The new leader of the Queens machine is as old-school as they come.
Early in the morning on Monday, March 11, dozens of Democratic district leaders shuffled upstairs to the county clubhouse, perched above a shuttered C-Town grocery store in Forest Hills. Before the workday started, they rubber-stamped the predetermined outcome: Rep. Gregory Meeks would be the new Queens County Democratic Party chairman.
The Queens Democrats are an insular group, often criticized for acting like an exclusive fraternity – you’ve got to know someone to get in. There wasn’t any sort of a public process to elect Meeks, and the meeting wasn’t publicly announced. The roughly72 district leaders didn’t sit through any debates among the contenders – in fact, there weren’t any other contenders, since nobody but Meeks admitted to having an interest in the job.
For the rest of the 800,000 registered Democrats in Queens, here’s the process of picking a new county boss: 1) Former Rep. Joseph Crowley resigns as county chairman to focus on his new lobbying job with the Washington, D.C.-based Squire Patton Boggs. 2) A few outlets report that Meeks is the leading contender to replace him. 3) Word spreads that Meeks will be elected. 4) Meeks is elected. The Queens Machine works.
Meeks does represent change for the county party, but only in certain ways. He’s the first black man to lead the Queens Democrats, and he’s the first boss from the traditionally black, middle-class neighborhoods of Southeast Queens. But the breakthrough is not enough to quiet critics of the county party. Meeks is the establishment, a party line insider who has been in office with county support for more than 25 years. He’s a capitalism-embracing moderate, and he has fended off numerous allegations of corruption over his years in office. If the county party wanted to signal political change, he would be an odd choice.
Yet change is already coming for the Queens Democratic Party. The borough, or at least its western reaches, is the physical epicenter of the capitalism-skeptic wing of the Democratic Party. It’s where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upset Crowley last summer. It’s where committed activists, fearing gentrification and furious over secretly negotiated subsidies for a hugely profitable corporation, defeated Amazon’s HQ2 plans. And it’s where the seven Democrats running for Queens district attorney are arguing over who can jail the fewest people.
This growing crop of voters might leave Meeks no choice but to reform the county party. But he said he’s not that guy.
“I still don’t use the term, necessarily, ‘reformer,’” he said when asked if that description would apply to him. “I say now, what I want to be is a bridge builder.”
Meeks’ domain is far from the country club set in Forest Hills, and even farther away from the growing progressive influence of Western Queens, where some elected officials say they barely know the congressman. Meeks is now the county boss of those neighborhoods too, but he was already the de facto boss in Southeast Queens. Meeks has been organizing monthly breakfast meetings, inviting all the elected officials whose districts overlap his: state legislators, New York City Council members, district leaders – a couple dozen in all. (New York City Councilman Eric Ulrich, the sole elected Republican in the deep-blue borough, is not invited – though he gets along well with Meeks.) Such geographic cohesion is relatively rare in politics, where the brassy horns of competitive elections can often drown out the soft strings of cooperation. “My colleagues are like, ‘You guys do that? You guys talk to each other?’” said New York City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, a frequent attendee.
Soon after meeting Meeks, you get the impression that the answer to that question is no – the congressman does all the talking. Meeks, 65, is a gregarious, backslapping politician who talks as loudly as he dresses – often in double-breasted suits with busy shirts and bold ties. That recipe has made him a favorite on cable news, where he has been appearing frequently in recent months. While he’s dynamic on screen, he’s even more animated to an audience of one. A week after he was elected county chairman, we met at his district office in Jamaica, Queens, and talked about his plans for the new job.