By Vinnie Rotondaro
Queens City Council hopefuls have long lived by an unwritten political law: If you don’t have the muscle of the county Democratic machine, you don’t win.

On Sept. 15, Jimmy Van Bramer broke that rule.

Van Bramer beat the leadership pick, Deirdre Feerick, by nearly 10 percentage points in the District 26 primary. Disenchantment with the status quo and support from unions and the Working Families Party (WFP) combined to push him over the top, many political analysts said.

“Union and third-party challenges to County power have been going on for a while,” said George Arzt, a political consultant. “But this is one of the cases where they actually came to loggerheads.”

Even so, historically low voter-turnout qualified the win. Out of 47,147 registered Democrats in District 26, just over 6,500 came out to vote, according to Board of Election numbers. Van Bramer beat Feerick by 571 votes.

The voter-list expertise and canvassing support Van Bramer took from the WFP proved crucial. His victory was one of 21 other City Council wins for the WFP.

Much of Van Bramer’s appeal stemmed from the years of face-time he invested in the close-knit, working class neighborhoods of Woodside, Sunnyside, Long Island City and parts of Astoria and Maspeth. Unlike Feerick, whose career was been spent in City Hall, he had deep grassroots ties in the area. Locals saw him as an independent—someone who would stand up for their concerns.

Such was the case for Lou Rispoli, a former foster care worker who began volunteering for Van Bramer after seeing him speak at an early fundraiser in Woodside. Rispoli maintained that Feerick relied too heavily on the backing of the sitting City Council member, Eric Gioia, who made an unsuccessful bid for public advocate.

“One of Deirdre Feerick’s miscalculations was to depend so heavily on Eric Gioia’s endorsement,” Rispoli said. “Eric is extremely unpopular in his own district. People perceived him as not being in touch with working class people.”

The unions helped, too. Van Bramer picked up support from the New York Hotel Trades Council, District Council 37, the Service Employees International Union 32BJ and the United Auto Workers.

The Hotel Trades Council, which boasts 12,000 members in Queens, may have been the most effective. In recent years the group helped elect Julissa Ferreras and Elizabeth Crowley to City Council and Joseph Addabbo Jr. to state Senate. In this primary it worked to tip the scales for anti-establishment candidate Daniel Dromm in the 25th District.

The union also teamed up with the WFP in other City Council races, creating a political combo that many establishment candidates struggled to counter. Van Bramer’s campaign typified the trend.

“This year it seems that the unions aligned with the Working Families Party and the Van Bramer campaign did a better job of identifying voters and getting them to the polls,” said Jerry Skurnick, of Prime New York, a voter analysis consultancy. “Citywide you could definitely see a trend on primary day that seemed to be a bit of an anti-incumbent anti-organization vote.”

The partnership was not always smooth, however. In early August, the WFP and its for-profit affiliate, Data and Field Services (DFS), came under intense public scrutiny when the bi-monthly City Hall News claimed that they used shared resources and staff to get around campaign finance laws for six City Council campaigns, including Van Bramer’s. The Board of Elections then determined the WFP and DFS—which share an office and staff—to be virtually indistinguishable, raising the question of dubious campaign financing practices.

On Aug. 26, Feerick filed a complaint with the Campaign Finance Board seeking a formal investigation into Van Bramer’s relationship with the WFP and DFS. Nothing came of her protest.

The scandal simply didn’t stick, said Dan Levitan, a WFP spokesman. He added: “We’re very confident that everything we did was in compliance and the Campaign Finance Board will find that when they conduct a full audit of all the campaigns.”

Presuming Van Bramer gets the all clear, he faces a new challenge in working with the party machine in the general election, which he is expected to walk away with. But political analysts say that despite some antagonism during the primary, it’s unlikely that he or other upstarts will change the way Queens politicians do business.

“The County has rebounded before and they will work very well with the victors,” Arzt said. “And whether it’s is Danny Dromm or Jimmy Van Bramer, they will probably play ball with the organization as well.”

Van Bramer tries to woo the crowd at the Distrct 26 arts and culture debate. (Above)