Almost every summer, voters of New York City go through a rite of passage—looking up from the back of their ballot and asking, what the hell is a judicial delegate? 

The short answer: Judicial delegates are elected, unpaid members of county political parties who are tasked with evaluating and ultimately voting on who will get their party’s nomination to be judges in their borough’s State Supreme Court.[1] Those nominations occur at judicial conventions typically held over the summer by every county party, and those State Supreme Court nominees then appear on the general election ballot for voters to choose from. 

1. The State Supreme Court is, contrary to the name, not New York’s highest court. (That would be the Court of Appeals.) The State Supreme Court is a trial court that handles both felonies and, in New York City, civil cases that exceed $50,000. There are about 366 State Supreme Court judges in New York City, according to data compiled by the judicial watchdog organization Scrutinize. By law, there are 173 seats for elected State Supreme Court judges in New York City. Most of the remaining judges were appointed by the Office of Court Administration via an opaque internal court system.

The origin of the judicial convention was meant to root out corruption. In 1911, a Tammany Hall-era patronage system that awarded judgeships to the politically connected was replaced with direct primaries. But those elections were also quickly dominated by the politically connected and were shortly after replaced in 1921 with the judicial convention model, and its elected delegates. The convention was supposed to root out corruption by putting regular New Yorkers in charge of the nominating process. 

In theory, the duly elected judicial delegates, who can be anyone who’s a registered voter with the political party, are meant to represent the will of the people at a judicial convention, vetting potential judges and arguing for or against their nomination. But this veneer of representative democracy is just that—peel it away, and the pretense reveals itself.

In reality, leaders of the county parties (and in most of New York City, that means the local Democratic Parties), control the process.[2] For one, judicial delegates tend to be party insiders. 

2. Often, to even be considered as a potential State Supreme Court candidate by party leaders, aspiring judges have to get involved with the parties—either through fundraising for them or by donating to the party. “It is 100 percent politics. It is 0 percent merit and democracy,” one Brooklyn political club member said about the process in 2021. The parties also play a large role in supporting and endorsing judges for Civil Court seats, who run in primaries to get on the general election ballot. Read more about how all of this sausage is made here.

And then there’s the fact that the outcome of the judicial nominating convention is almost always determined by party leaders, often in advance of the convention itself. 

Perhaps no other borough’s Democratic Party exerts more influence over its judicial election process than the Brooklyn Democrats. The party’s nominating convention is at best a largely empty ritual, and at worst a sham, where elected judicial delegates rubber-stamp decisions that have already been made in a much less public and less democratic process. 

For years, the actual selections were hammered out days or weeks before the Brooklyn Dems’ nominating convention, during a literal backroom meeting at Nick’s Lobster House in Mill Basin. This is not a meeting for judicial delegates—at this gathering, party leaders arrive with their slates of preferred candidates. And it’s at this meeting, party insiders say, where the horse-trading is finalized. 

This is how the Brooklyn Democratic Party has operated for decades. “Before it comes to us, it’s already done,” said one 2002 Brooklyn judicial delegate. ”Then we come in and just OK everything.”

The Brooklyn Democrats did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

Hell Gate and Type Investigations decided to check in on the Brooklyn Dems’ State Supreme Court judicial nominating process in the summer of 2025 to see if anything’s shifted for the better in recent years. 

As we found out, not much has changed.

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A peek inside an “archaic” process

On a mild summer day this past August, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, was rushing around the new Mill Basin headquarters of the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club. It was a meeting of the county party’s district leaders, and Bichotte Hermelyn was trying to rally votes for her favored judicial candidates, as those district leaders milled around trays of mac and cheese, kosher Chinese, and Caribbean dishes, all supplied by the former head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, Frank Seddio.[3] Both Bichotte Hermelyn and Seddio did not respond to requests for comment.

3. You might recognize Bichotte Hermelyn from Hell Gate and Type Investigations’s award-winning dive into corrupt machinations of power in New York City, the Eric Adams Table of Success. As for Frank Seddio, well, we’ve been keeping a very close eye on him indeed.

No one was legally allowed to be inside the storefront, which was under a full vacate order due to part of its facade having collapsed two years earlier. But that was fitting, considering that this meeting of district leaders[4] was undermining another facade: the state’s democratic judicial elections. 

4. District leaders are unpaid, elected leaders of county political parties. Each Assembly district gets one male and one female district leader, and they are theoretically meant to be the connection between the grassroots of the party, the voters, and its leadership.

We had been tipped off that they had gathered to decide on the slate of judicial nominees that would be rubber-stamped by the elected judicial delegates a few days later at the Brooklyn Democrats’ official judicial nominating convention. 

Before the meeting began, Hell Gate and Type Investigations observed Bichotte Hermelyn zigzagging from one district leader to another and pulling them aside for chats; she was, according to several district leaders we spoke with as we stood on the sidewalk, lining up votes. 

“Many people say one thing, and then they change. That’s when the fun starts,” district leader Heriberto Mateo told us, looking over at Bichotte Hermelyn.

Assemblymember Maritza Davila, another district leader, then cut him off from talking to us, asking him in Spanish, “What are you doing? Talking to the press?”

“It’s archaic,” district leader Jacqui Painter told us when asked about the nominating process, before ducking into the storefront.

At 7:31 p.m., it was time to call the meeting to order. “There’s a lot of negotiation going on,” Bichotte Hermelyn told the assembled district leaders, according to a surreptitious recording of the meeting received by Hell Gate. (We were not allowed inside the meeting, outside of a brief moment at the beginning to eat a buffet plate that Seddio offered us.)

Bichotte Hermelyn then listed the names of people who had applied to the borough’s judicial screening committee[5] to be considered as a State Supreme Court candidate, and had been deemed qualified.

5. Like other county parties, the Brooklyn Dems have a judicial screening panel that vets any person who has declared their candidacy as a State Supreme Court judicial nominee, to ensure they meet minimum standards. They send around a list of qualified candidates to the Brooklyn Democrats’ district leaders. The party has recently held public candidate forums—a step introduced in 2023, after reform-minded district leaders pushed for more transparent and standardized ways to evaluate judicial candidates. (Last year’s was held just one day before the meeting we’re writing about.) Much of the real wheeling and dealing, both current and former district leaders told us, happens in that brief interregnum.

What followed was three hours of acrimony and deal-making. 

After each individual was named, people either shared glowing endorsements and noted their deep connections to certain candidates—a district leader noted that they met one candidate “about 15 years ago”—or the name was read aloud and received no comment from the crowd. Either a judicial candidate already had a district leader ready to speak up for them, or their nomination, even if they were qualified, went nowhere. 

After all the names were read and before the voting began, one district leader admonished the group not to pick people based on connections or demographics, but on experience.

“Seats don’t belong to anybody. They don’t belong to people. Just consider that when we say that a seat ‘belongs to a certain community,’ that by definition is exclusionary,” that district leader said. “The seat belongs to the people.”

There was a smattering of applause, but their plea was largely ignored. Throughout the meeting, various district leaders rose up and spoke out in favor of candidates who came from their communities, or were from underrepresented groups on the bench, or had done the legwork of ingratiating themselves with the county party by reaching out to district leaders or attending party events. And unfortunately, there weren’t enough open seats—only nine—for all the candidates people wanted to push. 

Voting began. To winnow down the list, they voted in three rounds, and in each, district leaders could vote for up to seven potential judges, while also “reserving” a few of those votes for later in the round. 

While some candidates amassed sizable majorities each round, others were running neck-and-neck for the last few slots of the nine nominations the party had to hand out. During the final rounds of voting, the district leaders then squabbled among themselves about who would eventually get the nominations, which would all but ensure they were elected in the overwhelmingly Democratic county.

District leaders wrote down on notepads which person voted for which candidate; they could possibly then later track them down and perhaps make a swap with them for their favored candidates. Bichotte Hermelyn read aloud the vote totals—some candidates were extremely close.

“Let’s take a break!” one district leader shouted.

“Because everybody wants to make some deals,” another person muttered.

At 10:30 p.m., Bichotte Hermelyn announced they would be going to a run-off for two candidates who were in a tie.

Not all district leaders were fans of the process—some district leaders belonged to reform factions of the party, like the New Kings Democrats, whose goal is to take down the current party leadership. 

One district leader who was especially incensed by the naked deal-making got up and confronted Bichotte Hermelyn. “Are we walking around whispering in people’s ears to tell people who to vote for and who to pull votes from? Is that what we’re doing right now?” they said.

“I’m talking to Frank,” Bichotte Hermelyn shot back, referring to Seddio.[6] “Everybody talks to Frank,” another person said.

6. Seddio continues to play a prominent role in recommending judges for the bench. For more on Seddio, go here.

Finally, after hours of negotiating, and a runoff that was decided by two votes, the nine candidates had been decided. 

Only one step remained—the actual judicial nominating convention. 

“We want to make sure your voices are heard at the judicial convention. So when we’re nominating someone…we’re going to have designated names to nominate the person and second, so we need to know everybody who’s going to be nominating someone and seconding,” Bichotte Hermelyn announced. “These are the winners for this year,” she added. “This was as fair as it could be.”

“I want to thank you all for making this happen nice and easy,” Bichotte Hermelyn said, before ending the meeting with a word of warning: “I would suggest when you’re meeting judges, stay away from lavish dinners.[7] A cup of coffee would be great. Stay away from having four or five hours,” she said. “We’ve been hearing lavish dinners, four-hour sessions. Stop it, please. Because the next thing you’re going to hear in the news is the Brooklyn Democratic Party is ‘corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.'”

7. For more on these “lavish dinners” Bichotte Hermelyn was referring to, go here.

Bichotte Hermelyn did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

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“It just didn’t make sense: How are we…deciding on who’s going to be a judge?”

All nine of the judges nominated by the Brooklyn Democratic Party won their election in November. In fact, no one besides those judges appeared on the general election ballot. (To appear on the ballot, you must be nominated by a political party. Republicans don’t even bother in Brooklyn, for the most part.)

District leader Julio Peña III, a member of the New Kings Democrats who was in the room as the chaos unfolded, said that he and several others who were there know that this isn’t how State Supreme Court judges should be nominated. He described the process as “ridiculous.”

“It was incredibly intimidating, and I had no idea what I was doing, and I felt like I almost didn’t want to vote at all,” Peña said. “I don’t have the qualifications to make this kind of decision.”

The August affair in Mill Basin appears to be standard for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. 

Attorney Mark Hanna, who was also in the room that night, was first introduced to the absurdity of this process when he was elected in 2022 as a Brooklyn Democratic Party district leader for Bay Ridge. As a new district leader, he started attending the private meetings at Nick’s Lobster House. He recalled, “It was this weird horror of: ‘Wait, our judicial system is being decided by these people that I don’t know, who aren’t lawyers, who are sitting at a lobster house?'”

“All of a sudden [the potential judges] become political pawns in a horse-trading game between district leaders,” Hanna said. He saw firsthand, he said, how some district leaders within the Brooklyn Democratic Party make alliances, agreeing to vote for each other’s desired judge based on personal connections with that person, rather than their aptitude at applying the law. 

Dana Rachlin, who served as a district leader for Greenpoint and Williamsburg from 2022 to 2024, was shocked by the process in which candidates became judges. “It just didn’t make sense: How are we, district leaders, some of us have never set foot inside of a courtroom, deciding on who’s going to be a judge?” she said. Even more troubling, she said, at that time, there was no formal process to learn about the candidates and assess their qualifications. (Thanks in part to Rachlin’s efforts, the party began holding those aforementioned public candidate forums.) Indeed, some district leaders never did, she said: “There were district leaders that never met with candidates, and then they would just give their proxy to another district leader.” 

But what happens at an actual official judicial nominating convention? Read our next Case File, which takes us to the Queens Democrats’ 2025 judicial nominating convention.