Greg Meeks to convene city power brokers this weekend to discuss council speaker race

Queens County Boss Greg Meeks is convening a roundtable of power brokers this weekend to discuss the race for City Council speaker, sources familiar with the meeting confirmed to City & State. 

County Democratic leaders and labor leaders are invited to attend. The meeting will serve as a level-setting moment for county machines and unions before the annual Somos conference on Wednesday, where many a speaker deal has been hashed out. It also comes ahead of Tuesday’s mayoral election, after which, a probable Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may choose to get involved in the speaker race. Meeks has not endorsed Mamdani.

Meeks’ meeting also follows an initiative spearheaded by City Council Members Lincoln Restler and Althea Stevens to discuss the council’s next leader in forums that are for members only – excluding the traditional influencers from outside the council. Speaker candidates appeared at internal council forums on Wednesday and Thursday. The aim of the group is more informative than persuasive. Attendees are not being organized into a voting bloc. 

There are currently six candidates for council speaker, and Manhattan Council Member Julie Menin is widely seen as the candidate with the most appeal to outside influencers. She’s said to have a good relationship with Meeks. 

Not everyone is committed in the race, however, and the planned meeting is expected to include stakeholders who are strongly supportive of Menin as well as ones who haven’t leaned as hard toward a candidate in the race. Members of the Brooklyn delegation – the largest in the City Council – have candidates in the speaker race who they like, but the county has not decided on one candidate to support as a bloc, according to Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. (Bichotte Hermelyn did not initially tip City & State off about the meeting.)

Bichotte Hermelyn said that talks among county leaders are always ongoing and that she expects there to be plenty more opportunities to discuss the race during Somos. “I don’t know what’s the rush,” she said. “It’s going to be a democratic process.”