Prospective candidates at the New Kings Democrats meeting in mid-May.

As the Barack Obama campaign secured a hard fought victory in the Democratic primary this week, a core group of Obama volunteers from North Brooklyn are turning their grassroots activism toward more local concerns. Matt Cowherd, a lawyer and delegate candidate for Obama in New York’s Democratic primary, and Rachel Lauter, a recent Brown University graduate who works for the City of New York and a candidate for County Committee, have co-founded New Kings Democrats, a new political club that will build off of the online network of activism that helped drive Senator Obama’s fundraising and turnout to record levels in the primary.

Over the past few weeks, New Kings Democrats has been recruiting candidates for Brooklyn Democratic County Committee. The position is as well-known as it is powerful. That is, not very. County Committee members are elected every two years and get to elect the Chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, convene committees to discuss issues of interest to members, and help fill vacancies when politicians resign from office. Unfortunately, County Committee has developed a reputation for not doing very much. They only meet once every two years and half the Brooklyn seats are vacant.

New Kings hopes to change that by getting a slate of candidates, about fifty people, from North Brooklyn elected to the post. Petitioning started Tuesday and candidates must gather signatures in their neighborhood before the July 10th filing deadline with the Board of Elections. If you see people asking for signatures for something called Democratic County Committee, it is not a performance art project. These people are actually running for local office and you can vote for them in the fall.

Cowherd and Lauter have brought in Jeff Merritt, President of the Grassroots Initiative to train the prospective candidates by explaining how to fill out paperwork properly and giving advice about campaigning for the office. The candidates consist of a diverse group of young professionals under 35, drawn from Obama listservs and primary campaign phone banking sessions at Cowherd’s Wyckoff Avenue loft.

Two members of a North Brooklyn City Council office have been attending the meetings, though they came on behalf of themselves and were not representing their councilmember. Esteban Duran, a City Council candidate running for Councilwoman Diana Reyna’s open seat in 2009, filled out a petition, though other City Council candidates have not attended the meetings. Lauter believes that if the political club continues to grow, it could form a base of support for candidates for local office in 2009, though it is far too early to speculate who the group would endorse.

The group is so new that Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the current Brooklyn Democratic Party President, has not heard about the organization, but welcomes their involvement. Cowherd and Lauter have stated that they want to work with existing party leaders to bring more young people into the Democratic Party.

One thing is clear. With so many vacancies at the county level, it should not be difficult for New Kings candidates to win their seats. The hard part of figuring out exactly how they will work within the Brooklyn Democratic Party, happens afterwards.