Capital New York

On a rooftop just south of Park Slope, just after the last major salvo of July 4 fireworks over Manhattan petered out,  a lightly buzzed Jonathan Judge, president of the Brooklyn Young Republicans, stepped in front of the view of the skyline.

“We are gathered to celebrate our independence from foreign domination,” said Judge, a compact young man with bright orange hair and, like most of the men in attendance, a thick goatee. "And our independence from corruption and for reform.”

Judge and 15 club members and guests had gathered atop the roof of former congressional candidate and vice chair of the King’s County Republican Party Susan Cleary, simply to celebrate, they all said. Also in attendance were Lucretia Regina-Potter, the B.Y.R.-backed candidate running for State Assembly against Peter Abbate in the 49th district, and Joseph Hayon, a N.Y.-9 Congressional candidate running on religious values. (Hayon says his candidacy is not supported by the B.Y.R., but that he is a member of the group, meaning he is on its email-invite list.)

With the view of the city’s major fireworks largely obscured by midtown’s skyscrapers, and the fireworks from the Gowanus and Prospect Park coming in irregular bursts, the night turned to drink and discussion of their core values.

“We’ve got all kinds of Republicans here—conservatives, libertarians, all kinds,” said communications director Roy Antoun, a Rutgers student and county committeeman and an enthusiastic admirer of Ron Paul. “But at our core, we all believe in two things: reform and some type of limited government.”

“Our club has matured into an individual, reform-thinking organization,” said Judge, seeking to distance his organization from the county Republican organization, and by implication, Brooklyn Republican chair Craig Eaton. He added, “We find flaws in both parties—the way that they support the status quo.”

Still, they spent most of the evening talking about the ineffectiveness of the local Republicans. They think the state party is fairly useless, they don't like the county leadership, which they feel is insufficiently transparent, and they had complaints about sub-leadership party functionaries, too.

Antoun was unhappy with his first District Leader because she failed to tell him where to show up to be a County Committee delegate. Regina-Potter has it out for the organizers and low-level folks in the 49th Assembly district.

Mostly, they were angry at the whole existing New York Republican firmament, in a comprehensive, Tea Party kind of way: for them, the party is an edifice that needs to be destroyed and remade.

“It’s not a party, it’s just a messed-up institution,” said Yakkov Bard, who says he is still a registered Democrat but intends on changing his registration soon. “I don’t think they have a goal, really.”

It should be said here that it's hard to know what the goal for the Brooklyn Republican Party ought to be, realistically.

Brooklyn Republicans exist in helpless, seething discontent in a very Democratic borough within a very Democratic city. In Brooklyn, the 900,000 enrolled Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly eight to one.

The only real Republican force in the borough is State Senator Marty Golden, who is a sort of hyperlocal powerhouse, but thoroughly actualized in his fiefdom as it currently exists, and certainly no threat to the city's established political order.

A beleagured state party, led by Chariman Edward Cox, provides no succor to Brooklyn, seemingly resigned to putting the same brave, hopeless candidates up against incumbent Democrats in downticket races, and focusing what little energy and means it possesses on manufacturing enthusiasm for gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and on boxing out Mike Long’s Conservative Party of New York from the party's tactical decision-making processes.

“Party leaders don’t do anything to organize or consolidate the party,” said Antoun, claiming that the Republican leadership has gutted the civil society mechanisms that could help Republicans to take more of Brooklyn than ever before.

“When associations are made by organized clubs—outside the express will of the party boss,” added Judge, “they are attacked.”

He says that the local Republicans organization deliberately seeks to destroy grassroots movements, and that a number of candidates had been called and harassed by higher-ups in the party for expressing dissent. Judge, Antoun and Regina-Potter say that internal debate about the direction of the party has been all but eliminated in Brooklyn, if not the city and the state.

Asked for his observations on the party, Judge said, “It doesn’t exist to be observed."

(Reached for response, Eaton suggested that the Brooklyn Young Republicans were long on talk on short on constructive action. "It's all smoke and mirrors and blogs and e-mails and statements instead of rolling up their sleeves and getting out in the field for a candidate," he said.)

The first goal of the Brooklyn Young Republicans is to establish a foothold somewhere by actually winning. They deplored the lack of more significant help from the party firmament for Regina-Potter, who looks like CJ Craig from The West Wing if you took a picture of Craig and compressed it in Photoshop. She's matronly and very proud to be so, leading her child with her around the event, pushing food and drink on a guest-reporter and pivoting from political topics to talk about the dinner she had just cooked and how incredibly hot the stove was.

She was not unaware of the odds she faced. "How can any average person who’s involved in politics go up against dinosaurs with huge war chests?” she asked.

There was no answer.

The Brooklyn Young Republicans speak about substantive politics with the zeal of Tea Partiers (not accidentally), and considered themselves locked in a fight with a party leadership that is not only complacent but ideologically compromised. They believe they're gaining traction: Judge claimed that the organization, as of last count, had some 100 paying members and another 1,000 on its mailing list.

“We provide a place where we can speak without being condemned and judged for what we believe in,” said Judge. He claimed that a lack of transparency, choice on their ballots, and discourse had led many to abandon the Brooklyn Republicans. “And we bring them back,” Judge said. “We stop a lot of bloodletting.”

“The challenge of Republicanism in Brooklyn is about enunciating the common sense to enough people so that they can see that they’re digging their own graves,” said David Teitelbaum, who recently became a member.

There seemed to be a consensus among the attendees that Brooklyn is teeming with secret Republicans—immigrants who have not broken into civil society, outcasts disillusioned by the party, and even Democrats In Name Only who vote for their party only for the chance to participate in a real debate and see real change come from their vote.

“There are a lot of Democrats out there who are strongly sympathetic towards the Republican Party,” said Judge. “We have actually been converting Democrats!”

Bard presented himself as living proof of that. “I used to think that conservatives ate babies," he said. Now, he said, he believes that “conservatives are the most character-assassinated group in history.”

He told me he believes in the Brooklyn Young Republicans and their power to overcome the no-hope Brooklyn old Republicans. And he said he believes in Judge's vision of Brooklyn as “hopefully soon a formerly Democratic borough.”

The event, scheduled to end at midnight, broke up early, with most of the attendees leaving after the food and drink started to run out. Bard and Judge stayed on the rooftop to the very end.

Mark Hay

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