This much is certain: Helen Gambichler is running for office. She is the Queens Democratic Party bosses’ nominee for a spot on a little-known body called the Democratic County Committee. County committee members are the very blades of grass of grass-roots politics in New York, the worker ants of participatory democracy. There are more than 1,100 Democratic committee members in Queens alone, most representing only a few blocks, all of them unpaid. There is just one problem: Ms. Gambichler, a 72-year-old retired court clerk, did not know she was running for anything.

Source: New York Times August 24, 2018 14:19 UTC