Unity Just Prevented an Election - And You Should be Angry About It.

A few days ago, New Action’s Executive Board unanimously voted to endorse Ben Morgenroth for the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) Board. In-service members from across the city—many of them passionate advocates for Tier 6 reform—joined forces to help Ben, one of our most outspoken voices on pension equity, collect the 1,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot. Not only did he meet that threshold—he crushed it, submitting a total of 1,353 signatures in just about a week.

Unity did what Unity always does when a challenge emerges: they tried to disqualify him. Even after throwing everything they could at his petition, Ben still had more than enough valid signatures to qualify. By all rights, we should be heading into a contested election between Ben and Unity’s candidate, Victoria Lee.

Instead, we got a disqualification—and no election at all.

Let’s rewind. Unity had already fast-tracked an endorsement for Lee through the Delegate Assembly before any other candidates were even confirmed to be running. It’s a decades-old trick: pretend it’s a one-person race so Unity's handpicked candidate gets the official UFT stamp of approval. That move alone undermines basic union democracy. But what happened next is worse.

Victoria Lee filed a formal challenge to Ben’s candidacy, citing a supposed technical error on his petition form: the inclusion of his name on the name line and alongside a campaign address. Here’s the kicker—Unity’s own candidate in last year’s TRS race, Christina McGrath, did the exact same thing. It’s a nitpick at best, and a manufactured disqualifier at worst. But it worked.

Ben is off the ballot. The election is off the table. And the 1,353 members who signed his petition? Silenced. Instead of a choice, we get a coronation.

Why Unity did this is a mystery—even tactically. Let’s be real: Victoria Lee had every institutional advantage. She already had the DA’s endorsement (even if improperly obtained), her literature was plastered across schools, and Ben was a lesser-known challenger entering the race mid-cycle while UFT members are already inundated with the general election. Unity already had the Goliath advantage here. So why not allow the vote and claim a legitimate win?

Instead, they’ve handed critics another glaring example of how Unity stifles democracy to cling to power—even when there’s no real threat. It's a baffling strategic error. And it’s one more reason why many of us are fed up.

If we want a real union with real elections, we can’t keep letting Unity run the show. There’s still time to vote for ARISE.