wider scope of the democratic influence in New York? Gwen, like, is there any, why can they keep doing this? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that this kind of puts Rodney's really out on an island in terms of she's there, you know, and then, you know, the state democratic leader, democratic party leader, Jay Jacobs. I talked to him this morning. He's now a party in the lawsuit. He's going to have to go to court because of this. And I don't, you know, he still is saying, I don't like this is this undermines our whole party by doing this. You have changed the rules at the last minute. That is an undemocratic thing to do. Even though he's named as a defendant in the lawsuit, he's like, my lawyer is going to say that in court. Like, I side with the reformers on this. I think I don't really know how this plays out. I think it will be really interesting to see this lawsuit again. The reformers refiled late last week. They're going to have to go before a judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning. And their argument is that this is a violation of election law. And it's also a violation of the party's own bylaws for a number of reasons. But one of them is that this should have been an open meeting. And it wasn't. We were clearly reporters were blocked from entering. You're allowed to go into executive session. That's private, but executive committee meetings are supposed to be public by the party's bylaws. It's hard to know if that's going to play out in court, right? As Jeff was mentioning, the Brooklyn Democratic Party is very instrumental in appointing judges within Kings County courts. And the first judge recuse themselves. This judge hasn't recuse themselves. So hopefully there's not. But it's, you know, we've seen Frank Cedillo is facing litigation that Helgate has covered extensively and other outlets. And he's been able to, you know, there's two million missing dollars. The last I checked and he's been able to sort of postpone any kind of accountability for many, many months and even years because he has a lot of influence in the system. So it will be very interesting to see exactly what leverage the all the members of the party have over Rodney's or if she can really just go ahead. And Jay Jacobs and the state Democratic Party there being sued by the reformers as well because the reformers are saying, well, the state Democratic Party should fix this. You know, the Brooklyn, the county party answers to the state party. So the state party should be able to stop them and fix this. I don't know if that, I don't know if they are able to. I don't know if they want to. We're going to find out, I guess in the coming days and weeks with this litigation. But that's that they're looping in the state party into this into the suit. Yeah. Listeners, you might be thinking right now, well, I don't live in Brooklyn. Well, this sounds like inside baseball. There is a text from a listener and I want to go to a caller to address exactly that. The text says with all due respect is the Brooklyn Democratic Club relevant anymore. And I want to broaden this out to think about what this means generally for the way our government runs. And to do that, I'd like to go to Natalie in Staten Island. Hi, Natalie. Welcome to the show. Hi there. Yeah. I've been following the Brooklyn, county Democratic Party since at least 2020. When they had a 13-hour Zoom meeting, then they later, if I'm not mistaken, had a follow-up that was even longer, I think it was 20 hours. That and I then shared a congressional district with Brooklyn. So what people don't realize outside of the inside baseball thing is all roads to democracy in this country run through these county parties, and in 2022 we lost the house in a way that we actually could have kept it if the state and these county parties kept their eyes on the ball. We had seats that we could have flipped, we could have preserved that balance or at least the majority. So democracy is directly affected by these shenanigans. We have a congressional candidate now who is to flip the seat for Staten Island and Brooklyn and because of that county's shenanigans, that party bosses shenanigans, and our own in Staten Island, it is an uphill battle. It is the only red seat in New York City. I have heard almost no media cover it. Natalie, thank you so much for that call and Jeff, I'd like to turn to you right now. You listen to Natalie. How does that sit with you and more widely? I mean, if you're at a dinner party, have you tell people, "Hey, this matters. You should pay attention to it." Yeah, well, look specifically, she's totally right about this. I asked Frank Cedillo about that congressional race. I said, "Look, Mike DeCilles is the Democrat trying to unseat Nicole Malliotakis and the Brooklyn Democratic Party hasn't done anything for him." And Frank Cedillo, again, the former leader, ally of Bashad Hermelon, he says, "Yeah, well, that seat's unwinnable. We're not even going to try. Why would we waste our time on that?" And I understand that argument. It is an uphill battle to unseat Nicole Malliotakis, but there are a lot of Brooklyn Democrats that would say, "Well, the party has to try." I mean, they've got to give them some resources. They've got to give them some help. This could be a really big anti-Trump wave year, and yet the Brooklyn Democrats are just totally giving up, not even trying. So that is totally a big part of this. It's right. The weakness of the Brooklyn Democratic Party could have waves that affect arguably the whole nation if we're talking about control of Congress. And look, a bigger picture. This is just one example of the kind of old guard of the Democratic Party having a real disagreement about how politics should be run with a younger, more progressive crowd. That oversimplifies it somewhat, but this is a pattern that we've seen across every city, across every state, across the whole nation. And this is just the Brooklyn example of that. This is the more progressive North Brooklyn and West Brooklyn cadre of district leaders disagreeing with the more moderate Southern Brooklyn and Central Brooklyn cadre. And it's just all about which direction the party should be going. So yeah, the specific issues they're fighting over are, you know, focused on their specific to Brooklyn. But if you zoom out just a little bit, you can see that this is really a bigger picture thing. And this is a battle for the Democratic Party that's been ongoing across the country. I will say there is a little extra nuance in Brooklyn because in these Southern Brooklyn seats, you have more moderate Democrats who have to beat Republicans in general elections. And in this case, they're actually aligned with the more progressive blue folks up in North Brooklyn because they both sort of agree that the Brooklyn Democratic Party has falling asleep at the wheel in terms of helping win, like they're the only ones that have these contentious general elections. And everybody's sort of on the left and the right wants to get behind those that are fighting in the general election, and then there's sort of these folks in the middle that are allied with Rodney Spachot, where it's actually not really a left-right agreement. It's really a power struggle more than anything else. Interesting. And that kind of sets Brooklyn apart, you're saying from some other areas. I think it's like a little, yeah, yeah, for sure. I think so. We're running out of time. Let's go to one more caller. We've got Sam in Manhattan. Hi, Sam. Welcome to the show. Hi. Can you hear it? Oh, Henry. Hi. Go ahead, Sam. Hi. Well, we're talking about, constitutionally, the people have a right to free assembly. And within that, you can organize anything you want. We're talking, the county's party is made up of clubs. It's just like I can establish a bridge club. I can make the rules for that club. There's nothing public about it, and I don't buy the argument that people have been disenfranchised. That club, those clubs and parties, can make their own rules. And there's nothing in the law that's gone wrong. They may try to establish that, but courts will not get involved with, unless there's money and defraud, not get involved with it into party politics like that. It's been gone on a long time in Brooklyn with the Medes de Zito's kingdom that he ran. However, you know, you just kind of organize better and try to take over those clubs that you need for the rules for your favor, but there's nothing illegal about it. Sam, thank you so much for that call. I hear you saying there's nothing illegal about it. So I had a question about some lawsuits coming up. I'll oppose it to both of you before I let you go. The reform leaders are planning to file a lawsuit opposing these changes. Jeff, I'll start with you and then Gwen, go to you. Do you think that suit's going to have legs? Yeah, look, they have filed, and it's true. It's kind of a long shot. Apparently, according to people that have looked into the history, the courts are generally hesitant to get involved in party matters. And not to mention, this was the core of that is that this is a lame duck group of outgoing district leaders that voted for something. And like, look, lame duck Congress, they can pass laws, lame duck city council. They can pass laws. So that part confuses me a little bit. I know that it might feel wrong to change the rules on the way out, but legally, they might be able to. The argument that they're making, there's actually a very strange thing because that's happening because we change the date of the primary. So usually before when the primary was in the fall, it would be like primary, then the county committee, then the executive committee, and that always happened in quick succession. And now because the primary is so much earlier, the term for district leader actually runs from primary to primary. So they're arguing your term is already over. You just haven't gotten out to yet because we haven't had the county committee meeting where we would pick our new district leaders and you would be seated. So they're arguing that you actually have no voting power because you're not technically a district leader. You just haven't left your position yet. That's like the legal argument. I don't know if it will stand. It is a good, you know, who knows what will happen in Brooklyn court that we'll see. It sounds like it's emblematic of one in fighting into the certain like malaise with the way that power is transferred within from old guard to new, is that a fair summary there? Definitely. Yeah. Okay. I've been speaking with Gwen Hogan, a senior reporter at the city reporter and Jeff Colton, this editor-in-chief of city and state will have to leave it there. Gwen, Jeff, thank you both so much for coming to the show and for unpacking a technical piece and showing why it's relevant to all of us. Thank you. A pleasure.