[00:00:00] Blue City politics in New York City, and some would say nationally, just got a major shock to the system after socialist Zoran Mandani won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary by more than 10 percentage points over former New York Governor Cuomo. So the question we're going to be asking today is just what this victory means for the future of blue cities, not just what happened in New York, but what does it mean for other blue cities across the country?
[00:00:23] And joining us to talk it over for this episode, we were very excited to have a chance to speak to one of the Democratic Party's leading strategists, Celinda Lake, one of two lead pollsters for the Biden campaign in 2020. She continues to work as a pollster, you're going to hear in this episode, for other Democrats across the country, including AOC. So she's on the progressive side, and she's excited, Sandeep, about Mandani's win.
[00:00:50] And I'm excited that we had a chance to speak in part because she makes the case for why that victory could be a blueprint for Democrats elsewhere. And so I thought what she had to say was pretty interesting stuff. Yeah. Celinda, I've known Celinda for a long time. She is one of the country's most respected, I would say, progressive pollsters and strategists on the Democratic side.
[00:01:14] And so it was great to have her on, not just to make the affirmative case for Mandani and for the issues and kind of positions that he represents, but also for why she thinks he's laying out a blueprint for how politics need to evolve in blue cities going forward. You'll hear in the episode, I'm obviously a Mandani skeptic.
[00:01:41] I'm fairly sure that the kind of politics he represents is not the pathway forward for the Democratic Party and maybe not even in blue cities. I'm not sure he can deliver on his results. That said, where I am 100 percent in agreement with Celinda is in her very clear indictment that she delivers against the Democratic establishment,
[00:02:04] the Cuomo campaign and their inability or failure to put forward alternative ideas to the kinds of ideas that charismatic young Democratic socialists like Zoran Mandami are putting forward. Yeah, and I would say, you know, I went into this with some skepticism, which I still have about some of his policy ideas. But hey, I'm wishing him well. I'm hoping that he tries some of these things and some of them may work and help progressive causes.
[00:02:34] And maybe those specific issues will be blueprints for Democrats in other blue cities. So here's the show. Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Blue City Blues, a podcast featuring smart guests talking about the problems facing blue cities and how to fix them. I'm David Hyde with political consultant Sandeep Kaushik.
[00:03:03] Sandeep, I understand you are up visiting the islands for the Fourth of July. And the rumor is that you have no embarrassment about how bougie that sounds. I'm leading the gentry lifestyle. Yes. I bet I meant you're a man of the you're a man of the people. So you have no embarrassment. Yeah. Yeah. Zoran Mandami wants to tax me. Yeah. Unfortunately, visiting the islands, not the topic this week. We're going to be talking about the fact that Zoran Mandami won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary.
[00:03:32] And joining us with insights and knowledge, one of the Democratic Party's leading strategist, Celinda Lake. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited about the topic. Yeah. And just, hey, Celinda, it's been a while, but. I know. And I want to be in the Sandlands. That's my favorite island. Come on out. You can stay at my place. All right. You got a deal. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts about Mom Donnie's Wind and New York and the, you know, and what it means. And I'm sure you do, too. So this is going to be fun.
[00:04:02] Well, I'm very excited about the wind. And I actually don't think it is shocked the system, but it actually was a shock in the making for a while. And I think that the victory was just represented in an incredibly well-done campaign and grassroots support and mobilization of voters. But it's like Barbara Mikulski used to say, I'm a 20-year overnight success.
[00:04:28] So I think that this has been building for a while, and it's great to see it come to this be the next step. But there's been a lot of analysis sort of from the progressive left. This has been a big, we told you so. The messaging, the way the campaign was run, the idea that progressive populism may be the answer, maybe a blueprint for the Democratic Party nationally, maybe in other blue cities. Mondami's platform includes opening city-run grocery stores, making buses free, freezing
[00:04:57] the rent on rent-stabilized apartments, a whole bunch of stuff. And free daycare, right? Lots and lots of free stuff. Free daycare, which we definitely need. So anyway, progressives believe that this shows, you know, it's like I said, it's sort of when I told you so. From the establishment left, pushback against some of those kinds of conclusions. You're excited about this. What are some of the tentative conclusions, though, that you think Democratic Party folks
[00:05:24] or just people living in blue cities can draw from this race? So I think, number one, it shows that the voters are in the mood for change and new leadership. I think, number two, the establishment tries to take down these new leaders. And I saw it with the congressman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and accusing her of being only a bartender, which she was fine with because she wanted to represent bartenders and suggesting
[00:05:53] that Zohan did not have enough experience, which he has plenty of experience. People don't even know he held office. And he's a very seasoned thinker. With a wonderful mother, by the way. And my favorite filmmaker. So I think that it's ironic that the voters are just not having it anymore. The so-called experience and establishment hasn't produced much for it in his very, very flawed leadership.
[00:06:21] He also offered something positive and positive beats negative. And I hope this is a big lesson that the Democrats take away from this because you can't beat something with nothing, which is what we're trying to do about half the time at the national level. So Zohan offered clear specifics. These are very popular policies. And you can call them socialists. You can call them communists. You can call them MAGA. You can call them whatever you want. The voters call them darn good ideas.
[00:06:50] And they think they're doable. Freezing rents and stabilize New York is not a radical concept. And freezing rent has really been taking off with the public. Free daycare. And Namibia just moved on. They just elected a woman president. And they moved on free daycare. But we can't move on it, even though the daycare system has collapsed. Bus ridership in D.C. and most blue cities right now. A lot of people aren't paying the fares anyway.
[00:07:17] When you get on a bus in Washington, they don't fuss and fume with you. They just say, get on, get on, get on. So, you know, these policies, grocery stores. I worked in downtown Philly and represented Congressman Dwight Evans district. That place, that district has been a food desert for 40 years and we can't get it fixed. We rely on those voters to get national presidents elected, but we can't fix the food desert. So, oh, thank you.
[00:07:45] So, I think that what these are are really common sense ideas that can be done, that fit, that make real differences in real people's lives, that don't necessarily have the biggest lobbying forces behind them. They just have the people behind them. And isn't it nice for a change that the people speak the loudest rather than the lobbyists? So, I do want to get more into the big picture implications of Mom Donnie's primary win.
[00:08:13] And I think there's certainly a lot to unpack there. But let's put that aside for a minute, Celinda, because I do, you know, because let's talk about what actually happened campaign-wise in this New York City primary and what went wrong with the Cuomo campaign and what Mom Donnie and his campaign did right. And I track this race pretty obsessively from out here in Seattle, especially once the left started to consolidate around Mom Donnie.
[00:08:38] I think the point you were making at the beginning here that this was building for a while. And I think you could kind of see some signs that, you know, this wasn't, you know, a kind of lightning bolt out of the blue that happened in the last couple of weeks. It was really, there were clear signs that even though Cuomo was way ahead in the polls, that Mondami was showing strength and starting to really consolidate the left of the electorate.
[00:09:02] But so I got to say, watching this race, that I thought Cuomo ran a truly horrible, horrible campaign. But Celinda, what's your take on how it went down? I think Cuomo ran a truly horrible, horrible campaign. Yeah. And one of the worst I've seen. And it was old school, even for old schoolers. First of all, he ran negative. He tried to scare people straight. You can't do that. People are sick of it.
[00:09:31] Things are already pretty rough and scary. So you're not going to scare them. Number two, he did not do any transition. I mean, he had developed a lot of unpopularity for personal reasons, for policy reasons, for the handling of COVID, whether it was fair or not. And he had no transition from that. It's just like, I want to come and save you. Wait a minute. Don't you owe me an apology? Don't you owe me an explanation? Don't you want to tell me what's different?
[00:10:00] He ignored the grassroots. He brought in endorsements from outside. You know, why would people and people I really respect? I love Jim Clyburn. I think he's a real leader for his people. Why the people in New York City would care who the congressman from South Carolina is endorsing for the mayoral race when he's a leader in Congress. This is just really, really top down. It's dismissive of what the voters really want.
[00:10:30] It's not listening to them. It's not bringing in community leaders. And I think they're just, I could go on and on, but there are just so many ways. The amount of money being spent, and Zolan raised the money overnight in small donor contributions. And, but the kind of money that Cuomo was raising, the way he was spending his money, it just was misplaced in so many ways. Right.
[00:10:54] They had a huge independent expenditure campaign, but fueled mostly by really, really incredibly wealthy sort of billionaire kind of donors and, you know, corporate Wall Street sort of stuff. But, yeah, to me, because I really agree with what you're saying there, Zolinda. I mean, to me, Cuomo's entire approach in this campaign reeked almost from day one of hubris and entitlement. Right.
[00:11:17] They started off the sort of prohibitive favorite and they sort of treated it as a fait accompli that, that he was going to, you know, he was the anointed one and nobody was going to kind of get in his way on this. And to your point about his prior scandals, I mean, he could have handled that differently. He could have shown some humility and said to the voters, like, I behaved inappropriately in the past and, you know, and how I treated some women in my office when I was governor. And I didn't mean to cause harm, but I did. I'm sorry.
[00:11:46] You know, he could have done that sort of apology thing and asked for forgiveness and people probably would have, you know, forgiven him for that. Instead, he just denied everything and kind of hid behind a wall of of handlers and stuff like that. And I will say this. I spoke to a friend who was involved in his campaign the week before the primary. And he said to me as we were kind of texting back and forth that the Cuomo campaign internally was a real shit show. It was it just turned into a kind of a disaster.
[00:12:16] And they had totally lost focus and couldn't settle on a message in its last couple of months as the Momdani challenge was sort of taking shape. And they started freaking out and they didn't really know how to respond to it. And this person was telling me like they had tweets, old Momdani tweets where he called Obama, quote unquote, evil and untrustworthy.
[00:12:36] And my friend was tearing his hair out saying, you know, why weren't we using this stuff in a closed Democratic primary in New York City saying to voters like, hey, is this really the kind of Democrat that you want to support? The one that says Obama's evil and you can't trust him. And but they didn't use that stuff. They had their TV message was super tired. And I thought they relied way too hard on attacking Momdani for wanting to defund the police, which was a stale message.
[00:13:04] You know, that was one that worked last like a look in Seattle. I've beaten a lot of left wing candidates in the last two cycles by just pointing out, look, this wacko wants to defund the cops. We can't have that. Right. But that's that moment has passed. And I don't think voters think the cops are getting defunded or that they're going anywhere. And so trying to do this fear thing that you were just talking about, Selinda, seems like it just fell flat. Didn't work. Well, and there was no agenda.
[00:13:31] I mean, you're trying to sell that you're the best person to fix things, that you really know what you're doing, that you have unique expertise and you don't offer a single new idea. You don't offer a single solution. You just tear down the other person. Well, that gets old. And then you tear them down in old ways with big money. And after a while, the voters are like, no, forget it. And then you characterize people in these dismissive, disrespectful ways.
[00:14:01] I mean, I remember when the congresswoman was running and I was in her district and I saw these signs in these food places and they were calling her simultaneous, you know, communist, socialist, whatever. This is AOC. These are democratic socialists. Yes, yes, AOC. And, you know, there's a Korean takeout place with a sign in it.
[00:14:24] Now, I hardly imagine that a South Korean takeout place with an AOC sign in the window is a communist set. I mean, get real. So, so it's just, you know, they go too far. They don't offer anything about themselves. Also, I think that one of the things, and you said a very important thing, Sandeep, and we did a study on restoring trust. Cuomo had to restore trust with the voters and he thought he could just come in and didn't have to do that step.
[00:14:52] And we found that the biggest way to restore trust, which is at an all-time low, is to apologize or to say I would do this differently or to say, you know, I made a mistake. It was a different error. I really didn't want to cause, you know, or I've learned things. I mean, there are just so many ways to do this now.
[00:15:16] Now, it's like when Harris, and I love Harris, but when she could not say anything she would do differently, there were so many answers you could give to that. Heck, Joe Biden would do some things differently. Okay? So we both do some things differently. Or that worked, this didn't, and so we're not going to do that again. Or I got my own new ideas and here they are. I mean, this is just insane, these politicians.
[00:15:46] And the voters say when we were doing this testing, you never hear a politician say, I made a mistake, we fell short, or I apologize. And voters are sick of it. All right. So he ran a kind of a crappy campaign, but who knows if Cuomo would have won. And as you said at the top, Salinda, Zoran gets a lot of credit for his messaging, for running such a brilliant campaign.
[00:16:08] I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about this viral video that I didn't see here in Seattle, where he participated in the polar bear plunge in New York City on New Year's Day. He's wearing his business suit that he wears around and he jumps into the water after saying, I'm freezing the rent in New York City. And so it's hilarious, if you haven't seen it. I've not seen that. That's funny. So whether or not actually freezing the rent for rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, I mean, I used to have one. It was like winning the lottery.
[00:16:36] I'm not sure that that's necessarily great policy. But as you say, it's great politics. He's super popular. My question, I guess, is flipping this a little bit. I mean, why is anybody surprised that simple messaging and effective use of these kind of short videos works? Like, we're supposed to be using those for our podcast, you know, and everything else. So, like, why is this a surprise to anyone, especially the Cuomo campaign that's really well-funded?
[00:17:06] Well, I mystified myself because everybody knows the communication has massively shifted. Everybody knows that authenticity is the number one trait you want to communicate. Everybody knows that, particularly in the blue cities, because you can't afford the television, although Cuomo bought television, you can't afford the television raining down. And so, and you're buying half of New Jersey and everything else.
[00:17:32] So why not get on? And everybody knows that something passed on by friends and family and people to people is by far the most effective communication. So, viral videos are not just accidents. I mean, I've never seen anybody. I think Zoran and AOC both share a trait of being incredibly good explainers of what they are thinking.
[00:18:02] And they're very honest and they don't do it with a lot of high register language. They sit down and walk you through, you know, here's what we're going to do. And like I said, freezing the rent, I happen to believe that is a good step. But if you believe it's a bad step, what are you going to do differently?
[00:18:20] And secondly, if you believe it's a bad step, then you better be aware that the voters who used to think it was a bad step now think it's a good idea because we need something to short circuit how expensive housing is becoming. Yeah. He also had a can-do attitude. The irony is he had the all-American attitude. Americans are like, we can get it done.
[00:18:43] There's a very famous experiment that was done in marketing where they asked people, they said, this is the slogan, what do you think? And they said to Germans, this is the best beer that's ever been created. And the Germans said, of course, this is German beer. It's the best beer ever created. And the same formula for 100 years. And I can't remember what the Brits said, but the Americans said, you didn't change the formula in 100 years. Give it to us. We'll make it better in six days.
[00:19:11] So like this can-do attitude is very embedded in our culture. And so Ron had it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's no question that he was just a – whatever you think about his policy and his politics and his promises, that he's a really charismatic and talented politician. I didn't watch that particular video. I did watch some of his videos, including one he did in Hindi, you know, like talking to like the Indian community.
[00:19:39] And they were really – you know, he's charming. He's really, as you said, sunny and optimistic, Celinda. He's smart. He's very – But doesn't talk down to you. Yeah. I mean, he did one where early in his campaign where he went up to the Bronx, right, where a lot of minority voters flipped to Trump in the last election. And he asked them, you know, who they voted for and asked – talked to Trump voters about why they voted for Trump.
[00:20:07] And he did, you know – and just a very candid, like, man on the street. I'm going to have conversations with people. Like, he didn't, like, try to hide the fact that a lot of minority voters were frustrated and fed up and had turned to Donald Trump. And it's good. It's good stuff. Like, it was authentic, right? You said that, you know, that's the name of the game at this point. And one thing I would say – He also showed respect for people. He listened to them and he showed respect.
[00:20:36] And we – Ed Goas and I, the Republican pollster, wrote a book about how we get our system back on track. And we titled it, It's a Question of Respect. You are representing people. You are working for the people. You can work for people legitimately if you don't respect them. And these officeholders who are winning, whether it's Maxwell Frost or so-and – they respect their people. And it shows.
[00:21:02] Yeah, it's not clear Cuomo respected the voters of New York City in this – he didn't – I think it was pretty clear. Yeah, yeah. I think it's pretty clear. Yeah. He certainly didn't show it. And, you know, one quick shout-out here. Our editor for Blue City Blues, Quinn Waller, wrote a story for an online news site in New York City called City Limits right before the election about how much out-of-state money Momdani was bringing in. You were talking about his small donor contributions. They were coming in just from New York.
[00:21:31] They were coming in from all around the country. And in that story, she quotes – and I'm quoted in that story. And I say, like, you know, sometimes if you're an AOC or you're Momdani and you have that charisma and you're – you can build a national kind of celebrity profile and actually bring in lots and lots of small-dollar donations to counteract the big money that comes in from other candidates.
[00:21:55] But in Quinn's story, she quotes a Momdani supporter from New Jersey, right, who had written him a check, and he said, quote, a win for Zoran or even a close race, which I think it will be, is a blueprint for the Democratic Party. Look, run economic populist, run young. And so my question to you, Selinda, is that the blueprint for the Democratic Party nationally or in blue cities? Well, I think it's run populist for sure.
[00:22:25] And we're still having this fight. Even as we are beat by right-wing populism, we are debating whether we should be left-wing populist. It's really insane. Secondly, I would say run for change. Not status quo, not tearing things down. Run for positive change. Offer an alternative. Say what you're for, not what you're against. Offer asset campaigns, not just deficit messages.
[00:22:55] And then run young, maybe run new leadership. Run outside the box. Run authentic. But we need to have more change in our leadership. We need to include these new voices. And whether you're old or young, people want to have a new generation of leadership. And, you know, God knows we have enough problems that we should be using everyone. What's the problem?
[00:23:22] Why can't Cuomo get off his pedestal if he has some good ideas? Recommend them to the government of New York City so he can help. Why not help your state? Why not help your city? No, it's all about him. Yeah, I just want to follow up on, you know, some of these issues that he brought up. Um, and Trump's intervention, uh, after the election, you know, saying he's going to arrest Mom Donnie. He's going to deport him.
[00:23:50] He's going to take over New York City, which Zoran's got to love, right? And I also loved his response. Oh, yeah. Basically saying Trump ran on making groceries cheaper and he hasn't done squat and I'm going to fix that. But let's get into some of these issues over the course of this conversation, one of which is the grocery store issue you brought up in the context of, um, the food desert idea that there are neighborhoods where there are fewer grocery stores. And so maybe this helps solve that.
[00:24:18] But the other issue he brings up is sort of price gouging and how this is going to solve some of our problems with affordability. And that's what he's getting at there, I think, with Trump. And I just, this is just a peeve of mine because I've covered politics here in Washington state. And when inflation was starting to, uh, become an issue in 2022 and Democrats were effectively saved by Roe getting overturned. So it didn't, it didn't really hurt them in that election, but it was an issue.
[00:24:45] They didn't do enough, you know, at the federal level to try to actually solve it. And I heard from our local Congresswoman, Kim Schreier, no, the issue is price gouging where I'm going to go after price gouging. And look, price gouging is kind of a bullshit issue. Anybody who understands economics kind of knows that. And here he is talking about how this is, this is price gouging in grocery stores. And, and I just feel like maybe it's a blueprint for New York city. I get the idea that this is, this is going to maybe work there, but this seems very Trump like to me because you're not being authentic.
[00:25:15] You're not being honest. You're not telling people the truth about egg prices. The reason egg prices are expensive is because, you know, there's the avian flu and the cost for egg producers going up and that's the same for all kinds of groceries and grocery store margins are super low. So it's like you can create subsidized commissaries or whatever you want to call them. And that might lower the price of groceries. It's not necessarily such a bad idea. It's super popular. But I'm wondering kind of what you think about that or what I'm saying about it, at least
[00:25:42] is that an idea that Democrats should run on? Does it matter if it works or not? Like, what do you think? Well, I think three things. I think number one, your grocery store ought not to be a food bank. And that's the only grocery stores that a lot of neighborhoods have is a food bank. And those food banks have almost no and I'm not critiquing the food banks. God bless the food banks. But those food banks and I have worked in food banks a lot, by the way, with a lot of
[00:26:10] born again Christians, because born again Christians really do walk the walk on that thing. They have no produce in them. They and organic. You can forget it. So you're buying, you know, a lot of stuff that is very high carbs, etc. Why do we allow that to continue to happen? We have tried and tried and tried to incentivize grocery stores to come into neighborhoods. They won't do it. So let's do it. You know where this is being done and experimented with?
[00:26:37] It's being experimented with in Native American reservations. It's being experimented with in Alaska Native areas where there is some kind of private public cooperation to get grocery stores in there. I don't think price gouging is a bullshit issue. I think when the junk fees are added on to everything, that's bullshit. I think the predatory lending is bullshit.
[00:27:05] I mean, we've worked on all of the successful predatory lending initiatives. Our biggest problem is that we tell people we're lowering the interest rates to 36 percent and they think that's usury. And then we say, wait a minute, do you know that they're actually 400 percent? So when you have monopolies in charge of eggs, then you get price gouging. Prices that went up to COVID should have come down and they didn't. We need to do something about this.
[00:27:31] And certainly tariffs is not the answer, particularly tariffs on things that you don't that Americans don't produce. So I think that the thing about it is whether you like the individual components and actually the grocery store component, which is one of my favorite, is not one of the most popular, although it's net positive. But the Reese's Front, the Fairs, etc. are very, very popular in New York, whether or not you're low income or not.
[00:27:59] The problem is do something. Try something. And if all you're doing is tearing down, tearing down or trying to tell people. I mean, I think one of the biggest problems for the Biden administration and all well-meaning and well-intentioned people is for three years they tried to tell people that inflation was down. Well, you know, I hate to tell them. And I said to some people that will go unnamed, when was the last time you were in a grocery store?
[00:28:27] I'm getting two bags for what I used to get three for prices. Inflation is up. And by the way, you got important things to do. So I don't want you to go to the grocery store. If you need groceries, tell me. I'll go get them. But can I tell you, I'm getting you two bags for what you used to pay for three. So I just think that there is a lot of price gouging. And there is a lot of, and the affordability agenda is really strong. When prescription drugs, I mean, the VA negotiates 399 drugs.
[00:28:57] Medicare only negotiated 20. And now we've taken that away. Well, hello, if you can't figure out how to price drugs lower in Medicare, then let's go get the book from the VA and apply that list. How's that for a common sense idea? It works for the VA. Well, I want to work for Medicare. Yeah, I mean, I do think you put your finger on this kind of affordability question, which Mom Donnie made the centerpiece of his campaign, right?
[00:29:23] He's like, he kind of tried to steer away from the more hot button culture war issues and focus on this kind of, well, I am a skeptic of the policy stuff he's putting out here. I will just kind of come clean about this. On the other hand, his kind of laser-like focus on affordability does seem to be the question of the moment, whether it's housing affordability or the cost of groceries or stuff like that. But this might be a good find for me to bring up sort of from my kind of Mom Donnie sort of skeptic position.
[00:29:52] You know, let me bring up Brandon Johnson, right? So Brandon Johnson is the mayor of Chicago. Yeah. He ran... Our client. Is he your client? Okay, I did not know that. Yes. That's interesting. So, you know, ran a very lefty campaign, backing of the... Strong... He came out of the teachers' unions, a very powerful organization in Chicago, and they really helped elect him against a pretty law-and-order conservative candidate that he ran against. He won that race. And it worked, right?
[00:30:21] He got elected, and one of the things he ran on was publicly owned grocery stores, right, when he ran for mayor of Chicago. But since then, like, you know, sometimes campaigns are poetry and governing as pros. He sort of backed away from the publicly owned grocery store stuff. It seems like they kind of figured out that it wasn't workable or they can't really do it. And maybe now I would say Brandon Johnson is a cautionary tale for running in a blue city
[00:30:47] on a kind of very lefty platform that may sound great to voters, but right now he's arguably, you know, one of the most unpopular mayors in the country, right? I saw some polling that had him at 14% approval, you know, dismal, dismal numbers. So is that the cautionary tale, Celinda, or am I over? I don't think so. I think Chicago's pretty unique, honestly. First of all, it's quite a city to try to run. You've really got four different Chicagos.
[00:31:14] The budget issues made some of the ideas impossible. And, you know, if they're, I mean, what would it be like if we had had Build Back Better have a grocery store component? I mean, is this a radical idea to have grocery stores in every part of a city? Is it a radical idea to have the poorest neighborhood in Philadelphia have a grocery store there? My gosh, if this is communism, call me a communist.
[00:31:43] I mean, honest to God, I don't perceive this to be a radical idea. How are you going to get it if the grocery stores won't go in? You can try the tax incentives, et cetera. Maybe it's a public-private partnership like Alaska's tried. Maybe it's a publicly owned grocery store. I mean, it's not like government wants to run grocery stores. They just want to get grocery stores into every neighborhood because it will make for healthier kids, better education, safer neighborhoods. And they're cheaper.
[00:32:11] These, when you're buying all your groceries at a liquor store, you're paying top dollar and getting nothing. I think that there is just some common sense here and some thinking outside the box. And I don't think it's a cautionary tale because I don't think people, they know that there was some areas in crime fighting and education that needed the money. There were budget shortages and stuff. I think that what Brandon Johnson was trying to say and what Zona is trying to say is,
[00:32:40] we need to think outside the box. We need to try some new things. These are my ideas about new things. But if you don't, you know, I'll listen to your ideas about new things too. If you don't think this will work, what are we going to do instead? Not we're going to stop and go another 40 years without a grocery store in central Philly because we can't figure this out. I think Boston is a really great example.
[00:33:07] And many of the Zoran and Brandon Johnson policies, Mayor Wu has implemented quite successfully. Now she's under a challenge from a self-financing millionaire. So we'll see what happens. But she's been very successful in implementing these things. I want to hear more about Boston and other blue cities if you know about them. Because I think what you say about Chicago seems right from the news that I'm reading
[00:33:35] in the sense that maybe every city is a little bit unique. And it's hard to draw clear kind of national conclusions about this. I also really love the point that you and Sandeep are kind of making together just about affordability being such a great issue for Democrats. Whatever solutions they're coming up with, it's obviously something that the Republicans are failing to help us solve. But in Pittsburgh, we had this moderate challenger, Corey O'Connor, I guess his name was. Who's our client too. Oh, wow.
[00:34:04] Okay. Are you doing this deliberately? So he ran on enhancing the police force, affordable housing for all, and supporting businesses of all sizes. More of a moderate candidate beating a more progressive candidate. But you bring up Boston, which is a city very much like Seattle, but it's kind of the mirror opposite of Seattle in the sense that a few years ago they elected Michelle Wu, a progressive. And she's super popular. The polls show that she's doing really well there. So what's the Wu story?
[00:34:34] What's Wu doing right that some others might not be, do you think? Well, I think she really built consensus in the city. Some of these cities are pretty badly divided, Chicago being an example of it. And so it's hard to get the consensus. Whether Boston was more unified, and they had been happy with their mayors before, like Marty Walsh and stuff. So there's been a long history of building consensus there. They have some resources because it's a fairly affluent state.
[00:35:02] The state's not at war with the city. In some of these states, their state legislators are at war with the city. That's not true. Even with a Republican governor, it was never true. And she, and again, I think she's a poster child. She was a very accomplished local government figure. The press treats all of these people, whether it's AOC or so on or Wu, as if they'd never been in office before. Quite the contrary. They've been elected, reelected.
[00:35:30] They have policies that they've implemented. The other thing I think that is great about them is, and Wu is an example of this, she has an ongoing conversation with her voters. She is not doing this behind closed doors. She is not doing her actions with lobbyists. She is out front talking to everyone. She's out in the community. She's saying, this is what we're going to do. This is how I think about it. What's your, you know, what do you think about it? Let's move. And she gets things done.
[00:36:00] So she's in an ongoing conversation where she's talking to her voters and listening, and then she gets things done. That's the key. And she's running against, as you said, Josh Kraft, who can't, I mean, this is the, what's his name? Robert Kraft's son, the New England Patriots owner and Trump buddy, Robert Kraft's son. How popular are the Krafts in Boston? I guess it depends on how big a Patriots fan you are or something like that. They're not popular here in Seattle, I can say. I know.
[00:36:29] Well, people can be very well-liked and you don't think they're the mayor. There you go. Good point. I mean, Sandeep is very well-liked. I like him, but I don't think he should be my mayor. Yeah, you don't want me as your mayor. No, I don't. That is true. That is, that is true. Yeah, let's get into some of these other policy proposals, because I know some of these are ideas that I like, Sandeep may like. Free child care for every New Yorker ages six weeks to five years.
[00:36:58] They currently have it, I guess, for three-year-olds in New York City. So this would be an expansion of that program. That seems like an idea that every Democrat should be able to get on board with. What about an idea like that, Selina? Well, part of it is not every Democrat has. I mean, again, these are what I love about Zoran is he picked proposals. They may sound radical to out of New York City, but they fit into the infrastructure and the atmosphere in New York City now.
[00:37:27] So I think it's harder to pull off in every city. In cities that don't have that infrastructure already, it's hard to expand it. You've got to create it. It's also, we're in really tough times on child care because we need federal investment on it because the child, COVID collapsed the child care system and it really has not recovered. What I love about him is, again, if you really know what's going on, because you have rent
[00:37:54] stabilization, rent freezes are not that, you know, it's not a totally, you know, different idea. It's not an idea from Leningrad or something. It fits in the philosophy because people are not, in a lot of these big cities, people are not paying the bus fares now. They're jumping the line. They're jumping. They don't have the change, whatever. They don't have the token. It, you know, the metro system's the same thing.
[00:38:20] Having a policy where you finance the buses in a stable way and just let people ride and hopefully get people out of their cars and riding, get people to work on time. These are common sense ideas, actually. And it's, to me, it's really a shame that part of the debate has not been, this is Democrats at their best, building on things that are already make sense, building on models that
[00:38:44] have been piloted other places, thinking through what is, you know, what's the next step to make progress on solving this problem, given what we're doing in our city already. That's the way I see, Zoe. And it's about time. Yeah, I will say, particularly on the child care issue, that to me is the plank of Zoran's platform that most appeal to me.
[00:39:13] I do think that's a really popular, viable thing to do. Boston, we were just talking about Boston. Boston sort of pioneered a really innovative, subsidized, high quality pre-K program that made real strides in eliminating the opportunity gap between, you know, the gap in performance between races and socioeconomic status. Seattle has a really, really great program kind of modeled on Boston's that I did the ballot
[00:39:41] measure that funded the initial phase of that back in 2014. And Bill de Blasio, as you say, in New York City is the one that sort of set up this initial kind of system that Zoran intends to build on. And that all makes sense to me. But I will say this, all of this stuff, the free or subsidized child care or freezing the rent or, you know, the grocery stores or free transit on the buses costs a lot of money here. Right.
[00:40:10] And if you listen to, you know, Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York state, you know, she's like, I'm not going to Zoran can't do this stuff unless he can get the authority to raise taxes on the wealthy. Yeah. Yeah. Which is what he's saying he wants to do. And the governor saying, no way, man, I'm not letting you do that. That's a bad idea. I don't like it. And so so I guess I wonder, like, how how doable is this?
[00:40:40] If let's assume that these are great ideas. Well, let's just let's ask ourselves the question. How viable is the governor's position? OK, because this is wildly popular and New York is not short of rich people. And even some of the rich people like patriotic millionaires think they're not paying enough in taxes. So you can, you know, and Zoran has the ability to bring people together. And if you're going to win the governor re-election to the governor of New York, you're going to have to roar out of New York City.
[00:41:07] So it's not like he just thought of these ideas and has no chits in his pocket. And I'm not privy to any of his conversations, but that's the way I see it. You really want to take this on? You really want to tell New York City they can't tax fairly tax rich people to do things that everybody else wants to do? Hmm. Interesting way to get re-elected as governor.
[00:41:33] You're saying he's got the people behind him in New York City and, you know, and every politician responds to the public. They've already made a difference. And they're feeling self-confident about the difference they already made because they were already told Zoran couldn't win and none of his ideas were valid and they proved he could. Yeah. I mean, there's questions about how undertaxed or underregulated is New York City as it is. Again, I used to live there. Most cities don't have an income tax. Now, we wish we had an income tax here in Washington State because we have the most regressive taxes in the entire country. It's terrible.
[00:42:03] But I'm not sure how popular. Depends on who you mean by we. Voters in Washington State, though. No, Seattleites. Seattleites. Democrats. Seattleites. Yeah. Seattleites are Democrats. That's true. Yeah. I guess I do have this question about what you think about Mom Donnie. And this kind of gets to the sort of blueprint question for the left and Blue Cities nationally, hopefully. But it's just how ideologically flexible do you think he is when it comes to his approaches to this stuff? In other words, does he kind of go in?
[00:42:31] Does he actually just experiment with free grocery stores and go, this is working, this isn't? And he's going to be nimble? Or do we not really know yet? And how important really even is that? I mean, because the messaging could be all that's important. I'm not 100% sure it's not, given Trump's success at the federal level where it seems like bullshit can get you everything. I shouldn't say that, again, that this is all bullshit. I think the record's important. I think the record's important.
[00:43:00] But I also think that voters are, they're really interested in trying some things. And, you know, the person we haven't talked about is the elephant in the room, Trump. I mean, Trump has a million ideas. He lays them all out there. About a million and one of them are horrible. And yet people give him rewards. And, you know, I do focus groups every night. And the focus groups, people say, guys, like I just had a group last week where the guys go, well, you know, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Break a few eggs, man.
[00:43:30] The guy killed the chicken and burned down the kitchen. This is not about making an omelet, okay? But people are like, I want to try something. I want to make change. I want to make it better. I don't, I don't, I'm sick of this negative, negative, negative. And he's offering something different. He's offering something different. He's offering ideas. He changes his mind on his ideas. He says sometimes, well, okay, we're not going to do that. We're going to do this. You may or may not like what he's delivering, but he's delivering stuff. I mean, shit is changing. Oh my God, at a velocity that's insane. That is true.
[00:44:00] And people will say that about him. His base says that about him. He may not like it. And sometimes I wish he'd do it a little differently, but at least he's getting stuff done where nobody else is getting anything done. I was just in Australia and Australian conservatives were saying. But, but weirdly enough, Australian conservatives, they love the dole. They can't believe we have homelessness here. Even conservatives are like very critical of the United States for that reason and don't seem to like Trump on tariffs. But they were like, you know, he does what he says he's going to do.
[00:44:30] I'm like, he didn't build the wall, but I mean, he does a lot. It's true. Sandeep, I'm, I'm, I'm babbling here, but you should probably go. Yeah. Let me, let me, I want to jump in because, because, because Selinda, I have long, I've helped elect the last few mayors of Seattle. Right. And, and I have long thought and believe that as you were just saying, like at the end of the day, if you're mayor, you get judged by how, you know, the condition of the city, right?
[00:44:57] Like voters are, you know, your record matters. Or if you made things better. Yeah. If you made things better, people feel better about where the direction of the city, where things are going, the condition of what they're seeing on the streets, you know, and all of that stuff factors into it. But here's where I kind of wonder about this one, because I'm just, I, I take your point that like he can bring public pressure on folks like Kathy Hochul and the democratic establishment to give him the leeway to try these new ideas.
[00:45:25] At the end of the day, I think he's going to run into some rough water on this stuff. But, and here's what I don't know. What I honestly do not know is let's say Kathy Hochul doesn't give him the taxing authority he wants and he can't deliver on free buses and free childcare and this stuff. Is it really, is he going to get blamed for it? But from the voters, are they going to feel disillusioned? I don't know.
[00:45:50] I mean, it may be that this is as much about for a lot of voters, the vibes that he's putting out about, they at least like that he cares about these things. And it'll be convenient to say, I tried to do them. And then these, you know, democratic old guard, you know, stick in the mud stopped us. And so maybe, maybe he can kind of get through that, right? Even if he can't deliver.
[00:46:18] Well, and maybe some of it he can get done anyway. I mean, like, can you freeze the rents on stabilized apartments without the state authority? I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV, but I think he can. Yeah. The bus system is hemorrhaging money now because people aren't paying the fares to begin with. So we got to do something different on the buses. At least that's the situation in D.C. and in New York Metro. See, these proposals get treated as wacko proposals.
[00:46:47] They're actually common sense proposals that are often dealing with reality on the ground. Is it cheaper to have kids who are constantly in trouble on tests because they didn't have a nutritious breakfast because nobody could buy decent groceries? Is that really a wise financial choice? I don't think so. And so, yes, maybe some of these things can't be done, but I think others of the things can be done.
[00:47:16] And we'll just have to see. I mean, one of my favorite candidates who's often compared to so on is Abdul Al-Sayed, who's running for Senate in Michigan. And when he was public health county, Wayne County, which is Detroit's public health official, he retired hundreds of millions of dollars of medical debt. And they said, it can't be done. It can't be done.
[00:47:41] And he sat the lenders down and he said, you know, we can be at this standstill for the rest of these people's lives. You're not going to get the full rate on the dollar. Here's the average rate on the dollar. You get on average 10 percent. We'll pay you 10 percent to retire this debt for these poorest people. Got it done. Because, you know, is that a radical proposal? No, it's a common sense proposal because the lenders didn't have to go to court, didn't
[00:48:09] have to harass people with phone calls, didn't have to take away people's homes who couldn't afford it anyway. I mean, you can go after this medical debt all you want to, but there's just a limit on what people can pay. Yeah. Yeah. One, as I'm thinking about my big takeaways from this election, right, from this New York City election. One thing is, I really do think, and Celinda, you've been pointing at this the whole conversation,
[00:48:32] the Democratic establishment, the old guard, whatever you want to call them, the power structure, they seem out of ideas and kind of kaput. And, you know, Cuomo's campaign was the most joyless, uninteresting, uninnovative, like, you know, kind of mess of a campaign. And yet, you know, everybody jumped behind him. All the establishment figures endorsed him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:49:02] Including the out-of-city establishment. Yeah. And, you know, kind of embarrass themselves that way once you see the sort of final results. So I do think there's a problem, like, in the Democratic power structure that that is real. And that goes to some of these people that are kind of more on my side of the Democratic divide on the moderate side. Right? I mean, that's real. On the other hand, I don't think that, like, Mom Donnie style, like, full on, or you may disagree with me on this, or, you know, because there's talk of AOC running for president in 28, right?
[00:49:32] Like, that this kind of Democratic socialism is going to play in Georgia or Pennsylvania or Arizona or, you know, places like that that Democrats have to win in order to kind of make the electoral math work. But I will say this. I feel like what we don't have in the Democratic Party, we need a new synthesis, right? There are things on the moderate side.
[00:49:58] I do think the left went too far on some of the culture stuff that has sort of blown up in our faces. On the other hand, we need to figure out some of these elements that folks like AOC and Mom Donnie and, you know, are talking about. Some of the populist elements, and the devil's in the details on this. Some of it's, you know, some of it's better than others. But there has to be a synthesis where we can kind of figure out how we unite the two parts of the party back together. And you've worked for candidates on both sides of that divide, right?
[00:50:28] Am I wrong about that? Well, I think we have to get some, we have to stand for something. I mean, I think, I don't think we're short of ideas. I think we have plenty of ideas. I think we have too many ideas. And, you know, every Democratic candidate you or I work with, no matter where they are ideologically, it's like three things, three things, okay? Nine-second soundbites, 76 seconds, three things. And they go, wait a minute, I have this. Wait a minute, I have that. Wait a minute, I want to add this in.
[00:50:54] That's like, you know, now you're on 30 minutes, not 76 words. And 76 words is the length of a 30-second TV ad, right? Basically, right? Yeah. So we have too many ideas. We got plenty of ideas. We got to get things done. And we got to communicate a coherent plan to the voters. We didn't lose, in my opinion, the 2024 elections because we were too progressive.
[00:51:22] We lost the 2024 elections because people thought we only cared about social issues and didn't care about economic issues. And had we put up an economic plan, that would have been the best answer to their economic plan and the best answer to the social issue attacks. Because it was a question of priorities, not a question of positions. So we got 25 people running now.
[00:51:49] Well, I hope at least 20 of them will have a plan. And so I think we need to get that out. But right now, we're sincerely divided on whether we're going to be for something or just against something. And I come back to my basic rule. You cannot beat something, even a very flawed something, with nothing. You have to put out your own positive ideas. And that is the most important lesson, in my opinion, out of the New York City mayoral race.
[00:52:18] So Linda Lake, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun. That's it for another edition of Blue City Blues. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And thanks, everybody, so much for listening.