Lifelong Williamsburg resident and Community Board 1 member Esteban Duran is running for District Leader in the 53rd Assembly District. Unfortunately for him, his opponent is Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who is also the incumbent and does not like to lose. — Photos by Aaron Short

(Updated below)

With the Democratic primary less than a month away, Esteban Duran and Barbara Medina, two District Leader candidates, should be on the street in Bushwick shaking hands and meeting as many constituents as possible in their bid to represent the 53rd Assembly District.

Instead, both are in court this week, staving off a challenge from the Brooklyn’s powerful hulk-like Democratic Party to bounce them from the ballot weeks before the election.

"District Leader" is a sort of nickname for members of a party’s State Committee — as this is North Brooklyn, this means the Democratic Party. DLs get to choose the county party leader, currently State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, and weigh in on who gets to run for judgeships. They are chosen every two years, in the Sept. primaries.

Medina and Duran, former staff members of Councilwoman Diana Reyna (Duran also worked for the Department of Education before he was laid off last year), are not strangers to the political scene. They are members of the New Kings Democrats — a three-year old Democratic club, which is challenging Lopez’s supremacy in the Kings County Democratic Party by running a slate of state and county committee candidates throughout the borough.

Both Duran and Medina are long-shot candidates for the state party office. Neither has raised much money and both face incumbents, Lopez and Maritza Davila, with the most extensive mastery of political organizing in the borough.

Actually none of the candidates are raising that much money. Duran and Medina have a few thousand between them, but have not filed expenditure reports with the state yet.

Meanwhile, Lopez’s biggest campaign contributor is… himself. He transferred over $50,000 from his state assembly campaign account to his district leader account, giving him a total of $53,500 to spend.

His female counterpart, Maritza Davila, has raised $2,100 for her campaign, but still owes the city close to $120,000 from her city council campaign last year, so let’s call them even.

Instead of simply brushing off these two first-time political candidates with some direct mail campaigns and phone banking, Lopez is throwing fastballs.

On July 16, the county filed general objections to several candidates’ petitions and followed those up with specific charges against Duran and Medina for permeation of fraud.

Duran and Medina submitted petitions with about 2,000 signatures each, but county attorneys questioned 1,700 signatures for their validity. The Board of Election took a second look and bumped up Duran’s signatures to about 750, well over the 500 required to be on the ballot.

That set up round two of the challenges, which took the candidates to Kings County Supreme Court last week for the tedious questioning of election workers.

In order to prove its case of fraud, Kings County attorney Carl "The Bullet" Landicino has called witnesses who signed Duran and Medina’s petitions and questioned whether signatures match names, whether names match addresses, and in some cases whether individuals signed for others. 

"My folks are consistent," said Duran. "They’re trying to allege conspiracy. They’re trying to get it thrown out on the basis of permeation of fraud."

Team Vito rested its case on Tuesday and Team Esteban is presenting Wednesday morning — highlighting the validity of signatures, and the judge should make her ruling on Friday or early next week.

This is not the first time Lopez has put his full weight to bear on such a seemingly small challenge. In 2008, when New Kings was first starting up, he led a similar campaign to toss County Committee members off the ballot.

One must note the presence of a number of Lopez assembly staffers and Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council workers, who are spending their vacations working on the county’s legal challenge for two state committee races. Because there’s no place better for catching some summer rays than civil court.

Update (8/16): On Friday, Judge Carolyn Demarest threw out the plaintiff’s case because of insufficient evidence proving that Duran committed election fraud. In her decision, Demarest went out of her way to show that fraud was not committed and that witnesses against Duran and Medina were not credible. Both will be on the ballot in September, but Lopez may choose to appeal the decision.

Update (8/17): On August 11, Barbara Medina dropped out of the race, voluntarily revoking her ballot, in an announcement made in court. Medina declined to continue her candidacy because of an illness in her family.

(An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Deborah Medina is Barbara Medina’s mother. A Deborah Medina does work at Los Sures and Barbara Medina briefly worked for Councilwoman Diana Reyna last year. We regret the error.)

Related Posts