Indivisible Westchester rides anti-Trump wave into mainstream

Indivisible Westchester is ready for another fight.

News broke earlier this month that Republicans had picked a candidate to run for state Senate in a hotly contested suburban district.

Indivisible, which backed the Democrat, tweeted its reaction.

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“It’s official. Game on,” it said.

Later, the account tweeted again and welcomed Republican Julie Killian to the race against Democrat Shelley Mayer.

A photo showed Killian with former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican who was the marquee casualty of a Democratic blue wave that swept through Westchester County in the 2017 elections.

“We’re ready!” the tweet said.

Indivisible Westchester is a progressive group that formed early last year as part of the national movement opposing the Trump agenda. The movement has been credited for bringing new enthusiasm and attention to local politics. Indivisible is cited by insiders as a factor in Astorino’s loss to Democrat George Latimer last year.

Within only a year of its formation, the group has gone from underground to the mainstream. And now its members are looking to hang onto its populist energy and loosely defined structure while coming to terms with its new status as influencers.

Its one-year anniversary party was attended by the likes of Rep. Nita Lowey as well as Latimer, who has publicly thanked the group for its help in getting him elected. But Farah Kathwari, who lives in Larchmont, said the group isn’t ready to be absorbed into the system.

“It’s very important to us that we are not perceived to be an arm of the Democratic Party because we are not,” she said. “We are equally critical of any political party that’s not serving the interests of the people.”

Members also say they aren’t afraid to turn on candidates they helped get into office if the officials turn their backs on the movement’s agenda once in office.

Group’s numbers are elusive

It’s not clear how many members comprise Indivisible Westchester.

From the beginning of the group’s website, there was little information posted on who was in charge. Its leaders mostly don’t use titles and shy away from clearly defined roles.

Deborah Bonner, a Sleepy Hollow resident, said that’s by design.

“People do want structure, but in the sense of kind of rallying around strategy as opposed to knowing what the hierarchy is,” Bonner said. “So long as we have strategy and we could move forward on it, then it really doesn’t make a difference who is sitting at the head of the table.”

A private Facebook group for Indivisible Westchester has about 4,000 members, according to the page's administrator, but not all are regular posters. Indivisible has an email list that’s blasted out to 2,000, leaders say, and their meetings draw a couple of hundred.

The group acts as facilitators with other organizations and is loosely linked with other local Indivisible groups, such as Indivisible Rivertowns. It’s even more difficult to estimate how strong the movement’s numbers are when taking into account the whole network of Indivisibles and other progressive groups.

Bruce Campbell, a member of Indivisible Westchester from Sleepy Hollow, compared the vibe to the campus protests in the civil rights era where diverse groups were united with common values.

“This is kind of an experiment in a political collective,” he said. “We get together, we exchange ideas, we decide on consensus on how to proceed, and we go at it.”

Trump inauguration a rally point

When Donny Khan moved to Irvington with his wife and two children over three years ago, he was plugged into national politics but paid less attention to what was happening in local government.

During the last presidential campaign, the idea of a Trump presidency seemed nearly impossible to him. Until it wasn’t.

Khan and his family attended the women’s march on Jan. 21, 2017, a national demonstration in reaction to Trump’s inauguration the day before.

“I decided that I needed to do more than just arguing with friends on Facebook,” he said. “I needed to take action.”

The march served as a starting point for the local Indivisible group. After the march, dozens of Westchester residents met at a New York City bar and discussed strategy. Soon, the group was taking shape and held its first meeting at a Larchmont church.

About 700 were said to have attended, many of whom didn't know Rob Astorino from Rob Lowe, according to Indivisible leaders.

Some of the members were dedicated Democrats, including Campbell, who is the vice chairman of the Mount Pleasant Democratic committee and served several terms as a trustee in Sleepy Hollow. The 2016 presidential race proved something had to change, he said.

“A lot of people felt that the Democratic Party wasn’t doing it for them, wasn’t providing the answer that they needed,” Campbell said.

The Indivisible groups popped up all over the country after Trump’s election. An Indivisible guidebook circulated on social media at that time, outlining methods to work against his policies.

Shannon Powell, a Larchmont resident and a founder of the Westchester group, said many realized that although local politics isn’t “sexy,” it is important. 

“It really has energized people who have been on the sidelines and weren’t paying attention to anything going on in their own backyard,” Powell said. “Our message to people is, the backyard matters. It’s actually where action should begin and everything should spring from that.”

Astorino became first target

Voter turnout in county and local races is dramatically lower than it is in presidential election years. Although Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in Westchester, Republicans were able to win countywide races in years where there was no presidential or gubernatorial race.

Trump picked up 31 percent of the vote in Westchester, but Astorino had won as county executive in 2009 and 2013 on a message of keeping property taxes flat. It was clear early on things would be different in 2017.

When Astorino held a town hall early last year activists came out in large numbers, tying the former county executive to Trump policies. Astorino supported Trump once he received the presidential nomination and called him a personal friend.

Picketers held signs that said “Trumpocrisy” and showed Trump-style hair on Astorino’s head.

William F.B. O’Reilly, who worked Astorino’s campaign, said his team set out on the re-election campaign ready to run on Astorino’s tax record.

“We realized that Indivisible was going to foul that up because they were going to constantly push back on it,” he said. “Any group in fairly small numbers can do that if they’re loud enough and if they’re persistent enough. And they were more than loud enough and more than persistent.”

Latimer compares group to cavalry

O’Reilly said he received some nasty attacks on social media from the movement, but admired their organization and constant presence on the campaign trail. He said he’d never witnessed a comparable group in Westchester politics since he first got involved in a campaign here in 2008.

Latimer entered the race for executive in spring after a decades-long career in Rye city government and the county and state legislatures. He said for many with his background, there is a feeling of fighting on issues and being in trench warfare.

“You poke your head out of the trench and somebody’s out there shooting at you,” he said. “You shoot back a little bit and you can never seem to make any progress and then all of a sudden you hear a cavalry charge behind you.”

Latimer went on to win the election in convincing fashion despite being largely outspent. Democrats also gained three seats on the county legislature to increase their majority to 12 of 17, and knocked out Republicans in local seats such as the Yonkers City Council president.

As Indivisible gained traction, questions were raised about just what space they occupy in politics. Astorino’s team raised questions during the election about if they needed to register as a political action committee, which would then mean they couldn’t coordinate directly with a campaign.

Most of their expenses have been paid by members out of pocket, but as the group grows in stature it is becoming increasingly clear it needs infrastructure and to cover its expenses. The group is planning a fundraiser in the coming weeks, its members said.

Members set agenda

After taking a collective breath after the 2017 elections, Indivisible has set in motion again, looking to break the perception the resistance is a white women's movement with outreach to young people and communities of color.

Their election priorities for 2018 are Latimer’s former state Senate seat in the 37th District, which comes up in the special election April 24 between Mayer and Killian.

Concern grew that a special election for Latimer's old Senate seat wouldn't be held in time for the state's March 31 budget deadline, leaving residents in that district without a representative during budget negotiations. 

Indivisible organized call rallies that they say flooded Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office with requests to call for an election. In the end, Cuomo called the election but it won't be held until April 24, after the budget deadline. Cuomo's office didn't reply to a request for comment.

In November, Indivisible's targets are Republican Terrence Murphy in Senate District 40 and Republican John Faso in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Although that congressional seat isn’t in Westchester, members said they’d adopted the district as an initiative to put resources behind.

O'Reilly, the Republican strategist, said what will be interesting to watch now is how candidates react to Indivisible's influence. When the national tea party movement took hold in areas around the country, he said, it drove the Republican Party to the right and in some cases elected officials saw primary challenges from harder line candidates.

Democratic strategist Jake Dilemani said the group had proven to be viable but its challenge will be not losing steam like some other populist movements.

“When people are angry at what’s going on politically, they tend to energize and organize,” he said. “The danger is letting that lapse. The hope is that the enthusiasm and the organizaing continues not just through the 2018 cycle but beyond.”

Larchmont resident Amy Gross, an Indivisible member, said this group won’t be a flash in the pan and even the prospect of Trump leaving office wouldn’t mean deflating.

“We just go from defense to offense,” she said. “There’s a short game and a long game and we’re in it. We’re in it to the end.”

Follow reporter Mark Lungariello on Facebook @lungariello and Twitter @marklungariello.