Why All the Fuss Over New Kings Democrats?

Earlier this week during our state primary, in which there were only a handful of contested races around the state, I ran for a down-the-ballot seat that caused a supporter of my opponent to go to unheard of lengths to defeat me by sending sophisticated direct mail to the district’s voters and conducting phone banks.  What was I running for?  To be one of the 6,200 members of the Kings County Democratic Committee.

More than a year ago, I met Rachel Lauter, a fellow resident of Brooklyn, in the basement of Duryea Presbyterian Church in Prospect Heights during a community organizer meeting for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.  Because of what Dr. King called the "fierce urgency of now" for a new kind of politics on a national level, we were both drawn into the Obama campaign.