Episode 32: Ryan Adams

Ryan is Co-Founder of HZQ Strategies and has recently worked on campaigns to elect Jamaal Bowman to Congress, Andrew Gounardes to NY State Senate and Khaleel Anderson to NY State Assembly.

Ryan spoke with David about the future of progressive politics and how to run campaigns that connect authentically with voters. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm David Grosso, and you're listening to Follow the Profit.
So on today's episode of Follow the Profit, I'm interviewing
someone who I would consider a friend and who I
often see around when I hang out in New York.
He's a political operative, is the best way to describe him,

(00:21):
but also generally a renaissance guy. He's sort of talk
about progressive politics, which, if you've been listening to the podcast,
is not something we typically cover, nor am I generally
interested in, quite frankly, but it's one of those things
that it's like the cloud above our heads. We're going
to have to take notice and learn more about it.
Ryan Adams of hz Q Consulting, Good afternoon, Ryan, thank

(00:44):
you so much for having me David, So Ryan, progressive politics.
You know, I see everywhere across the country, it's becoming
more mainstream, no matter what you think, you know, and
there's a whole sort of movement occurring. Why do you
think the time is now? I think a lot of
people are just getting fed up with the status quo.

(01:05):
I mean, when we think about progressive politics, we think
about oddly enough, I think about a Republican because I
think of Teddy Roosevelt, you know, the original progressive from
way back when, and so much of his approach to
progressivism was just traveling around the country and hearing the
stories of working class people and how they were being
continually downtrodden by a system that just felt broken. And

(01:29):
I think the running theme that you hear uh in
progressive politics and the system is broken and we have
to fix it. And then the proposal of how you
is very particular. But I think if I can, if
I can a quick anecdote, I was working on a
race in a very purple district. Like they voted for

(01:50):
Trump on the the presidential line, and then they voted
for Democrats on the other lines. Like that's how purple
it was. And of the candidate that I was working with,
he took a stance on police reform, and people would
write to him and say, I can't believe you want
to defund the police. He didn't actually want to defund

(02:11):
the police, but there was a there was a pack
with dark money saying that he wanted to like release
criminals into your grandma's house and lies and all that,
And they would write these emails and they'd say, I
can't believe you want to defund the police. It's terrible.
And then they would say, I mean, yeah, we're spending
a lot on police and we're not really getting safety results.

(02:33):
And yeah, I think sometimes the police shouldn't do stuff
that they do, like taking care of like mental health issues,
because like social workers would be better. And I don't
understand why we're not spending more money on putting police
in neighborhoods like when I was growing up, you know,
like if they were kind of community policemen who like
really were involved in the community. But I don't want
to defund the police. And then if you look at

(02:53):
all the things that defund the police people were arguing for,
it was literally all of that. It was I think
the left and the right had a lot of agreement
on kind of where the issues are right now. But
the problem is we are all very caught up in
how to make those things happen. And I think we're
all being pulled by the the apparatus is of the
political system that we have currently, because it seems like

(03:15):
in this very purple district, Republicans and Democrats wanted to
stop spending so much money on wasteful stuff, but how
they were talking about it was the real big difference,
and you know, a lot of the crossover appeal, right
is this, uh, you know, realization that the economic system
at least needs reform. We don't agree on how to

(03:36):
get there, but let's talk about that a little bit.
What do you think the problem is to in today's world?
And why do you think both candidates on the left
and the right are gaining popularity because of their anti establishment,
you know appeal, Because I think everybody can kind of
feel right now that we're all working harder. I mean,
productivity has gone up continuously since the seventies, but the

(04:02):
the wages haven't matched that. And doesn't matter if you're
a Republican or a Democrat, you're you're working forty to
sixty some some people working eighty hours a week just
to get by, and you're going, how is it possible
that I'm working more than I ever did before and
things haven't gotten better? And you can partially blame that
on inflation, but it's much more tied to the connection

(04:22):
between wages and productivity. We're seeing money being siphoned off
from every big company left and right and being put
into the pockets of very few people. I mean, I
think a lot. I think the left and the right
both agree that where all of the money from all
of our work is going is not going into the
right pockets. Whether you think it should be going into
the pockets of government and then redistributed to people who

(04:44):
need it, or or into the pockets of people and
then hoping that people will step up and do the
right thing, that's a different story. But I think we're
all tired of working very, very hard and not getting
the money that we need out of it, especially out
of this fear in a globalized economy. Me that you know,
if you ask for more, I have a Yeah, I'm
a I'm a political operative, and gosh, I feel so

(05:06):
pretentious saying that, but like I actually run the digital
marketing and strategy agency. We have non political clients, and
I can't tell you how often we get emails from
you know, agencies and other countries offering to do what
I do, literally emailing me saying sir, you can white
label all of our services for a fraction of the
price and then just go off on a beach somewhere.

(05:27):
Like We're in a global marketplace and it's very scary
for us to ask, well, I want more money. I
need more money. I can't exist without more money. And
then all of a sudden, some some guy in India's
emailing them, going, I'll do your social media for free.
It's not going to be great, but it's going to
be cheaper than another guy. And in in a in
a world where money is hard to come by for

(05:47):
everyday businesses and everyday people, Uh, cheap feels like a
good investment. It's not, but it feels like a good investment.
So it seems like we're engaged in a labor race
to the bottom. But there's also a lot of my
ration occurring in the United States. Someone like me who leaves,
you know, high tech states like New York and migrats
to low tax states like Florida. Why do you think

(06:09):
people are doing that and literally marching away from these
high attack places. Well, that's a tough one because I'm
here in New York City. I love New York City.
I will not be giving up on New York City
anytime soon. We were just talking about I just moved,
so I doubled down on New York City. I moved
deeper into Manhattan. Um, I think people, I mean people

(06:30):
are moving because they think they're going to get a
better deal elsewhere. UM, I don't know if that's true.
I mean I have family in Austin, Texas and they
saw huge surges in real estate. People were offered to
buy my my family's house in Austin, Texas for like
two times what it was worth, and I was like,
you should sell it, just sell it now, buying enough
how They're like, people are only gonna be crazy for

(06:53):
so long. Um, but the problem is that when someone
uh uh can you still hear me? Sorry, just gotta problem.
The problem is that when someone connects with a new
new community, they're they're expecting all the same resources to

(07:14):
be there. You could move to Austin, Texas hoping that yeah,
I'll just work from home and hopefully all the business
will be there, hopefully all the connections will be there.
But someone has to build all those things up. You know,
you can move to my My wife is in a
Facebook group called for the Love of Old Houses. Um,
and they don't they don't pay me to say that,
but they post these beautiful old houses that are like

(07:36):
I saw a ten room mansion for a hundred thousand
dollars in Almira, New York, and the whole pitch was
like you could you could take out a three hundred
thousand dollar home loan, have a ten bid mansion and
it would cost you six d a month in like
a mortgage. And I get it, but like, why are

(07:56):
you you're moving there hoping to escape high taxes? Is
are hoping to escape? You know, whatever you think you
think is cost of living, will call it, Yeah, I
mean cost of living. Right, Um, we were worried about
the cost of living, but we're not worried about the
value of living. And I think a lot of people
who move elsewhere are going to find that all the

(08:17):
things that they left are not going to be there,
and it's going to be incumbent on them to build them.
And you know, God, God bless them. If you move
to a new neighborhood, you should you should be sponsoring
the local theater. I want if you move your business
to UH out of New York, you better be like
paying for every little league in that new place so
that you're a part of that community. I have no
patience for for carpet baggers in any way. Well, I

(08:40):
understand what you're saying, Ryan, and it's definitely true. The
institutional strength and low tech states is definitely lower, right,
And you you make a good point, but the problem
is it's already happening. And in fact, I get a
lot of my updates about New York politics from you
going to me, which is, one, you have a declining
tax base because a lot of the city's revenue depends

(09:01):
on very, very high income earners, which many are in
the process of leaving. And too, you have a city
apparatus that is sort of rotten, and it has a
talent deficit and is inefficient, and it is a slow
lumbering beast. And then you have politics that are demanding
ever more, which is only normal, right, we we want
more from our government. But at what point does the

(09:24):
whole system not hold up in the face of all
these changes. I mean, I think you've really hit on
something that's important. I was saying that there's the tax
bases leaving, but that's because the tax base the tax
code is written not around the current situation that we're in,
but around where the current situation, where the situation was
twenty thirty years ago. The problem, in my mind, isn't

(09:47):
that these are are high tax states and that they're
highly inefficient states, Like there's a there's a bill that's
being proposed in the New York States Senate by Andrew
gun Artists, and he's talking about taxing big day to
companies because every time you live onto Facebook, Facebook makes
money off of you and then pay zero taxes on
all the stuff that you did. You know, you are,

(10:09):
in effect every time you post, every time you you comment,
creating value for them through your labor, and at no
point is that ever monetized. Coming back to the community,
you know, we're we're charging people hoping that real estate
is going to save things, and we're charging people hoping
that an old economy is going to to save things.
But maybe we need to look back and say, every

(10:31):
time we make a law around these kinds of things,
people are just going to try and figure out a
way of doing it. We need to be writing new laws,
better laws. And I think a big way that we
get new laws and better laws is by getting new
people and better people in. And I think the left
and the bike can both agree we need that. You're
suggesting we're fighting the wars of our mothers and fathers,
right we we kind of think of the world as

(10:51):
is if it's still the ninety nineties. And whether you're
on the left or the right, I like this idea
of inefficient government. The government needs to be up dated, streamlined.
You know, we are constantly bigger about shrinking the size
of government or growing the size of government. And I
feel like we never talked about the value we get
for the money that we put in. Absolutely, I mean

(11:13):
I I I laughed, because like we always talk about
The New York Post loves scaring people about homelessness in
New York City. Every time you open the New York Post,
it said, like, you know, the city is overrun with
homeless people. If you go, if you go to Washington
Square Park, they will eat you alive. That is not
I've read it. I've read I've read it. Right. It's

(11:34):
like it's like nineteen sixty nine over there. It's like
continuous woodstock right now. Yeah, it's it's I walked past
Washington Square Park and I'm just pulled into a production
of hair. It was crazy, always naked and chanting. No,
they say like, oh, well, we gotta deal with the
homelessness issue. Okay, It is cheaper to house people than
to pay for services to keep people homeless. Why aren't

(11:57):
we just taking the money and putting it towards housing people.
My wife as a social worker with the homeless, and
you know, she says housing first is the thing that
will solve everything. But but Ryan, what about mental health issues?
It is easier to take your pills. That will help
your mental health issue if you have a place to
drink water and have a schedule. But Ryan, what about
domestic violence? It is easier to escape a domestic violence

(12:19):
situation if you have somewhere to stay. We need more housing,
we need better housing. I mean, I'm very you know,
I'm I'm a progressive, But like Eric Adams has some
really great housing and zoning plans from Manhattan that could
really help this city. And I can't wait to see
what he does. I mean, he's not beholden to a
lot of the power structures that are already in place,

(12:40):
so it could be a really big change here. So,
when we think about homelessness, and this goes right back
to people who move to Austin, Austin has a huge
homelessness problem. There are people who are sleeping underneath the
overpasses because the heat is so bad. If they stay outside,
they'll die. There is no homelessness as a national christ
I said, unfortunately, Ryan, and I don't say this as

(13:02):
a partisan bickering thing, but liberals have been on the
wrong side of history with zoning. And obviously, you know,
you have the Tale of two Cities with zoning in America. Right.
You have Houston that has no zoning and they're literally
building houses and reservoirs. Right. And then you have the
city of Berkeley, California, that basically invented single family housing
zoning and caused the national homelessness crisis. And I'm happy

(13:25):
to hear that the new mayor of New York, the
marylech Eric Adams, has different ideas because it's literally supply
and demand, right, If you increase the supply of housing,
you're going to bring down the price and homelessness will
go down, something that California and other liberal places don't understand. Evidently. Yeah,
I mean, it's um uh. It's funny because people have

(13:46):
been talking about like, oh, the New York, New York
real estate market was really hit hard by COVID, but
the New York real estate market was really hit hard
by China closing off investments in the New York City
real estate market, and that happened in twenty seventeen, and
since then we've been seeing projects slowly fall apart. But
it represents a much larger issue that we have been

(14:07):
building housing for Chinese investment accounts and Russian oligarchs and
whoever is trying to squirrel their money out of their
country and put it somewhere safe. Like in New York City,
we've been building lock boxes, and we have not been
taxing those lock boxes. We have not been charging these
people who have left places follow That hurts the surrounding economy,
and and it's it's just gotten to a point where

(14:28):
we have to ask, why are we building what we're building?
Why Why do four different high rise luxury towers that
each have two hundred and fifty apartments in them have
to be across the street from each other in downtown
Brooklyn when everywhere else needs more housing that is affordable
and zoning and the cost of labor. Ryan It's pretty straightforward,
but it comes down to the idea. And like it's funny,

(14:52):
we've called me a progressive and if you go into
like really progressive circles, they'll they'll start, you know, chopping
up labels, and they'll say the progressives didn't destroy housing.
Liberals destroyed housing because liberals wanted to, uh, wanted to
create a little microcosm of the American dream where everyone
gets their own house. And because of that, they became

(15:14):
the not in my backyard nimbies who pushed people out
when they needed to build more housing. You know. Uh.
A lot of folks will will say they want everyone
to have an opportunity in life, they just don't want
it near their opportunity and that I just I think
this is one of the biggest issues of our time, Ryan.
And this is if you want to follow the profit.
The problem with our current housing crisis, which is now national.

(15:37):
It used to just be in our big cities, but
now it's everywhere. The cancer is spread. Is that the
net effect of all these zoning laws and restrictions as
just a disaster, surging levels of homelessness, uh, lower levels
of homeownership. And it's just it's a complete evisceration of
the American dream. And it's rule number one. And now

(15:59):
you see people writing our beds in places like Bloomberg
and Yahoo. That's say, oh, a renter society is a
dream for America, and I don't think it's a dream.
I think it's a nightmare. I think I mean some
people want to rent. I was just earlier today, I
was just reading about why everything is pushing towards renting,

(16:20):
and it's partially because the death cycle has gotten out
of control. Like Ray Dalio, you know, one of the
billionaire um I think, one of the smartest people out there,
has this whole theory about short term and long term
debt cycles. And the short term is why we have
a crash every ten years around some sort of bubble,
whether it's tech, whether it's real estate, whether it's I mean,

(16:42):
cryptocurrency is not big enough quite yet to be a bubble,
but certainly you're getting the sense of that. And then
we have these long term debt cycles where the whole
political and social economy kind of gets flipped on its head.
Because if you spend forty years building up the value
of housing, and you spend forty years convincing multiple generations

(17:04):
that housing will never go down, it will always be
the best investment, and people take that totally uncritically. Eventually
those chickens have to come home to roost. You know,
every debt is someone else's income, and you have to
pay those things. So we can't keep printing the money
that we do and not expect that at some point

(17:25):
it's going to have to be paid back. It's going
to have to be dealt with. And even with modern
monetary theory, there has to be some sort of rationality
and semblance of order in the system. And I think
a lot of new a lot of young people, you know,
people under forty, are looking at the system and the
world that they grew up in and they're going none
of this makes any sense. Investing in these things is

(17:47):
very dangerous. So on the bright side, we are at
the end of a long term debt cycle. It's a
it's a brave new world. It's in a it's a
you know, I have a have a master's in religion,
and it's an apocalypse in the sense that a lot
of revelations will come and a new a new beginning
will come out of it. Revelation to Genesis. I guess

(18:07):
that's the cycle, right. So, Ryan, you sound like a
fiscal conservative. It seems like in Washington these days we're
all modern monetary theorists. Whereas you know, the deficit doesn't matter,
debt doesn't matter. You know, let's give everyone what they want.

(18:31):
We basically have a Republican tax regime and universal basic income.
At the same time, half of our money that is
flowing through the system is borrowed at the federal level.
Consumers are drowning in debt. Ray Dalio is right. We
are at endgame in terms of debt. How long can
this system go on? So I do want to say

(18:52):
I'm not a fiscal conservative because the thing that I
disagree with is the Republican tax regime. I think you
have to tax people with money. Um. The problem is
that most people don't have the money. I'm very in
favor of the modern monetary policy if it's going from
the government directly to people, and we're seeing that with

(19:13):
the child tax credit. I mean, I can't tell you
how many lives I know in New York City were
saved by the fiscal stimulus. Checks that hit it let people,
you know, save their lives. I I saw I saw
group checks of people venmoving each other just to help
them get to that point where the stimulus got there
and people were really it was a very dark time. Um,

(19:35):
So I think you gotta pay for that by taxing
people who are flying into space currently. Um, because those
people not so subtle reference to Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos,
and Elon Musk, It's it's never a good side when
the richest people on the Earth are like, you know
what I should do? Leave immediately. Um. It's very scary
when the world is on fire and they're like, I'm

(19:55):
just gonna go to another planet. Um. So how then
do I think it has I mean, I'm not gonna
I'm not nostradamis. I'm not going to predict any you know,
particular timelines, but we have I'm gonna go back to
Ray Dalio. Everyone should go. Uh. If I read the book,
It's Principles. It was fantastic. Prince Principles is one of

(20:17):
the best books I've ever read. I read it once
or twice a year, just because it's like a fantastic
management book. But he's on LinkedIn once every week just
you know, typing away all of his thoughts, and he's
got a bunch of great YouTube videos that explain all this. Um.
And one of the things that he really likes to
stress is that at the end of a long term
debt cycle, the polarization between the hands and the have

(20:38):
not's get very very very intense, and other countries will
see the weakness in a polarized government and exploit it.
He loves talking about how empires rise and fall, and
whether they fall apart gracefully and kind of give way
to a new world order or they are ripped apart

(20:59):
by their own internal forces, is really on how they
choose to de leverage, how they choose to deal with
growing income inequality. And so what we're looking at, you know,
I'd say over the next ten years is a global
world order that's really changing. You have. You know, pre
pre pre COVID, China was already building the infrastructure to

(21:21):
to to become the ascending power. Their Built and Road
initiative was a master stroke in political um, you know,
political global economics and whatnot. But then COVID, low interest
loans to projects that require resources and labor in the
middle of a global pandemic become a very very tight,
very very hard investment to make. I mean, we're seeing

(21:44):
everything that happened with Russia and to think that Russia
is not a not a player in all the different
cybersecurity initiatives, we have to be worried about the whole
world is kind of looking in America right now going
it is not as strong as it used to be.
I can be a power, We can be a power.
And knowing that, I think it's incumbent on us to

(22:06):
to not rest on our laurels because the next ten
years we could see we could see skirmishes in the
South China Sea, we could see uh uh, infrastructure attacks
by by global actors. We don't know what the world
could look like. And to assume that the last thirty
years is a good predictor of the next ten is
a good way to be caught off guard the same

(22:27):
way assuming the last three years was a good predictor
of what would have been. But Ryan, a lot of
that has to do with, you know, we have from
the outside looking in. The division is so bad in
this country that it's highly unusual for someone like me
to have someone like you on the same podcast without
screaming at each other. So how do we, you know,

(22:49):
keep it together here to prevent us from you know,
just crumbling and giving an opportunity to you know, bad
agents like China. I mean, I think I think it's
a really good question because I'm I'm a little worried
that someone's gonna like tar and feather me for just
saying it, But you know, so be it. Anyone who
wants to kind of rip me apart for coming on

(23:11):
a podcast to talk about how we need to work
together is a probably not someone who's gonna work together
with me in the first place. And I say that
for the left and the right. I I think when
I talk in progressive circles about political organizing, there's a
lot of folks who come at this and they think,
I don't ever want to work with a Republican because
they are never going to act in good faith with me.

(23:32):
And I feel like the same. I wish I could
say the same for Republicans coming towards Democrats, but I
feel like a lot of uh Democrats in Congress will
always fall for the trick that Republicans will be like,
if you just give me an inch, I promise I
won't take a mile. I mean, I'm not. I'm not
going to name congressional names, but there's got to be
a couple of them with really sore backs from trying

(23:53):
to kick that football and falling. I think the problem
here is that it doesn't feel like we can trust
the other side to actually make good on their promises.
And you know, I was not a fan of Donald Trump,
one could say very strongly, um, and I think he
eroded that in so many ways. I mean, his counterpunching,

(24:15):
his his approach to government was anyone who gives up
an inch is a sucker and they deserve to be exploited.
And the moment that becomes the political tenor the moment
that becomes the tenor of the Republican Party, you're gonna
get Democrats saying why bother? Why? You know what we
saw with all of the reconciliation in Congress of like,
we're not gonna say, Mitch McConnell, We're not going to

(24:37):
sign anything until we good exactly what we want. You
had organizers everywhere across the country going, please, for the
love of God, do not fall for this. He is
going to ask for concessions. You are going to give concessions,
and then he is not going to whip the votes,
and you are going to be left in a weaker
bargaining position. And you know, well, we've got to try,

(24:57):
and then you try, and guess what, it doesn't happen,
And now we're gonna head towards reconciliation with the stuff
that we need. But I hear the exact I hear
the exact same thing about people on the right with
how they feel about people on the left. You know,
I listen, I don't have a dog in this fight.
I'm a registered independent. Like I don't care to correct you.
I tend to think that interviews are meant to channel

(25:20):
the energy of the guests, not fight with them. But
you know, it's one of those things that like, I
hear the exact same argument from the right, so to me,
and this is just speaking of someone who just wants
to see a better country and a more unified people
and really to set our differences aside. It's really easy

(25:41):
to blame each other, but in the end it's us
who suffers. We all suffer. So I think you've hit
on a very good point, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna validate that and then tell you
a little secret. Um. I think you're right that we
need the only way that we come to this together,
that we stopped playing in the media wars and we

(26:02):
start turning down the rhetoric. The moment you say I
will never like when Mitch McConnell said, like I am
the what was it, the grim reaper of bills in
the Senate, Like I've come to kill them. There's no
working with a person like that, whether you say it
privately or publicly, like that stuff gets out um and
that that really brings me to the thing that I've seen.

(26:24):
I've been working in politics for a chunk of time now,
and the thing that I think most people don't realize.
And I tell this to everyone I talked to. Politicians
are afraid of the people that they serve. Not in
the like, oh god, they're gonna come for me kind
of way, but like you have so much more power
than you imagine as a constituent, if you like, I'm

(26:47):
the guy who checks the email account when you email
info at politician dot org or whatever, h and every
one of those emails gets forward into a campaign manager,
a candidate. I have I have seen what happens when
coordinated campaign calls as an office in Congress or or
a state legislature's office. The moment you get five more call,

(27:08):
five calls, someone goes, we have to have a meeting
about this. How did this happen? So anytime you think, God,
I hate the way this politician who represents me is asking,
you need to call them, you need to email them,
you need to post about them. And I know this, Ryan.
I've worked in constituent affairs for a Republican politician at
the state level in Florida, and oh my gosh, if

(27:29):
you got two or three emails on the same topic,
it was like wait, wait, wait, stop the presses. And
people don't understand that there's so many different levels of government,
even your state rap or your state senator, wherever you
live in America, like you have a voice, and it's
not just about national politics, and it's not related to
how much you donate in this and that I have.

(27:50):
It's so funny because people think that money in politics
is what wins, uh, and what money in politics is
what matters. But if you were paying attention to the
New York City mayor or already there were people who
spent millions of dollars and came in abysmal in the
rankings and whatnot. Uh. And they think that. I've literally
seen states like state elected officials say listen, lobbyists can

(28:14):
give me whatever money they want, and I will happily
take a meeting with them, and then I can happily
ignore everything they just told me because you cannot buy me.
But I have never seen a state a state rep.
That I've worked with, or a congressional rep or anyone
for that matter, say, oh yeah, just ignore that person
they called and they were upset. No, the moment they call,

(28:36):
they get an email back, they got if. The only
time I've never seen someone uh respond is when there
was some sort of email issue, you know, like they
didn't get the email, they didn't get the call, they
didn't get the text. But we I think going back
to that, the last you know, the sins of the
past becoming with the problems of today. I think there

(29:01):
was a very strong sense. It was a Fukiyama who
said the end of history, like the neoliberal order has
kind of settle history. We don't need to fight for
things anymore. Everything is pretty good, everything is pretty stable,
and any aberrations from that are just little changes to
the sacred timeline. You know, they're not they're they're they

(29:22):
just can they can be pruned to be dealt with.
So tell so tell me about running our campaign. What
really happens behind the scenes, so so because we're also
political now and no matter where you're from the left
or the right, like there's all this sausage that's being made,
you know, behind the curtain and what really happens. You
mentioned that we all have a voice and you actually

(29:43):
listen to people, and that money doesn't matter as much
as you think. What else is an important note that
we should take note of. I mean, do you want
to hear how a good campaign has run, because I've
got how bad campaigns to run to sure them both. Uh,
good campaign are run by people who know and love
their community. So, like I said, I have a master's

(30:06):
in religion. I almost became a rabbi and I was
speaking to a rabbi about this, and the rabbi said
to me, to be a rabbi is to have a
profound love of Jews and only a moderate love of Judaism.
Politics is the same way. You have to love every
call you get. You have to love every interaction you have.
If you are running as a politician, to be a

(30:29):
real policy wank who spends their day's writing laws and whatnot,
you will be a great legislative director and a terrible
politician who will not win because I mean of every
good political campaign is talking to voters, and and that's
you know, uh, if I was running for something, it

(30:50):
would be me talking to voters, and then it would
be me recruiting twenty five people five and every part
of the district talking to voters, and then recruiting people
who in languages who that I do not speak to,
talk to voters and record robocalls and send out texting.
The idea here, and I have studies on this, and
it's definitely if you look through the elections that people

(31:11):
have been winning lately, if you do not talk to voters,
you will not win. You absolutely need to talk to voters.
And when you talk to them, you need to talk
to them honestly and earnestly. Do not pay random people
to knock on doors and go Hi. My name is Todd.
I'm from Ryan Adams. How have you major decision to vote? No?
I haven't, Todd, please go home. I've never heard of

(31:33):
this guy. I have four hundred pieces of mail from him.
I have a folder right here literally of all the
mail from races that I never read because I got
so many of them. In New York City. You know,
people want to raise money so they can do big
sexy TV ads. But big sexy TV ads do not
win races. Big, big sexy mail pieces do not win races.

(31:58):
You win races when you care. That is the long
and short of it. That goes against everything we hear
and big money donors who are doing they're ripping up
the airways, they're spending money on television commercials, they're putting
out mailers. It's it seems like it's very much a
money game. But that's not what you're suggesting. Well, it

(32:19):
is a money game if you do not see the
thing about lies is that lies only uh phill of
void when there's a void to be filled. If you
have not spoken to voters, and someone says I heard
that so and so you know kicks puppies. Um, if
they know nothing about you. The first thing that they
heard was I hear so and so kicks puppies, and

(32:41):
they that's crazy. But you know, he never he never
knocked on my door. We that that race that I
was talking about where a billionaire had spent a million
dollars on TV ads to say that this guy like
hated the police. Um, the ads. We did a whole
study of this, and we found that the ads didn't work.

(33:02):
People remembered them. People remembered his ads more than they
remembered our ads about the candidate, but they didn't vote
on them because everyone was going, oh, that guy doesn't
hate the police. He was endorsed by the Police Benevolent
Association of New York State. He doesn't hate the police.
He passed the nine eleven Responders Bill. Like, you can
screen whatever you want about your opponent, but if it

(33:23):
doesn't feel true because you've already had honest interactions with them,
it doesn't work. People to go back to what I
was saying about, like people thought history had ended. We
don't have to fight anymore. Politics became very lazy politics
and the nineties and the early two thousands became this
crazy like just put. I met those consultants who like,

(33:44):
we're big then, and so many of them are like,
you put out the mail, you do the TV ad,
you do the robocall, You could do these Facebook ads,
but I don't care. You know that some of the
votes are you got. You know, they don't kiss babies
because babies don't vote, but they will Hella send you
to a senior center because they think the only people
that vote are seniors, and that's why they'll spend of

(34:07):
your budget on mail, and that's just not true. People
who vote are people you engage. And if you think,
you know, there's this funny thing where a lot of
old school consultants will say, well that that group of
people don't vote, you know, the Asian to us, right,
they ignore us. They're like, oh, you're under forty, you're

(34:28):
never gonna vote. Oh yeah, or they'll they'll they'll do
it with um, they'll do it with ethnic groups. Will
be like Asian Americans don't vote, and I'll someone said
that to me and I went, well, one Asian American
in New York City. Could be Korean, it could be Malaysian,
it could be Chinese, it could be Japanese. That's like
there's a Spanish speaking people don't vote. Okay, cool, who

(34:50):
are you talking about. That's a that's a big umbrella term.
That's a lazy nonsense uh. And they do that because
they're they don't want to be engaged. And like, my
biggest the thing that I would tell anyone doing anything
right now, whether you're starting a business, whether you're running
a political campaign, whether you're starting a nonprofit because we

(35:10):
need those two. You have to care more than you've
ever cared before, and when you do, it will shine
through because everyone else, all the all the big established
people that you're fighting, they have gotten lazy. They have
gotten lazy, and the only reason they suddenly care is
because you have scared them now. And that you know.

(35:33):
I worked on Jamal Bowman's congressional race, and I remember
the beginning of that race, people were like, no one
is going to beat Elliott Angle, the man is an institution.
And then the more we did, the more the more
they cared. And it wasn't What did Elliott Angle say
on that hot mic, I wouldn't be here if there
wasn't an election. Whoa, I remember that, Yeah said it,

(35:56):
and I just I just went, that's it. That is
the confirmation and of everything people believe is run with
politics in one statement, and he deserves to lose, and
he did so. If you're running on the left or
the right, and I beg you to run with policies
that center people, and and you know I'm gonna I'm

(36:16):
gonna do one more religious thing. There's a prayer in Judaism,
you're supposed to say it every day. Uh, And it
says that you should you should love God with all
your heart and all your soul and all your might.
And that is how you need to approach everything, with
all your heart and all your soul and all your might.
And then you can follow whatever profits p R O
p h E T or p R O f I
T that you want, and I guarantee you'll go very far.

(36:49):
So tell me a little bit, since since you are
quasi rabbi and in politics, I'm sure Israel's on your
your radar. You know, in Israel is something that we've
all seen coming to the news a lot. You know,
it seems like American Jews are peeling off in their
support for Israel, and you elected someone who has famously
spoken in favor of the Palestinian clause, Jamal Bowman, do

(37:14):
you were you? Do you regret having removed someone who
was very pro Israel and replaced them with someone who
is not so committed. We'll call it. Well. I don't
think Jamal Bowman is anti Israel. I think he's pro peace,
and I think pro piece requires pro dialogue. And you know,
I'm no expert on Israel. Love it the honeymoons. They're

(37:37):
really fantastic. Um, but wait, the rabbi honeymooned in Israel.
How unusual. It's funny because it's all tied to what
you just said. I was on a program called Honeymoon
Israel that's meant to engage non traditional Jewish couples. My
wife is Catholic. I'm Jewish with Jewish life, Jewish community

(37:57):
and Israel. And the reason the program exists is because
for so long, the assumption was like, if you are
a Jew, you will go to college, you will be
in hill l, you will then go on birthright, and
then you will love Israel forever and you will stop
asking any questions about it. And you know, that worked
for a good chunk of time. But as things developed,

(38:18):
people begin to question more things, and great programs like
Honeymoon Israel are trying to engage people in a way
that makes them go like, wow, I saw I spoke
to Israeli's we went to the Lebanon border. We saw that,
we saw the walls and the holes from rockets. We
we we spoke with Palestinians. You know, if I know

(38:39):
Israel expert, but I will say the best way to
learn about the Israel Palestine conflict is to talk to
Israelis and Palestinians and hear from them about what their
experiences are and what's going on. I mean, even Israel
is going through its own political revolution. You know, getting
getting rid of of BB is like a big, big deal.
It is I'm trying to think of the right word

(39:00):
that doesn't have a negative connotation, but like, it's a
it's life changing. Is there a room for Israel support
among progressives because it seems like a lot of people
are concerned that progressives are just anti Israel or you know,
I think there's room for it if progressives want to
make room. I have been in some I've been in
some spaces where I've had to call out progressives for

(39:22):
saying things like it's such a I've experienced anti Semitism
a lot in my life. I've beaten up, I've been
made fun of. I used to wear Yamica h at
one point in my life, and someone took it and
played frisbee with it. Like I, I have experienced the
anti semitism pretty pretty intensely. And I've been in rooms

(39:43):
with progressives who go, oh, well, that person, he's got
the support of like, uh, these big Jewish donors, uh,
you know, because of his Israel stuff, and then it
slowly transitions into well, you know how those people stay together,
and then it's suddenly is like, well, you know, the
Jews will and the moment you say that Jew, you're
in a really bad place because just like saying the
Asian Americans or the Spanish speaking vote, there are lots

(40:05):
of different kinds of Jews. There are lots of different
kinds of people, and they all have very different opinions
on things. So I think if the left wants to
make room for a mean Zionist is a very hard
word because it has a lot of connotation with it,
but like pro Israel people, they can do it. There's
definitely room for it. I mean, you can't. You can't
have peace without partners. You're so careful in the way

(40:29):
you express yourself through this median I know you have
you been hanging out with liberals too long? There, Ryan,
We So, how do we improve our economic system while
staying competitive in a superpower? Because I feel like a
lot of progressive demands are you know, well intentioned, and

(40:52):
in a perfect world we give everyone everything, but we
live in a world of finite resources. And you said
it best. You know, debt is a major problem. Limitations
are a major problem. So how do we do how
do we do this? Right? You're gonna you're gonna you're
gonna hate this, and you're gonna you're gonna play Russian
music behind it. But we need to share in the
wealth a bit more. You know. Uh, someone said that

(41:14):
we have a labor shortage, and it's not a labor shortage,
it's a wage shortage. People people know that they're in demand.
That's what happens after every pandemic. Uh. We have to
pay people more. We have to change the way that
we treat people. And when it comes to government programs,
we have to center people first. You know. One of

(41:34):
the things that I'm really worried about in the next
year is what's going to happen when all these relief
programs end, because I think we're experiencing a very different
economy that's been dressed up to look very lively. But
once the eviction moratoriums and once once the student loan moratorium,
oh my god, Joe Biden, if you're listening, you better

(41:55):
start fulfilling some of those promises. You made because a
lot of people get mad about the demands are growing
on the left, and I hear them all the time.
I read them right. But if you think about it
this way, like my wife is a social worker. Together
we have I think it's like a thousand dollars or
something in student loans per month that we have to
to do. Um, wouldn't you rather I spend a thousand

(42:18):
dollars on American businesses? Wouldn't you rather make me give
that money on two restaurants and tipping real people who
will then go and spend it on real things. Jeff
Bezos doesn't need more money. I assure you he is good.
He lost half of it and he's still going off
to space. I don't think. I don't think the job creators.
Maybe the job creators of the past were really truly

(42:41):
job creators, but now they're becoming robber barons like they
did in the eighteen nineties and the early nine hundreds,
and we need progressivism more than ever because of that,
and so we need to be centering people. And I
guarantee when you put what was the I'm trying to
remember the statistic now, but the percentage of the stimulus
x that went out, we're all almost automatically recirculated back

(43:03):
into the economy. And then text that is that is
the kind of stuff we need. I mean, we bailed.
I guess, I guess where I peel off Ryan is.
All of this is well intended, But if you forgive
student loans, you have to reform higher education. And if
you help people, you have to address the root causes
of what's causing these issues. So to me, student debt
and poverty and lack of healthcare coverage is more a

(43:26):
symptom of the problem rather than the problem. And I
feel like neither side really gets at that, what is
the dysfunction in our economic and political and cultural, you know,
world that is causing this dysfunction. So I think I
think you just nailed it. Uh, And I think you've
you've actually really nailed that differentiation between the left and

(43:48):
the right. Um, it's that in order for us to
fix things, we can't just deal with the symptoms, which is,
you know, the left loves dealing with symptoms because symptoms
are painful, and the left loves dealing immediately with pain.
Oh you're homeless here, let me get you out of homelessness.
But doesn't fix the homelessness crisis. The right does. Right

(44:09):
loves dealing with problems, but you know that takes time,
and sometimes that causes more harm over time because of it.
I think we need to deal with the you know,
my wife, who again who is a social worker, often
talks about how if you're going to help someone get
out of homelessness, you have to deal with the symptoms
and the problem. You can't just give someone li fium

(44:30):
if they they're bipolar and then be like, great, you
should be out of you should be out of your
homelessness situation in the next week. That's not how it works.
You need to fix the symptom and the problem. And
I think one of the things that it's really taxing
on America right now is that it feels like no
one wants to to tackle Both were chained to idols
of the past. And I think what's so important about

(44:53):
podcasts like this and the work that lots of people
out there are doing is that they're trying to get
new ideas and new people in who are are not
beholden to how these things work. And I think that's
the way we're really going to change stuff. We need
to listen forgive student loans and then change the student
loan program so that you know, there aren't dinky little

(45:14):
colleges that that have five people at them that are
not preparing anyone adequately and are just you know, for
lack of a better word, scams. Let's fix it. If
we're going to fix the housing crisis, let's fix the
housing crisis. Ah. I think that America would be better
off if we were all fully invested, and I think
that's the thing that we all really need to come by.

(45:37):
One of the things that has really bugged me is
that the media. You know, during the pandemic um there
was an incredible opportunity for the media to come together
and present a unified vision of what it means to
be American. That didn't happen. Ryan, and it kills me.

(45:58):
It kills me because every day I'd wake up, I'd
make coffee, I'd opened the news, and I hear these
stories of misery and pain. And then I'd go to
work and I would hear stories about these incredible people
there was. There was a an organizer who was also
a candidate running last year, and she organized the Halal
carts and queens to feed people because they couldn't work.

(46:20):
She raised money privately and then she paid them to
make meals for Ramadan because people were hungry and the
city was coming up short because of all sorts of issues.
And no one ever told her story. No one ever
told the story of the state senator who who basically
pulled a Shirley Chisholm and got a whole bunch of
farmers markets to deliver their food, not to the farmers

(46:43):
markets that they were all closed, but to food pantries
instead and paid them for it. There was so much innovation,
There's so many beautiful things happening that showed that we
will get through this if we work through it together.
So if we're going to talk about you know, America
moving for word, uh, it has to be one where
we're all invested in this project together. And I know

(47:06):
the left is I know, I know there are a
lot of people on the right who are they're not
you know, not everyone is out here just trying to
get their own I think if we're going to move forward,
we we have to say what's working, what's not, and
how can we pull everyone along the way to make
sure that this this there's an inclusive vision of the
world that everyone has a place in. And uh, if

(47:29):
you want to win, you've gotta call people. You've gotta
talk to people, and you have to have a vision
of the world where people can see themselves in it.
And you have to have new ideas and a lot
of our wars or generational wars that are no longer
relevant in today's world. And I think you know, I
am I. I don't have a lot in common with
your politics, Ryan, but I think you are committed and
you care, and I think that that is three quarters

(47:51):
in the battle really is people who understand the issues
as they are today, not as they were twenty five
years ago, which we seem to be rehashing all these
things as if it's still the nineties, and it's not
if it was if it was still the nineties, and
the solution still works. I can still go to a
movie for like six bucks, and the one the movie

(48:12):
theater down the street for me, I think it's fifteen now,
so yeah, and then nobody's going there because it's going
into straight into our houses. And you know, you know,
the whole model of how we used to live is
falling apart, and politics, whether it's left or right should
probably reflect these new realities, shouldn't they Ryan, It should
reflect the people, uh, it should. The City Council in

(48:35):
New York City, for the first time like in years,
is going to reflect the real diversity of the city,
you know, in terms of gender, in terms of ethnicity,
in terms of sexual orientation and that, and thank God
for it. It gives me hope to see in New
York City, which as much of people love to think
of it as a very liberal city, but it isn't

(48:56):
trenched in economic interests that worked very hard to keep
things like particular way. And if New York City can
can overcome a lot of those interests, I know the
rest of the country can too. It just takes very dedicated,
very passionate people waking up every day and saying this
is worth it. Well, you know, as goes the rest
of the country. So even if you are a Republican

(49:18):
listening somewhere from Kansas, that's our flagship city. So we
wish all of you in New York the best in
all of your endeavors. And as they say often around
here in Florida where I'm doing this recording, maybe don't
bring all those politics here, but bring that ferocity and
attacking those special interests and all of those things that

(49:41):
don't make any sense in today's world. That sounds it
sounds like a plan. Please also, come to New York.
We're reopening. We we thrive on tourism. It's restaurant. We
get get tested, make sure you your your negative get vaccinated.
And then and calm down. Broadway is reopening in the fall.
It's going to be view full. Please come. I'm excited

(50:02):
to come right And on that note, thank you so
much for your time. We really appreciate it. Oh it's
my pleasure anytime. So thanks to all of you for
joining me as we Follow the Prophet. And a big
thanks to our producers Cheyenne Read, Scott Handler, and of
course to our executive producers New gang Rich and w Myers.
I'm David Grosso. If you're enjoying this show as much

(50:23):
as i am, give us five stars and give us
a review. We read those and take your feedback in mind.
Follow the Prophet is a production of ging Rich three
sixty and I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Part of the gang

(50:44):
which