June 25, 2025 • 47 mins
Today's episode is a re-run of our interview from last month with Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. On June 24, Mamdani won the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, making him the presumptive party nominee and the early favorite to win November's general election. So it's the perfect time to revisit the candidate and his unique platform. Endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, he's proposing rent freezes, universal childcare, higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, free buses, and city-run grocery stores. In this conversation, we talked to the would-be mayor about his socialist vision for New York, including how he plans to fund more public goods, what he would do to ensure that government-run services are up to standard, and why there should be Halal carts on every street corner.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Adlots listeners. We are re releasing an episode that
we recorded on May twenty third with Zorin Mumdanie.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Just last night, Zoron won the Democratic nomination to be
the new mayor of New York City. He is the
massive favorite going into the general election, although of course
Cuomo is the favorite going into the nomination, so anything
could still happen. But probably a lot of people are
tuning into this race now for the first time and
want to know what the Democratic nominee is all about.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yep, and we asked him a lot of questions about
exactly that, So take a listen.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, we might
we had a socialist mayor here in New York City.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Can I tell you something please? It's slightly weird. Last night,
the night before we're recording this episode, I had a
dream that I was in a shared uber with Adrian
Adams and she was the driver. So she's another mayoral candidate.
She was driving and I told her we were going
to interview this particular candidate.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And I was amazing.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I was asking her for good questions.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
This is an amazing dream you're not making, Lissa.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
No, my dreams are very literal. And everyone in the
uber was giving me ideas for questions and had opinions
and stuff like that. But now I can't remember any
of the.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh, that's really disappointing anyway. You know, we don't really
cover a lot of New York City politics. We don't
cover a lot of politics in general. We hardly ever
talked about New York City politics. Who really cares about
New York and the broad audience. We don't like to
be too navel gazing, but you know, this is a
city with a lot of people who, needless to say,
(01:57):
work in finance. Potentially, if Door Maine your changes to
tax rates here, et cetera, then that could have an
impact on the industry that we cover a lot. There
are a lot of economics stories that are sort of
New York centric, particularly relating to housing, that are very universal,
et cetera. So it's not a crime to every once
(02:17):
in a while to a New York City focused episode.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
No, and this also relates directly to a previous all
Balts episode we did all about how New York gets
its groceries.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
That's right, that's the connection. Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I'm very excited to say we have a state assemblyman
and candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor, Zoron, Mumdanie
coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Zoron, Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
I mentioned your socialist. What specific strand of socialism are you?
And are the other socialists revisionists and deviationists of various flavors.
We need to know your exact the exact category here.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
I will leave that to the internet. I will. I
will tell you that I am a dem cutic socialist. Yes,
and I started to call myself that after Bernie Sanders'
twenty sixteen run for president, when I finally had a
language described the way that I saw the world and
the way that I believe the world should be, which
is one where every person has the dignity they need
to live a decent life.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
By the way, you know, now that I am a
journalist at a mainstream news organization, I do not personally
have political opinions, but I can say that I didn't.
Wasn't always the case. And I went to high school
in Vermont, and I was a volunteer on Bernie's nineteen
ninety six house campaign and wants a picture of me
with Bernie. So I was a very early you too.
I was a Bernard Brother before it became cool.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yes, you got in early.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
So how would you describe your platform? Is it the
New York version of Sanders.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
It's heavily inspired by that same focus on income inequality
and a recognition of the fact that one in four
New Yorkers are currently living in poverty in what has
now been described as the most expensive city in the country.
And it is a platform at its core to make
this city affordable and to use every tool at city
government's disposal to do so, because for too long we've
(04:08):
had politicians pretend that we are just bystanders to a
suffocating cost of living crisis, when in fact, we have
two choices, whether to exacerbate it or put an end
to it. And we've seen Eric Adams do the former.
We're running to do the latter.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
What did Eric Adams do when you said he did
the former, what did he do in your view to
exacerbate it.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
You know, the first issue that you hear from most
New Yorkers when it comes to cost of living is housing,
and the mayor sets the rent increases for more than
two million New Yorkers to live in rent stabilized housing.
And he came in as a self described real estate
That's how he described himself coming into the office. And
he's raised rents accordingly. He's raised them more than nine percent.
And this year, when the Rent Guidelines Board, which is
(04:46):
entirely composed of his appointees, found that the landlords of
those million or so units that have close to two
and a half million tenants had seen a increase in
their revenues by twelve percent, he wanted to raise the
rent once again to close to eight percent. And that
is one example. Another I would say is his relationship
to Connetison. Connettison can only raise the rates of gas
(05:09):
and electric with the permission of the state, and they
do so through something called a rate case. The City
of New York under Eric Adams administration sided with Walmart
in support of Connetison's requests to raise those rates by
sixty five dollars a month on average. And I know
that because I was also a part of that rate case,
one of the few elected officials who signed an opposition
to it, And I think that you can see this
(05:29):
again and again and again in the way that he
has intervened in the major costs that are driving New
Yorkers out of the city.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So, since you mentioned housing and the rent freeze, you
support rent freeze, lower rents. What do you say to
people who think that you need to incentivize landlords to
maintain their buildings to build new ones. There are also
people out there who think that regulatory reform is the
key to the supply problem in New York why rent
(05:57):
freezes particularly versus you know, maybe lou some of the regulations.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
I think that many of these things can actually be
achieved in tandem. I am both a candidate who believes
we need to freeze the rent for rent stabilized tenants
and one who believes that we need to end the
requirement to build parking lots when reconstruct housing, who believes
we need to increase densitery around mass transit hubs, that
we need to upzone wealthier neighborhoods that have historically not
contributed to affordable housing production. And we need to interrogate
(06:24):
why Tokyo is building ten homes for every thousand people,
Jersey cities at seven and New York is barely at four.
And some of that also has to do with what
is often described as the mundane details of housing law,
but can have massive impacts on whether or not it's
affordable or expensive to construct that housing, be it single
staircase versus dual staircase, or the regulations that have effectively
(06:44):
made it illegal to build SROs in this city, and
the need for us to have a true diversity of
housing stock. And I think the reason for the focus
on our rent freeze is that that is the clearest
and most direct way that you start your housing platform
as the mayor of this city, given your appointing of
all nine members of that Rent Guidelines Board. But it
cannot be the extent of it, because a city of
(07:07):
eight point four eight million people deserves a mayor with
a housing platform for eight point four eight million people,
not just the closest two and a half million that
live in those units. And the other point I would
make is that I have served in Albany, I'm now
in my third term, and I've seen in Albany, while
I have opposed it, we have passed legislation that allowed
landlords to double the amount of money they can receive
(07:28):
for iais, which are otherwise known as individual apartment improvements.
So to your concern around incentivizing repairs and things of
that nature, landlords have already just won the right to
double the amount of money they can receive for those improvements.
And I was in opposition to that doubling because of
the immense amount of fraud that we've seen in that
kind of program, where expenses are not actually what they
(07:52):
are represented to be. And the final thing I would
say is the rent guidelines had that findings of the
twelve percent increase in revenue for those landlords. If there
are landlords for whom that picture is not an accurate representation,
there is a program where they can apply a hardship
program for relief when they show that their income from
rents is not matching up to their costs at a
ratio that is allowing them to continue to operate that building.
(08:15):
And that is a program that I will intend to
continue to support because I believe it is important to
ensure that we can keep all of these buildings in operation.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I've heard that about Jersey City, that they've actually done
a fairly good job of expanding housing supply. What is
the role in your vision for more affordable housing for
the private developers and the for profit developers and so forth,
and you know, in your view, how can we actually
move the dial in terms of housing production of we'll
(08:44):
get into some of the stuff about I want to
talk about the public housing too, or quote affordable housing,
but for the private landlords, what can actually in your
view move the dial on that.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
I think some of it has to do with the regulations.
I was speaking of the fact that we continue to
have this requirement to build parking and you build housing.
That's not a requirement we should have any longer. The
need for us to take advantage of our unique place
in this country, and that we have mass transit hubs
across the city and that should be a site of
more housing density, and the fact that housing production has
(09:15):
not been evenly distributed across this city, especially in wealthier neighborhoods.
But I think even beyond that question of zoning, which
is what a lot of this comes back to, there's
also the question of process. We need to make it
faster to build this housing and ensure that we don't
see delay after delay after delay. And so one of
the points of our housing plan is also to move
(09:37):
away from the piecemeal process that is the one you
can describe today as being where you have something known
as member deference, where every city council member has the
ultimate vote on whether or not a development goes up
or down. We need to have a citywide approach, one
that also fast tracks developments that are in line with
the very priorities we've laid out with regards to housing production,
(10:00):
labor standards, affordability, because it's been too long where we've
seen proposals to build affordable housing for low income seniors
languish for years in delays, and those delays all cost money,
and that's also what drives up the cost of this production,
and I think we need to streamline those processes.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Actually, let's talk about that a little bit further. Because
public housing, which you want to expand significantly, is very
costly to build, and you know, there are certain standards
of public housing. We expect it to last a very
long time. There's priorities that it be carbon friendly, et cetera.
But like public housing, production in New York City has
(10:40):
been on parer cost wise, with even some very high
end private construction. Hudson Yards on a per unit basis
came in pretty similarly. This would be important regardless of
how it's financed. How do you actually get the cost
down in your view of public housing production.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
So the first thing I would do is just distinguish
between what kind of housing we're speaking of when we
say public housing, A lot of times we're referring to
Nischa developments. Yeah, across the fire.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
That's when I said it. I was thinking Nische, Okay.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Just to be clear, and I think that you know,
what we've seen in Nischa is in many ways emblematic
of a larger betrayal of working class New Yorkers. Nischa
is technically underneath the auspices of the federal government, but
the city and the state have an immense role to play,
and we've seen over time, while the federal government has
refused to fund the plan to put at least forty
(11:34):
billion dollars towards Nischa to deal with an ever expanding
amount of capital needs, the city since the time of Bloomberg,
has started to narrow the amount of funding that it provides,
and the state is not stepping up in the way
that it should. Now in our housing plan, we propose
doubling the amount of money we spend on preserving Nischa housing,
because what we've seen is that, oftentimes it's easy to
(11:57):
describe this housing crisis in New York City is solely
of affordability, it's also a crisis of having a safe
and habitable place to call your home. And as someone
who represents the largest public housing development in North America,
Queensbridge Houses, as well as the story of Houses Ravenswood Houses,
I have seen so many of my constituents, seniors who
are forced to walk up many flights of stairs because
(12:18):
their elevator isn't working, who are waiting for months to
have repairs be conducted, and who in a moment of
housing crisis. Under Eric Adams, we've actually seen the time
it takes to fill a vacant unit in Nische now
exceed more than a year, which should be the easiest
thing for city government to do.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I want to talk about another plank of your platform
that is of particular interest to us, and that is groceries.
Of course, so a while ago, Joe and I recorded
an episode on how New York actually gets its produce,
and we learned about the importance of the Hunt's distribution
terminal and all of that why grocery stores.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
You know, we are focused on the cost of living crisis,
and when you ask New Yorkers whether they're making forty
thousand dollars a year or two hundred thousand dollars a year,
you will inevitably hear them speak about groceries and the
sticker shock they feel in going back to the grocery
store and their sense that that which they could afford
years ago is now out of reach for them. And ultimately,
(13:31):
groceries and food are a non negotiable part of being
a New Yorker and living in any city in the world.
You need to be able to afford it to build
any kind of a life. And yet what we're seeing
is that people are being priced out of produce. And
when something is critically important to that dignity, I believe
that there should be a public option for it. And
what we have proposed is a reasonable policy experimentation in
(13:55):
our city of a pilot program of a network of
five municipals own grocery stores, one in each borough, that
would respond to twin crises, one of affordability and two
of food deserts, because, as I was saying earlier, as
the representative of Queensbridge Houses, I will speak to constituents
who live in the largest public housing development in North America,
and they will ask me questions for which I don't
(14:16):
have the answer, Questions like why are there five fast
food restaurants in a five block radius? But I cannot
find a place where I can get fresh produce that
I can afford. And I hear that time and time again.
And so what this proposal does is it not only
guarantees cheaper groceries, but it also guarantees that those groceries
can be in the very neighborhoods of New Yorkers that
(14:36):
are being denied that service today.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So some commentators have described this proposal as somewhat unusual
in America. I actually don't think it's that unusual. I'm
a former military brat and I vividly remember commissaries and
bx's on military bases, and those were subsidized. Anyway, how
do you, I guess, address the fears of critics who
(15:00):
worry that this is going to devolve into some sort
of Soviet style market where maybe I can only buy
one specific brand of tuna fish versus like the five
that are currently on offer.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
Well, the beauty of a pilot program is that it
only expands if it's successful. Now I'm confident that it
will be successful, and yet we will have to see
those results themselves. And the reason we even came up
with this is because of the successes of this model
in Kansas, as well as what you said in the
context of military bases across the country. And what we've
also found is there was a feasibility study done in
(15:34):
Chicago to see the applicability of this kind of a
model in an urban setting, and it found it not
only possible, but urgent and necessary. And that is the
exact kind of approach we have to take here. And
I think what's been quite interesting to me is state
government in the time that I've been there, has had
a similar recognition, but on a different topic, where it's
(15:55):
said that gas prices are something that we can only
allow to get up to a certain point, and when
they go beyond that, we need to subsidize it to
ensure that it's affordable. In twenty twenty two, the state
spent more than six hundred million dollars to suspend portions
of the gas tax, and yet we are watching as
New Yorkers are being priced out of bread and milk
(16:17):
and eggs, and we are saying that this is beyond
our control. And I think that the last point I
would make here is that our proposal is one that
would cost sixty million dollars for all of those five together.
That is less than half of the money the city
is already spending on a program called City Fresh, which
will subsidize corporate supermarkets in the hopes that they provide
(16:39):
affordable groceries, but with no guarantee to that, and with
no requirement for them to accept snap or wick, or
to engage in collective bargaining, or to actually guarantee those
cheaper groceries. So this is going to save the city
money while piloting a program that we are confident will
actually deliver the results that we have been denied in
that existing program today.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
All right, I have two specifically questions on this. One
is I understand, and I find intuitively logical, the idea
that people should be able to afford produce and it's
food has gotten very expensive at the grocery store. But
grocery store margins themselves are pretty thin. Yeah, so in
terms of like actually using the grocery store channel to
(17:22):
deliver these cost savings, given that the retail stores margins
are so thin, just three percent, why is that the
dial rather than I don't know, give people a voucher
so that they can order fresh direct or something like that.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
You know, I am someone who has been skeptical of
the efficacy of a voucher based model, and what I
am proposing with this idea of a network of municipal
and grocery stores is not a means by which the
city would make money and be able to increase that
prosityty is like.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
The grocery level margins seem very thin. Now, I know
you're not trying to make money. I'm just saying the
margins seem thin. So if I think, like what moves
the dial significantly on affordability, the actual retail level grocery
does not strike me as where the big optional opportunity is.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
I think the opportunity we have with a city run
model is that we can actually guarantee those cost savings. Right.
We have heard national chains and executives speak on earning
calls about how they've been able to blame covid era
supply chain costs to increase profit margins even further. And
what this would be as a clear mandate from the
city that every single dollar we save we pass on.
(18:29):
But beyond that, given that the mandate is not a
profit based one, that we can also pass on further
savings to ensure that things like milk and eggs and
bread are actually affordable.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So the other thing, and you sort of anticipated this question,
which is you mentioned, for example, that in existing Nightscha
housing people are waiting for a long time to get in,
elevator repaired, and so forth, how do you ensure operational
success Because I think people would say, oh, I've seen
how Nightscha housing works. I guess I'm going to know
(19:02):
how a city, a New York City run grocery store
is going to work. And who knows if it's going
to be open, and who knows if they're gonna, you know,
keep the refrigerators repaired or if they're going to have
tomatoes one day. I'm just saying, like you have already
confirmed the idea that certain city run things are not
run particularly well. So why should we why should the
(19:22):
public have confidence that, even setting aside price, that these
would be like run well, run efficiently.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
I have to earn the public's trust and I will
do that every single day as the mayor of the city.
And if you believe in public goods, in public services
I do, it behooves you to believe in just as
much in public excellence. And the first charges that you
must have is to tackle that which has not displayed
that excellence. I think Nischa is an example of that.
I also think one of the reasons why I focus
(19:50):
so much on the MTA in my time in the
State Assembly has been because that's another example of that
where we have a world class city and we do
not have world class public transit. I love our p transit,
I love our trains, our buses, I love riding a
city bike, and yet I know that the way in
which we are running it could be so much better.
And what has excited me is that we've seen glimpses
(20:12):
of what that excellence could look like. I mean, I
remember when I went in to get my vaccine for COVID.
I was in and out of that facility in fifteen minutes.
And that to me was an example of the public
sector being able to match the efficiencies we often hear
about when we describe the private sector. I think about Nischa,
which today is a story of disinvestment and of so
(20:33):
many New Yorkers being left behind. Could also be a
story closer to the one of how they developed the
minifridge in this country because it was a direct result
of an RFP that was put out, or a story
about yeah, and I think there's also a story today
to be told about woodside houses, which is a Nischa
development that is piloting a large scale installation of heat
(20:53):
pumps that has been shown to both increase the quality
of life but also decrease the carbon emissions and the cost.
And ultimately, that is what we need to show New Yorkers.
We have to earn their trust, and the best way
to earn their trust is to deliver the results that
we're confident we can with these ideas.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Just one more question on the grocery stores. So I
take the point about their purposes not to make money
for the government, obviously, but how would you actually judge
the success of them.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
I would judge the success in their provision of affordable
groceries I would judge their success in them meeting a
need that is currently being left unmet. And I think
that also means in the location of those stores, that
they actually provide a grocery store in a place where
currently it is too difficult to find any of that produce,
and that their prices are as we are discussing them,
(21:41):
significantly more affordable and more in line with where New
Yorkers are actually able to spend.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I want to talk more about public excellence in the
provision of public goods.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
My Bernard brother, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
I am an avid utilizer of many of the public
goods that New York City provides. They are in public school,
They go to the park almost every day. We ride
the bus together, we ride the subway together. I don't
think the subway and the bus are as bad as
some people say. It's certainly not as bad as the
impression I would get if I didn't live here and
(22:15):
now were watching Fox News about New York City. Nonetheless,
there has been an increase in crime over the last
several years. I think it's come down and recently, but
there is a fair amount of disrepair. My impression is
when I think about public goods in general, which is
that people on the left really like to talk about
them and how important they are, and then generally do
(22:37):
not seem as committed to sort of like product excellence
as I would expect for them to say, be politically sustainable.
Like I said, I feel very safe. I live in
the East Village, I commute up here. I generally feel
very safe. But you know, like I see needles on
the playground at Tompkins Square Park, there are bathrooms that
are almost never open or functional. There's smoking on the
(23:01):
subway from time to time. It's not the end of
the world, but it's not very pleasant, especially when you
have kids. And I'm curious, like what your view is about,
like what seems to be a sort of tension between
excellent provision of public goods and some of the law
and order, as people would call it, requirements for them
to be clean, friendly, excellent places.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
You know, I think we on the left have to
make it clear that quality of life is of immense
concern to us, because when we are fighting for public goods,
for public service, for public excellence, at the core of
it is that belief that everyone should have an excellent
quality of life. And yet What has happened in the
last few years is that this term has almost been
made to be understood as if it is solely a
(23:45):
conservative concern, when in fact, this is at the heart
of what we're fighting.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It feels to me, like, to be honest, that the
left has conceded that that. Actually the part of the
reason it's become a sort of conservative coded term is
because I perceive, and tell me if I'm wrong, it's fine,
but I perceive a certain discomfort about some of the
hard choices or some of the you know more, maybe
carcerole is the right word, law and order whatever that
(24:12):
would contribute to making some of these public goods safer
and clean.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Well, I think what we have to make clear is
that those are not the only choices on offer. And
yet we do have to still respond to that same crisis.
And so often, as you were describing living in New
York City, you have a different understanding than if you
were to view it through the prism of social media
or TV. And yet we can say two things at once,
which is that there is an immense amount of fear
(24:37):
mongering and that we still have to deliver world class goods,
which we are far from doing today. And I say
that as someone who loves our subway system and who
knows that when you ask New Yorkers where they feel
least safe in the city, you oftentimes hear those same words,
it's the subway system. And that's why at the heart
of our campaign is a proposal to deliver that same
(24:59):
p public safety that New Yorkers have been denied under
Eric Adams, a mayor who ran in twenty twenty one,
telling those same New Yorkers they need not choose between
safety and justice. He's shown himself unable to deliver the former,
uninterested in delivering the latter. And what we've said is
that we will create a Department of Community Safety, the DCS,
which understands that police have a critical role to play
(25:21):
in public safety, and we are currently relying on them
to respond to almost every single failure of the social
safety net, asking them to do the work of social
workers and mental health professionals, a reliance that has made
it nearly impossible for them to actually do their jobs.
And we can see that in their inability to raise
their clearance rates of the major seven categories of crime.
(25:41):
And so what our DCS will do is tackle five
key issues homelessness, mental health crisis, gun violence, hate crimes,
and victim services, and will learn from the evidence proven
models that have been successful elsewhere in the country in
responding to these very issues and doing so in America
that provides public safety and frees up the police.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So another part of your platform is raising the corporate
tax rate, raising income tax for millionaires. And I think
one of the things we are all perhaps internalizing this
week as we watch Washington, DC and the big beautiful
bill currently going through its process, is that raising taxes
on the rich seems to be really, really difficult in America.
(26:43):
Maybe New York is different, maybe New Yorkers feel differently
about it. But I guess my question is A, why
do you think it seems so difficult? And then B
how can you actually overcome that particular.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Hurdle it just to take on? You actually need state
permission to do that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
You do. You need to work with the state, and ultimately,
the city is a creature of the state, and any
agenda you have as a mayor that seeks to match
the scale of the crisis New Yorkers are living through
will require Albany. When we wanted to create universal pre
k we required Albany. When we wanted congestion pricing, we
(27:23):
required Albany. And I think again and again and again,
you will look at any of the most ambitious parts
of any candidate's plans and it will require Albany. When
I came into office in twenty twenty one, one of
the first battles that I helped to lead was to
raise taxes on the most profitable corporations and the wealthiest
New Yorkers so that we could fully fund our public schools.
(27:43):
And we eventually did so over the objections of then
Governor Cuomo, raising about four billion dollars, and that allowed
us to fulfill the legal requirement of the Campaign for
Fiscal Equity, a landmark case with regards to fully funding
public schools. And I think it's difficult in Washing and
it's difficult for a number of politicians to raise taxes
on the rich when those politicians are also funded by
(28:06):
the rich, because ultimately that clash between the interests of
their donors and the interest of their constituents is one
that they will oftentimes pick their donors. And we've seen
that with Andrew Cuomo. He speaks a big game about
fighting for working people, but he is funded by the
same billionaires that fund Donald Trump. We've just seen Bill
Ackman give his super pac two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
(28:27):
and we continue to see that even with him receiving
a million dollar donation from DoorDash looking to very clearly
purchase influence around labor and street safety regulations. And I
think there is a real possibility of doing so, not
only because it's one of the most popular things when
you pull it amongst New Yorkers and amongst Americans, but
because it's needed to pay for an agenda that will
(28:49):
transform the quality of life not only for working class
New Yorkers, not only for middle class New Yorkers, but
even for the wealthy. You hear this concern about the
degradation of city services, and our proposal is one that
meets the earlier conversation we were having about the necessity
for a public good to be so excellent that even
the wealthy use it and delivers that with regards to buses,
(29:11):
with regards to childcare, and with so many of the
city services that will keep this city running.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
If you're unable to raise the tax rate for whatever reason,
how much of your policy proposal is not viable any longer,
and how do you actually prioritize the different things that
you are proposing.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
So I'm confident in our ability to raise it because
I've seen in every year that I've been in Albany
since twenty twenty one, that the legislature has in its
own budget proposals proposed. Those increases on income taxes for
the wealthiest New Yorkers and on raising the top corporate
tax rate. And just for one moment, if I can
explain what those proposals are. Our proposal is to raise
(29:50):
the top state corporate tax rate to match that of
the radical socialist utopia of New Jersey. It's seven point
twenty five percent here in New York, to match theirs
of eleven point five five percent. That's a tax that
applies to the topmost level of profitable corporations. We're talking
about their profits millions of dollars, and it would raise
five billion dollars just in doing so. The second part
(30:13):
of the tax plan, which would raise four billion dollars,
would be to increase New York City's income tax rate
on the top one percent of income earners. We're talking
about people who make a million dollars or more a
year by a flat two percent increase, so a twenty
thousand dollars increase, which is what I would argue a
rounding error when you're looking at it within that larger context.
Those two things together raise nine billion dollars, and then
(30:34):
we raise an additional billion through good government reforms, whether
we're talking about procurement or hiring fiscal auditors, or actually
collecting the fines and fees that New York City is owed.
So that's our fiscal policy of how we raise ten billion. Now,
you always have to prepare for every eventuality. The city
also has about three billion dollars in its rainy day
fund and its reserves combined. It also, in times of
(30:55):
economic growth, as we've generally seen in the last few years,
sees its budget increase by two to three billion dollars.
So there are a lot of different opportunities. And the
final thing I will say is we have a city
budget of one hundred and fifteen billion dollars. I am
not confident that Eric Adams has been spending every one
of those dollars in the most productive way. And one
(31:16):
of the first things that I will do when I
get into city Hall, JOJ. But no, I mean to
be honest with you, it is a regret of mine
that we have allowed someone like Elon Musk to use
the language of fraud and inefficiency and waste for his
own ends of personal benefit, when really, if we care
(31:37):
about public goods and public service, we should be ensuring
that it is the most efficient spending of those dollars.
And I think when we look, especially at the way
in which we've hollowed out public capacity to instead replace
it with private consultants, there is an immense amount of
money to be saved, especially if we're looking specifically at
the DOE and how much of our reliance on curricula
(31:57):
procurement has to do more with who we've already been
procuring with and not having any standardized approach when it
should also be a universal approach across the department that
ensures we both save money and deliver excellence.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I want to ask another politics question. I didn't really
like to talk policy, but I think this is actually
an important to mention after the recent general election twenty
twenty four, and it's clear that Democrats performed worse than
they historically have among non white voters all around the country.
There's this big debate about why, and the left says
the centrist you failed to talk to the working class.
(32:31):
In the centrist it's like, no, it's because you've made
us talk about pronouns and that repelled.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
People, et cetera. I'm actually not that interested in that
question right now.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I'm interested that intra left left candidates actually have not
done particularly well, mentioned Bernie among poorer voters, among non
white voters, among polling I'm not going to ask you
about your own polling per se, but I saw Paul
that said you were pulling at eight percent among black voters,
with Andrew Cuomo having.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Done a lot better.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Seems like left politics in this country it appeals to
educated white people, many of them who probably work in newsrooms.
I haven't pulled the Bloomberg newsroom, but you know, stuff
like that. Why do you think that is? Why have
general left candidates, whether it's the primary level, et cetera,
or even just looking at you know, New York City
(33:20):
mayoral polling, not had more progress among what is arguably
the core base of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
You know, I think these polls that we're speaking about
right now with regards to New York City continue to
be polls that are more reflective of name recognition than
they are of support. And what I mean by that
is Andrew Cuomo is a former governor who is the
son of a former governor, and when I speak to
many New Yorkers who support him, I almost always hear
the word Mario in their answer. And what I'm proud
(33:51):
of is that we are the only campaign other than
Cuomo to have broken double digits with every single ethnic
group across the city.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
But you know, like even like on say like unionization,
there's a lot of excitement among utanization of grad students,
for example, But you know that's not what we think
of as like, you know, the sort of like industrial
beating heart of the labor movement, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
It does seem to be a phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
That's sort of more left culture or sort of left
economic policies have taken hold more among educated whites.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Well, look, I think you can look at DC thirty
seven for an example. This is the largest municipal union
in our city, and they represent the workers who actually
keep this city moving. They are by and large black
and brown New Yorkers, and they explicitly chose not to
endorse Andrew Cuomo because he created Tier six, a new
category in the pension program that took more than one
(34:41):
hundred thousand dollars out from working class New yorkers pockets
and made them retire later after having served this city
in state for decades. And I was proud to receive
their endorsement, and I think that it shows me the
path here is one where every single day over these
next thirty four days, we are going to continue to
increase our support where we have seen ourselves, for example,
(35:03):
just break twenty percent in support with Latino voters. And
that is indicative of the fact that the very New
Yorkers who know Cuomo the most are the ones who've
been failed by his policies the most as well. And
that is a responsibility for my campaign and every campaign
to showcase his actual record of cutting Medicaid, stealing money
from the MTA to fund upstate ski resorts, hounding the
(35:26):
more than ten women who courageously step forward to accuse
him of sexual harassment, and in many ways echoing a
Donald Trump style record. And that's what we will seek
to do, both at the doors the more than five
hundred and fifty thousand we've knocked so far, and on
cable and broadcasts and mailers, because we have now raised
eight million dollars, the most amount of money we can
legally spend in this race, faster than any campaign in
(35:47):
history and podcasts. I guess, yes, this is actually our
master plan. Yeah, it all comes down to odd lots.
Speaker 6 (35:55):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
So we're going to cut that cook.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So I just rem it's something from my dream. Actually.
So one of the passengers said that what he wanted
was basically this is not a real passenger, but I
think it's reflective of some things that you actually do
here in New York. But he said what he wants
is basically boring old competency in a mayor so an
(36:19):
administrator that has lots of policy experience, as opposed to
someone who's you know, maybe relatively new and trying to
do some new things. And I think that is important.
You know, there's a big difference between coming up with
policy ideas and actually executing them and executing them, Well,
how are you going to get things done? And what
(36:39):
do you say to the people who just want, you know,
like a boring continuation not necessarily of Eric Adams, but
you know, maybe going back a little bit further.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
I understand that desire. It's a desire for normalcy, and
in time when politics has become about cronyism and corruption.
And as much as Andrew Cuomo markets himself as a
candidate and a campaign of competence, this is a man
who couldn't even follow basic paperwork requirements to receive millions
of dollars in public matching funds, someone who couldn't write
a housing policy without the assistance of chat GBT, or
(37:12):
even spell the names of its endorsers correctly in his
own press releases. And as much as a frenetic public
facing schedule as I've been keeping over the last seven months,
I've also been keeping a private schedule where I've been
meeting with deputy mayors and commissioners from a wide variety
of mayoral administrations to speak about the how of it all.
(37:32):
Because an idea is only as good as its implementation,
and ultimately, it comes back from a desire to build
a team of the best and the brightest, one where
we have a common thread of excellence, of fluency and
a track record that binds all of those appointments and
those hires. Not a common thread of having served together
for twenty years, which is what it seems to have
been with Mayor Adams today. And one additional point I'll
(37:56):
say is that too often the style of leadership we've seen,
whether it's from Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams, has been
to hire replicas of yourself, to hire people who with
whom you have one hundred percent agreement and who are
the quickest to say yes to any one of your ideas,
be they good or bad. I am not interested in
that style of leadership. I'm interested in a style of
leadership that understands that ultimately the buck stops with me,
(38:18):
and that I have to build a team that speaks
to a wide breadth of opinion, of ideology and of
track record, that not everyone is going to look and
sound and be just like me, and that if I
want a DOT commissioner, all I need to agree with
them on is the vision for DOT, not HPD. And
if I want to hire a deputy mayor, they need
not agree with me on my thoughts on foreign policy.
(38:40):
They need only agree with their purview that they're being
hired for. Because it comes back to this notion that
I think Mayor Koch put it best, which is, if
you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues,
vote for me. If you agree with me on twelve
out of twelve, see a psychiatrist. And that speaks to
the need to have room for that disagreement and ultimately
be bound by that pursuit of excellence.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
During the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, it was a Trump
supporter I'm looking up. It was actually the founder of
Latinos for Trump who said that if Trump didn't win,
there would be taco trucks on every corner, which sounds
really good to me.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
You have also proposed.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Neoliberalism for halal cards, which I really like chicken over rice,
so I'd be very happy to see more of them
and be cheaper. But I'm curious how far you'd extend.
So reduce the permits make it easier to open a
Increase the permits, yes, oh, increase the number of permits
make it easier, therefore to get.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
It is true that the halal guys in Midtown, I
think the original one. You go by there in the
afternoon and the line stretches around the block. We've kind
of insane.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
They used to say, a chicken in every pot. I'm
saying a helal in every hand.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Okay, what about hotels? Their hotel prices are insanely expensive.
Airbnb is no longer legal. I know someone visiting the
city right now who had to get a place in
Jersey City because it's just too crazy. In New York,
it's insanely difficult to build a new hotel, apparently due
to opposition both from existing hotel owners to new hotels
(40:06):
for reasons and the hotel worker unions. Do you support
liberal in the same way that we need more wolog cards?
Would you support liberalization of hotel development in New York City?
Speaker 5 (40:16):
Now, I am not as interested in the concerns of
existing hotel owners, but I am very interested in the
concerns of hotel workers, and I think that that is
something that I would love to explore. Is there a
way to expand the number of hotels while ensuring that
we also retain the protections for those workers, because so
(40:36):
often we've seen this very fight, and it's going to
be one that will intensify in the next year as
there's contract renegotiations coming to a head during the World Cup,
where hotel owners have put hotel workers on the front
lines of so much of the work without giving them
the pay that is requisite for that. With Airbnb, one
of my concerns has been the transformation of what would
be housing into effectively small scale hotels and the proposal
(41:01):
that they're pushing. I think they've currently they're putting I
think more than a million dollars into spending on local races.
Has the prospect of turning a double digit number of
one and two family homes, taking them off of the
market and making them these vacant units.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
I'd just say Tracy is someone who has lived in
multi family housing my entire life in New York City.
I'm not thrilled with Airbnb because I like to know
who the neighbors are in my building and sometimes you
get loud, noisy, crazy people.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Anyway, keep going here.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh, I think that's a concern that a lot of
people would share. I have just one more question. It's
the most important one. But you have a little experience
in Bollywood. I suppose I'm a big Bollywood fan. Everything
I look I know about cricket I learned from Lagan.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
Which is great film.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, great film. Okay, So here's my question. Amer Khan
or Shower Khan, who one.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Wow, Why why would you do this to me? Amir
Khan for my head, chau Khan for my.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense to me.
I think I would say a similar thing.
Speaker 6 (42:04):
Well, you know, why didn't we spend the interview on
these questions.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Do a Bollywood episode?
Speaker 5 (42:08):
I would love to do a Bollywood episode.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Wait for those who don't know, what is the Bollywood.
Speaker 5 (42:12):
So the body connection is that my mother, her name
is Mira, and I are. She is a filmmaker. She
is an Indian filmmaker who's made a number of films,
my favorite of which is Mississippi Massala and I actually haven't.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Seen that one. I saw Monsoon Wedding and that was great.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
Great film, great film.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
You have to see Missip Massala because it's also the
reason that I'm alive. She met my father while researching
for that film.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Huh sore and Mom, Donnie, thank you so much for
coming on the thrill that we could.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Make it happen.
Speaker 6 (42:36):
Thank you so much, the pleasure to be here, Tracy.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
If he wins, maybe he'll come back on.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
We can do a Bollywood Well we have, we'd have
a lot of other stuff to talk about. But I
would definitely, I would definitely. I don't know much about it.
I love Legan, so we should talk more about that sometimes.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I really love Bollywood movies. I need to catch Mississippi Massala.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I guess, yeah, I mean Moms.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, yeah, that was obviously a very interesting conversation. I
do think, you know, there's this sort of knee jerk
reaction against socialism in America for you know, reasons.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Or reasons reasons.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, but you know, examples of some of the stuff
do exist, and I think the bx's and the military
commissaries are a really good example of, you know, we
do have subsidized groceries that exist in America, and why
not have them in New York.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
I think a really key thing, which is there's this
bad cycle with the public provision of goods in the US,
which is just that people look at them and don't
think they're particularly well run, and then it's like and
now you want to have more, and so it's like,
you know, like I said, I love the New York
City subway. I take it every day. What I want
a grocery store that sort of resembles the New York
(43:59):
City subway, Probably not, I'm not saying it would. But
I'm saying this is my experience interfacing with New York
City public goods when I want a grocery store that
like resembles the bathrooms at Tompkins Square Park or has
similar No, not not at all. I mean so I
just feel like, like it's fine. I love living in
New York City. I think these public provisions are great,
(44:20):
and some of them are absolutely incredible, like the libraries.
But by and large, I think that the tenders of
public goods, for various reasons, have not done a great
job of Like, no, these are actually really good services.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That's fair, And obviously the government's core competency is probably
not running grocery stores right like they wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
I wouldn't n't.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
They would have to learn a lot in order to
get up to speed. But my point is, you know,
the commissaries at military bases, they're pretty good, like you
can buy everything and service is great. They still bag
your groceries at least the last time I was there,
So examples do exist. All I'm saying is it's possible.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
You know the other thing, and obviously we only had
so much time. Is I'm really interested further in this
tension between deregulation is good when it's small things like
a log cart or Zorn recently didn't add which we
didn't get around to talking about, how like, you know,
there should be make it easier for bodega owners and
(45:23):
you know, less regulations for them, which sounds great.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
I like, I like all of my like.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
The three local bodegas within a forty five second walk
from my apartment is great. But why do those sort
of basic principles of sort of liberalizing the rules around
X not then apply to some of the bigger things
such as hotels which are insanely expensive in New York
or other areas like real estate.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
He did mention allowing more single family stairs, so they're
all the single family stare nerds on Twitter. Well, I'm
sure be very excited about that also, which we talked
about episode once.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, oh yeah, we did. Yeah, all right, So this
is actually a.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Core It is a core Odd Lots episode.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Okay, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
I'm Joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest zoron Mumdannie. He's at zoron k Mumdanie.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
Bennett at Dashbot at Caleebrooks at Calebrooks. From our Oddlaws content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash od Lots, where we
have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and
(46:34):
you can chat about all of these topics twenty four
to seven in our discord discord dot gg slash odlines.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
when we talk to New York City mayoral candidates, then
please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All
you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on
Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Hello, Adlots listeners. We are re releasing an episode that
we recorded on May twenty third with Zorin Mumdanie.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Just last night, Zoron won the Democratic nomination to be
the new mayor of New York City. He is the
massive favorite going into the general election, although of course
Cuomo is the favorite going into the nomination, so anything
could still happen. But probably a lot of people are
tuning into this race now for the first time and
want to know what the Democratic nominee is all about.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yep, and we asked him a lot of questions about
exactly that, So take a listen.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, we might
we had a socialist mayor here in New York City.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Can I tell you something please? It's slightly weird. Last night,
the night before we're recording this episode, I had a
dream that I was in a shared uber with Adrian
Adams and she was the driver. So she's another mayoral candidate.
She was driving and I told her we were going
to interview this particular candidate.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And I was amazing.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I was asking her for good questions.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
This is an amazing dream you're not making, Lissa.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
No, my dreams are very literal. And everyone in the
uber was giving me ideas for questions and had opinions
and stuff like that. But now I can't remember any
of the.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh, that's really disappointing anyway. You know, we don't really
cover a lot of New York City politics. We don't
cover a lot of politics in general. We hardly ever
talked about New York City politics. Who really cares about
New York and the broad audience. We don't like to
be too navel gazing, but you know, this is a
city with a lot of people who, needless to say,
(01:57):
work in finance. Potentially, if Door Maine your changes to
tax rates here, et cetera, then that could have an
impact on the industry that we cover a lot. There
are a lot of economics stories that are sort of
New York centric, particularly relating to housing, that are very universal,
et cetera. So it's not a crime to every once
(02:17):
in a while to a New York City focused episode.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
No, and this also relates directly to a previous all
Balts episode we did all about how New York gets
its groceries.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
That's right, that's the connection. Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I'm very excited to say we have a state assemblyman
and candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor, Zoron, Mumdanie
coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Zoron, Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
I mentioned your socialist. What specific strand of socialism are you?
And are the other socialists revisionists and deviationists of various flavors.
We need to know your exact the exact category here.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
I will leave that to the internet. I will. I
will tell you that I am a dem cutic socialist. Yes,
and I started to call myself that after Bernie Sanders'
twenty sixteen run for president, when I finally had a
language described the way that I saw the world and
the way that I believe the world should be, which
is one where every person has the dignity they need
to live a decent life.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
By the way, you know, now that I am a
journalist at a mainstream news organization, I do not personally
have political opinions, but I can say that I didn't.
Wasn't always the case. And I went to high school
in Vermont, and I was a volunteer on Bernie's nineteen
ninety six house campaign and wants a picture of me
with Bernie. So I was a very early you too.
I was a Bernard Brother before it became cool.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yes, you got in early.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
So how would you describe your platform? Is it the
New York version of Sanders.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
It's heavily inspired by that same focus on income inequality
and a recognition of the fact that one in four
New Yorkers are currently living in poverty in what has
now been described as the most expensive city in the country.
And it is a platform at its core to make
this city affordable and to use every tool at city
government's disposal to do so, because for too long we've
(04:08):
had politicians pretend that we are just bystanders to a
suffocating cost of living crisis, when in fact, we have
two choices, whether to exacerbate it or put an end
to it. And we've seen Eric Adams do the former.
We're running to do the latter.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
What did Eric Adams do when you said he did
the former, what did he do in your view to
exacerbate it.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
You know, the first issue that you hear from most
New Yorkers when it comes to cost of living is housing,
and the mayor sets the rent increases for more than
two million New Yorkers to live in rent stabilized housing.
And he came in as a self described real estate
That's how he described himself coming into the office. And
he's raised rents accordingly. He's raised them more than nine percent.
And this year, when the Rent Guidelines Board, which is
(04:46):
entirely composed of his appointees, found that the landlords of
those million or so units that have close to two
and a half million tenants had seen a increase in
their revenues by twelve percent, he wanted to raise the
rent once again to close to eight percent. And that
is one example. Another I would say is his relationship
to Connetison. Connettison can only raise the rates of gas
(05:09):
and electric with the permission of the state, and they
do so through something called a rate case. The City
of New York under Eric Adams administration sided with Walmart
in support of Connetison's requests to raise those rates by
sixty five dollars a month on average. And I know
that because I was also a part of that rate case,
one of the few elected officials who signed an opposition
to it, And I think that you can see this
(05:29):
again and again and again in the way that he
has intervened in the major costs that are driving New
Yorkers out of the city.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So, since you mentioned housing and the rent freeze, you
support rent freeze, lower rents. What do you say to
people who think that you need to incentivize landlords to
maintain their buildings to build new ones. There are also
people out there who think that regulatory reform is the
key to the supply problem in New York why rent
(05:57):
freezes particularly versus you know, maybe lou some of the regulations.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
I think that many of these things can actually be
achieved in tandem. I am both a candidate who believes
we need to freeze the rent for rent stabilized tenants
and one who believes that we need to end the
requirement to build parking lots when reconstruct housing, who believes
we need to increase densitery around mass transit hubs, that
we need to upzone wealthier neighborhoods that have historically not
contributed to affordable housing production. And we need to interrogate
(06:24):
why Tokyo is building ten homes for every thousand people,
Jersey cities at seven and New York is barely at four.
And some of that also has to do with what
is often described as the mundane details of housing law,
but can have massive impacts on whether or not it's
affordable or expensive to construct that housing, be it single
staircase versus dual staircase, or the regulations that have effectively
(06:44):
made it illegal to build SROs in this city, and
the need for us to have a true diversity of
housing stock. And I think the reason for the focus
on our rent freeze is that that is the clearest
and most direct way that you start your housing platform
as the mayor of this city, given your appointing of
all nine members of that Rent Guidelines Board. But it
cannot be the extent of it, because a city of
(07:07):
eight point four eight million people deserves a mayor with
a housing platform for eight point four eight million people,
not just the closest two and a half million that
live in those units. And the other point I would
make is that I have served in Albany, I'm now
in my third term, and I've seen in Albany, while
I have opposed it, we have passed legislation that allowed
landlords to double the amount of money they can receive
(07:28):
for iais, which are otherwise known as individual apartment improvements.
So to your concern around incentivizing repairs and things of
that nature, landlords have already just won the right to
double the amount of money they can receive for those improvements.
And I was in opposition to that doubling because of
the immense amount of fraud that we've seen in that
kind of program, where expenses are not actually what they
(07:52):
are represented to be. And the final thing I would
say is the rent guidelines had that findings of the
twelve percent increase in revenue for those landlords. If there
are landlords for whom that picture is not an accurate representation,
there is a program where they can apply a hardship
program for relief when they show that their income from
rents is not matching up to their costs at a
ratio that is allowing them to continue to operate that building.
(08:15):
And that is a program that I will intend to
continue to support because I believe it is important to
ensure that we can keep all of these buildings in operation.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I've heard that about Jersey City, that they've actually done
a fairly good job of expanding housing supply. What is
the role in your vision for more affordable housing for
the private developers and the for profit developers and so forth,
and you know, in your view, how can we actually
move the dial in terms of housing production of we'll
(08:44):
get into some of the stuff about I want to
talk about the public housing too, or quote affordable housing,
but for the private landlords, what can actually in your
view move the dial on that.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
I think some of it has to do with the regulations.
I was speaking of the fact that we continue to
have this requirement to build parking and you build housing.
That's not a requirement we should have any longer. The
need for us to take advantage of our unique place
in this country, and that we have mass transit hubs
across the city and that should be a site of
more housing density, and the fact that housing production has
(09:15):
not been evenly distributed across this city, especially in wealthier neighborhoods.
But I think even beyond that question of zoning, which
is what a lot of this comes back to, there's
also the question of process. We need to make it
faster to build this housing and ensure that we don't
see delay after delay after delay. And so one of
the points of our housing plan is also to move
(09:37):
away from the piecemeal process that is the one you
can describe today as being where you have something known
as member deference, where every city council member has the
ultimate vote on whether or not a development goes up
or down. We need to have a citywide approach, one
that also fast tracks developments that are in line with
the very priorities we've laid out with regards to housing production,
(10:00):
labor standards, affordability, because it's been too long where we've
seen proposals to build affordable housing for low income seniors
languish for years in delays, and those delays all cost money,
and that's also what drives up the cost of this production,
and I think we need to streamline those processes.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Actually, let's talk about that a little bit further. Because
public housing, which you want to expand significantly, is very
costly to build, and you know, there are certain standards
of public housing. We expect it to last a very
long time. There's priorities that it be carbon friendly, et cetera.
But like public housing, production in New York City has
(10:40):
been on parer cost wise, with even some very high
end private construction. Hudson Yards on a per unit basis
came in pretty similarly. This would be important regardless of
how it's financed. How do you actually get the cost
down in your view of public housing production.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
So the first thing I would do is just distinguish
between what kind of housing we're speaking of when we
say public housing, A lot of times we're referring to
Nischa developments. Yeah, across the fire.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
That's when I said it. I was thinking Nische, Okay.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Just to be clear, and I think that you know,
what we've seen in Nischa is in many ways emblematic
of a larger betrayal of working class New Yorkers. Nischa
is technically underneath the auspices of the federal government, but
the city and the state have an immense role to play,
and we've seen over time, while the federal government has
refused to fund the plan to put at least forty
(11:34):
billion dollars towards Nischa to deal with an ever expanding
amount of capital needs, the city since the time of Bloomberg,
has started to narrow the amount of funding that it provides,
and the state is not stepping up in the way
that it should. Now in our housing plan, we propose
doubling the amount of money we spend on preserving Nischa housing,
because what we've seen is that, oftentimes it's easy to
(11:57):
describe this housing crisis in New York City is solely
of affordability, it's also a crisis of having a safe
and habitable place to call your home. And as someone
who represents the largest public housing development in North America,
Queensbridge Houses, as well as the story of Houses Ravenswood Houses,
I have seen so many of my constituents, seniors who
are forced to walk up many flights of stairs because
(12:18):
their elevator isn't working, who are waiting for months to
have repairs be conducted, and who in a moment of
housing crisis. Under Eric Adams, we've actually seen the time
it takes to fill a vacant unit in Nische now
exceed more than a year, which should be the easiest
thing for city government to do.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I want to talk about another plank of your platform
that is of particular interest to us, and that is groceries.
Of course, so a while ago, Joe and I recorded
an episode on how New York actually gets its produce,
and we learned about the importance of the Hunt's distribution
terminal and all of that why grocery stores.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
You know, we are focused on the cost of living crisis,
and when you ask New Yorkers whether they're making forty
thousand dollars a year or two hundred thousand dollars a year,
you will inevitably hear them speak about groceries and the
sticker shock they feel in going back to the grocery
store and their sense that that which they could afford
years ago is now out of reach for them. And ultimately,
(13:31):
groceries and food are a non negotiable part of being
a New Yorker and living in any city in the world.
You need to be able to afford it to build
any kind of a life. And yet what we're seeing
is that people are being priced out of produce. And
when something is critically important to that dignity, I believe
that there should be a public option for it. And
what we have proposed is a reasonable policy experimentation in
(13:55):
our city of a pilot program of a network of
five municipals own grocery stores, one in each borough, that
would respond to twin crises, one of affordability and two
of food deserts, because, as I was saying earlier, as
the representative of Queensbridge Houses, I will speak to constituents
who live in the largest public housing development in North America,
and they will ask me questions for which I don't
(14:16):
have the answer, Questions like why are there five fast
food restaurants in a five block radius? But I cannot
find a place where I can get fresh produce that
I can afford. And I hear that time and time again.
And so what this proposal does is it not only
guarantees cheaper groceries, but it also guarantees that those groceries
can be in the very neighborhoods of New Yorkers that
(14:36):
are being denied that service today.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So some commentators have described this proposal as somewhat unusual
in America. I actually don't think it's that unusual. I'm
a former military brat and I vividly remember commissaries and
bx's on military bases, and those were subsidized. Anyway, how
do you, I guess, address the fears of critics who
(15:00):
worry that this is going to devolve into some sort
of Soviet style market where maybe I can only buy
one specific brand of tuna fish versus like the five
that are currently on offer.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
Well, the beauty of a pilot program is that it
only expands if it's successful. Now I'm confident that it
will be successful, and yet we will have to see
those results themselves. And the reason we even came up
with this is because of the successes of this model
in Kansas, as well as what you said in the
context of military bases across the country. And what we've
also found is there was a feasibility study done in
(15:34):
Chicago to see the applicability of this kind of a
model in an urban setting, and it found it not
only possible, but urgent and necessary. And that is the
exact kind of approach we have to take here. And
I think what's been quite interesting to me is state
government in the time that I've been there, has had
a similar recognition, but on a different topic, where it's
(15:55):
said that gas prices are something that we can only
allow to get up to a certain point, and when
they go beyond that, we need to subsidize it to
ensure that it's affordable. In twenty twenty two, the state
spent more than six hundred million dollars to suspend portions
of the gas tax, and yet we are watching as
New Yorkers are being priced out of bread and milk
(16:17):
and eggs, and we are saying that this is beyond
our control. And I think that the last point I
would make here is that our proposal is one that
would cost sixty million dollars for all of those five together.
That is less than half of the money the city
is already spending on a program called City Fresh, which
will subsidize corporate supermarkets in the hopes that they provide
(16:39):
affordable groceries, but with no guarantee to that, and with
no requirement for them to accept snap or wick, or
to engage in collective bargaining, or to actually guarantee those
cheaper groceries. So this is going to save the city
money while piloting a program that we are confident will
actually deliver the results that we have been denied in
that existing program today.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
All right, I have two specifically questions on this. One
is I understand, and I find intuitively logical, the idea
that people should be able to afford produce and it's
food has gotten very expensive at the grocery store. But
grocery store margins themselves are pretty thin. Yeah, so in
terms of like actually using the grocery store channel to
(17:22):
deliver these cost savings, given that the retail stores margins
are so thin, just three percent, why is that the
dial rather than I don't know, give people a voucher
so that they can order fresh direct or something like that.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
You know, I am someone who has been skeptical of
the efficacy of a voucher based model, and what I
am proposing with this idea of a network of municipal
and grocery stores is not a means by which the
city would make money and be able to increase that
prosityty is like.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
The grocery level margins seem very thin. Now, I know
you're not trying to make money. I'm just saying the
margins seem thin. So if I think, like what moves
the dial significantly on affordability, the actual retail level grocery
does not strike me as where the big optional opportunity is.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
I think the opportunity we have with a city run
model is that we can actually guarantee those cost savings. Right.
We have heard national chains and executives speak on earning
calls about how they've been able to blame covid era
supply chain costs to increase profit margins even further. And
what this would be as a clear mandate from the
city that every single dollar we save we pass on.
(18:29):
But beyond that, given that the mandate is not a
profit based one, that we can also pass on further
savings to ensure that things like milk and eggs and
bread are actually affordable.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So the other thing, and you sort of anticipated this question,
which is you mentioned, for example, that in existing Nightscha
housing people are waiting for a long time to get in,
elevator repaired, and so forth, how do you ensure operational
success Because I think people would say, oh, I've seen
how Nightscha housing works. I guess I'm going to know
(19:02):
how a city, a New York City run grocery store
is going to work. And who knows if it's going
to be open, and who knows if they're gonna, you know,
keep the refrigerators repaired or if they're going to have
tomatoes one day. I'm just saying, like you have already
confirmed the idea that certain city run things are not
run particularly well. So why should we why should the
(19:22):
public have confidence that, even setting aside price, that these
would be like run well, run efficiently.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
I have to earn the public's trust and I will
do that every single day as the mayor of the city.
And if you believe in public goods, in public services
I do, it behooves you to believe in just as
much in public excellence. And the first charges that you
must have is to tackle that which has not displayed
that excellence. I think Nischa is an example of that.
I also think one of the reasons why I focus
(19:50):
so much on the MTA in my time in the
State Assembly has been because that's another example of that
where we have a world class city and we do
not have world class public transit. I love our p transit,
I love our trains, our buses, I love riding a
city bike, and yet I know that the way in
which we are running it could be so much better.
And what has excited me is that we've seen glimpses
(20:12):
of what that excellence could look like. I mean, I
remember when I went in to get my vaccine for COVID.
I was in and out of that facility in fifteen minutes.
And that to me was an example of the public
sector being able to match the efficiencies we often hear
about when we describe the private sector. I think about Nischa,
which today is a story of disinvestment and of so
(20:33):
many New Yorkers being left behind. Could also be a
story closer to the one of how they developed the
minifridge in this country because it was a direct result
of an RFP that was put out, or a story
about yeah, and I think there's also a story today
to be told about woodside houses, which is a Nischa
development that is piloting a large scale installation of heat
(20:53):
pumps that has been shown to both increase the quality
of life but also decrease the carbon emissions and the cost.
And ultimately, that is what we need to show New Yorkers.
We have to earn their trust, and the best way
to earn their trust is to deliver the results that
we're confident we can with these ideas.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Just one more question on the grocery stores. So I
take the point about their purposes not to make money
for the government, obviously, but how would you actually judge
the success of them.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
I would judge the success in their provision of affordable
groceries I would judge their success in them meeting a
need that is currently being left unmet. And I think
that also means in the location of those stores, that
they actually provide a grocery store in a place where
currently it is too difficult to find any of that produce,
and that their prices are as we are discussing them,
(21:41):
significantly more affordable and more in line with where New
Yorkers are actually able to spend.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I want to talk more about public excellence in the
provision of public goods.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
My Bernard brother, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
I am an avid utilizer of many of the public
goods that New York City provides. They are in public school,
They go to the park almost every day. We ride
the bus together, we ride the subway together. I don't
think the subway and the bus are as bad as
some people say. It's certainly not as bad as the
impression I would get if I didn't live here and
(22:15):
now were watching Fox News about New York City. Nonetheless,
there has been an increase in crime over the last
several years. I think it's come down and recently, but
there is a fair amount of disrepair. My impression is
when I think about public goods in general, which is
that people on the left really like to talk about
them and how important they are, and then generally do
(22:37):
not seem as committed to sort of like product excellence
as I would expect for them to say, be politically sustainable.
Like I said, I feel very safe. I live in
the East Village, I commute up here. I generally feel
very safe. But you know, like I see needles on
the playground at Tompkins Square Park, there are bathrooms that
are almost never open or functional. There's smoking on the
(23:01):
subway from time to time. It's not the end of
the world, but it's not very pleasant, especially when you
have kids. And I'm curious, like what your view is about,
like what seems to be a sort of tension between
excellent provision of public goods and some of the law
and order, as people would call it, requirements for them
to be clean, friendly, excellent places.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
You know, I think we on the left have to
make it clear that quality of life is of immense
concern to us, because when we are fighting for public goods,
for public service, for public excellence, at the core of
it is that belief that everyone should have an excellent
quality of life. And yet What has happened in the
last few years is that this term has almost been
made to be understood as if it is solely a
(23:45):
conservative concern, when in fact, this is at the heart
of what we're fighting.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It feels to me, like, to be honest, that the
left has conceded that that. Actually the part of the
reason it's become a sort of conservative coded term is
because I perceive, and tell me if I'm wrong, it's fine,
but I perceive a certain discomfort about some of the
hard choices or some of the you know more, maybe
carcerole is the right word, law and order whatever that
(24:12):
would contribute to making some of these public goods safer
and clean.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Well, I think what we have to make clear is
that those are not the only choices on offer. And
yet we do have to still respond to that same crisis.
And so often, as you were describing living in New
York City, you have a different understanding than if you
were to view it through the prism of social media
or TV. And yet we can say two things at once,
which is that there is an immense amount of fear
(24:37):
mongering and that we still have to deliver world class goods,
which we are far from doing today. And I say
that as someone who loves our subway system and who
knows that when you ask New Yorkers where they feel
least safe in the city, you oftentimes hear those same words,
it's the subway system. And that's why at the heart
of our campaign is a proposal to deliver that same
(24:59):
p public safety that New Yorkers have been denied under
Eric Adams, a mayor who ran in twenty twenty one,
telling those same New Yorkers they need not choose between
safety and justice. He's shown himself unable to deliver the former,
uninterested in delivering the latter. And what we've said is
that we will create a Department of Community Safety, the DCS,
which understands that police have a critical role to play
(25:21):
in public safety, and we are currently relying on them
to respond to almost every single failure of the social
safety net, asking them to do the work of social
workers and mental health professionals, a reliance that has made
it nearly impossible for them to actually do their jobs.
And we can see that in their inability to raise
their clearance rates of the major seven categories of crime.
(25:41):
And so what our DCS will do is tackle five
key issues homelessness, mental health crisis, gun violence, hate crimes,
and victim services, and will learn from the evidence proven
models that have been successful elsewhere in the country in
responding to these very issues and doing so in America
that provides public safety and frees up the police.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So another part of your platform is raising the corporate
tax rate, raising income tax for millionaires. And I think
one of the things we are all perhaps internalizing this
week as we watch Washington, DC and the big beautiful
bill currently going through its process, is that raising taxes
on the rich seems to be really, really difficult in America.
(26:43):
Maybe New York is different, maybe New Yorkers feel differently
about it. But I guess my question is A, why
do you think it seems so difficult? And then B
how can you actually overcome that particular.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Hurdle it just to take on? You actually need state
permission to do that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
You do. You need to work with the state, and ultimately,
the city is a creature of the state, and any
agenda you have as a mayor that seeks to match
the scale of the crisis New Yorkers are living through
will require Albany. When we wanted to create universal pre
k we required Albany. When we wanted congestion pricing, we
(27:23):
required Albany. And I think again and again and again,
you will look at any of the most ambitious parts
of any candidate's plans and it will require Albany. When
I came into office in twenty twenty one, one of
the first battles that I helped to lead was to
raise taxes on the most profitable corporations and the wealthiest
New Yorkers so that we could fully fund our public schools.
(27:43):
And we eventually did so over the objections of then
Governor Cuomo, raising about four billion dollars, and that allowed
us to fulfill the legal requirement of the Campaign for
Fiscal Equity, a landmark case with regards to fully funding
public schools. And I think it's difficult in Washing and
it's difficult for a number of politicians to raise taxes
on the rich when those politicians are also funded by
(28:06):
the rich, because ultimately that clash between the interests of
their donors and the interest of their constituents is one
that they will oftentimes pick their donors. And we've seen
that with Andrew Cuomo. He speaks a big game about
fighting for working people, but he is funded by the
same billionaires that fund Donald Trump. We've just seen Bill
Ackman give his super pac two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
(28:27):
and we continue to see that even with him receiving
a million dollar donation from DoorDash looking to very clearly
purchase influence around labor and street safety regulations. And I
think there is a real possibility of doing so, not
only because it's one of the most popular things when
you pull it amongst New Yorkers and amongst Americans, but
because it's needed to pay for an agenda that will
(28:49):
transform the quality of life not only for working class
New Yorkers, not only for middle class New Yorkers, but
even for the wealthy. You hear this concern about the
degradation of city services, and our proposal is one that
meets the earlier conversation we were having about the necessity
for a public good to be so excellent that even
the wealthy use it and delivers that with regards to buses,
(29:11):
with regards to childcare, and with so many of the
city services that will keep this city running.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
If you're unable to raise the tax rate for whatever reason,
how much of your policy proposal is not viable any longer,
and how do you actually prioritize the different things that
you are proposing.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
So I'm confident in our ability to raise it because
I've seen in every year that I've been in Albany
since twenty twenty one, that the legislature has in its
own budget proposals proposed. Those increases on income taxes for
the wealthiest New Yorkers and on raising the top corporate
tax rate. And just for one moment, if I can
explain what those proposals are. Our proposal is to raise
(29:50):
the top state corporate tax rate to match that of
the radical socialist utopia of New Jersey. It's seven point
twenty five percent here in New York, to match theirs
of eleven point five five percent. That's a tax that
applies to the topmost level of profitable corporations. We're talking
about their profits millions of dollars, and it would raise
five billion dollars just in doing so. The second part
(30:13):
of the tax plan, which would raise four billion dollars,
would be to increase New York City's income tax rate
on the top one percent of income earners. We're talking
about people who make a million dollars or more a
year by a flat two percent increase, so a twenty
thousand dollars increase, which is what I would argue a
rounding error when you're looking at it within that larger context.
Those two things together raise nine billion dollars, and then
(30:34):
we raise an additional billion through good government reforms, whether
we're talking about procurement or hiring fiscal auditors, or actually
collecting the fines and fees that New York City is owed.
So that's our fiscal policy of how we raise ten billion. Now,
you always have to prepare for every eventuality. The city
also has about three billion dollars in its rainy day
fund and its reserves combined. It also, in times of
(30:55):
economic growth, as we've generally seen in the last few years,
sees its budget increase by two to three billion dollars.
So there are a lot of different opportunities. And the
final thing I will say is we have a city
budget of one hundred and fifteen billion dollars. I am
not confident that Eric Adams has been spending every one
of those dollars in the most productive way. And one
(31:16):
of the first things that I will do when I
get into city Hall, JOJ. But no, I mean to
be honest with you, it is a regret of mine
that we have allowed someone like Elon Musk to use
the language of fraud and inefficiency and waste for his
own ends of personal benefit, when really, if we care
(31:37):
about public goods and public service, we should be ensuring
that it is the most efficient spending of those dollars.
And I think when we look, especially at the way
in which we've hollowed out public capacity to instead replace
it with private consultants, there is an immense amount of
money to be saved, especially if we're looking specifically at
the DOE and how much of our reliance on curricula
(31:57):
procurement has to do more with who we've already been
procuring with and not having any standardized approach when it
should also be a universal approach across the department that
ensures we both save money and deliver excellence.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I want to ask another politics question. I didn't really
like to talk policy, but I think this is actually
an important to mention after the recent general election twenty
twenty four, and it's clear that Democrats performed worse than
they historically have among non white voters all around the country.
There's this big debate about why, and the left says
the centrist you failed to talk to the working class.
(32:31):
In the centrist it's like, no, it's because you've made
us talk about pronouns and that repelled.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
People, et cetera. I'm actually not that interested in that
question right now.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I'm interested that intra left left candidates actually have not
done particularly well, mentioned Bernie among poorer voters, among non
white voters, among polling I'm not going to ask you
about your own polling per se, but I saw Paul
that said you were pulling at eight percent among black voters,
with Andrew Cuomo having.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Done a lot better.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Seems like left politics in this country it appeals to
educated white people, many of them who probably work in newsrooms.
I haven't pulled the Bloomberg newsroom, but you know, stuff
like that. Why do you think that is? Why have
general left candidates, whether it's the primary level, et cetera,
or even just looking at you know, New York City
(33:20):
mayoral polling, not had more progress among what is arguably
the core base of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
You know, I think these polls that we're speaking about
right now with regards to New York City continue to
be polls that are more reflective of name recognition than
they are of support. And what I mean by that
is Andrew Cuomo is a former governor who is the
son of a former governor, and when I speak to
many New Yorkers who support him, I almost always hear
the word Mario in their answer. And what I'm proud
(33:51):
of is that we are the only campaign other than
Cuomo to have broken double digits with every single ethnic
group across the city.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
But you know, like even like on say like unionization,
there's a lot of excitement among utanization of grad students,
for example, But you know that's not what we think
of as like, you know, the sort of like industrial
beating heart of the labor movement, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
It does seem to be a phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
That's sort of more left culture or sort of left
economic policies have taken hold more among educated whites.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Well, look, I think you can look at DC thirty
seven for an example. This is the largest municipal union
in our city, and they represent the workers who actually
keep this city moving. They are by and large black
and brown New Yorkers, and they explicitly chose not to
endorse Andrew Cuomo because he created Tier six, a new
category in the pension program that took more than one
(34:41):
hundred thousand dollars out from working class New yorkers pockets
and made them retire later after having served this city
in state for decades. And I was proud to receive
their endorsement, and I think that it shows me the
path here is one where every single day over these
next thirty four days, we are going to continue to
increase our support where we have seen ourselves, for example,
(35:03):
just break twenty percent in support with Latino voters. And
that is indicative of the fact that the very New
Yorkers who know Cuomo the most are the ones who've
been failed by his policies the most as well. And
that is a responsibility for my campaign and every campaign
to showcase his actual record of cutting Medicaid, stealing money
from the MTA to fund upstate ski resorts, hounding the
(35:26):
more than ten women who courageously step forward to accuse
him of sexual harassment, and in many ways echoing a
Donald Trump style record. And that's what we will seek
to do, both at the doors the more than five
hundred and fifty thousand we've knocked so far, and on
cable and broadcasts and mailers, because we have now raised
eight million dollars, the most amount of money we can
legally spend in this race, faster than any campaign in
(35:47):
history and podcasts. I guess, yes, this is actually our
master plan. Yeah, it all comes down to odd lots.
Speaker 6 (35:55):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
So we're going to cut that cook.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So I just rem it's something from my dream. Actually.
So one of the passengers said that what he wanted
was basically this is not a real passenger, but I
think it's reflective of some things that you actually do
here in New York. But he said what he wants
is basically boring old competency in a mayor so an
(36:19):
administrator that has lots of policy experience, as opposed to
someone who's you know, maybe relatively new and trying to
do some new things. And I think that is important.
You know, there's a big difference between coming up with
policy ideas and actually executing them and executing them, Well,
how are you going to get things done? And what
(36:39):
do you say to the people who just want, you know,
like a boring continuation not necessarily of Eric Adams, but
you know, maybe going back a little bit further.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
I understand that desire. It's a desire for normalcy, and
in time when politics has become about cronyism and corruption.
And as much as Andrew Cuomo markets himself as a
candidate and a campaign of competence, this is a man
who couldn't even follow basic paperwork requirements to receive millions
of dollars in public matching funds, someone who couldn't write
a housing policy without the assistance of chat GBT, or
(37:12):
even spell the names of its endorsers correctly in his
own press releases. And as much as a frenetic public
facing schedule as I've been keeping over the last seven months,
I've also been keeping a private schedule where I've been
meeting with deputy mayors and commissioners from a wide variety
of mayoral administrations to speak about the how of it all.
(37:32):
Because an idea is only as good as its implementation,
and ultimately, it comes back from a desire to build
a team of the best and the brightest, one where
we have a common thread of excellence, of fluency and
a track record that binds all of those appointments and
those hires. Not a common thread of having served together
for twenty years, which is what it seems to have
been with Mayor Adams today. And one additional point I'll
(37:56):
say is that too often the style of leadership we've seen,
whether it's from Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams, has been
to hire replicas of yourself, to hire people who with
whom you have one hundred percent agreement and who are
the quickest to say yes to any one of your ideas,
be they good or bad. I am not interested in
that style of leadership. I'm interested in a style of
leadership that understands that ultimately the buck stops with me,
(38:18):
and that I have to build a team that speaks
to a wide breadth of opinion, of ideology and of
track record, that not everyone is going to look and
sound and be just like me, and that if I
want a DOT commissioner, all I need to agree with
them on is the vision for DOT, not HPD. And
if I want to hire a deputy mayor, they need
not agree with me on my thoughts on foreign policy.
(38:40):
They need only agree with their purview that they're being
hired for. Because it comes back to this notion that
I think Mayor Koch put it best, which is, if
you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues,
vote for me. If you agree with me on twelve
out of twelve, see a psychiatrist. And that speaks to
the need to have room for that disagreement and ultimately
be bound by that pursuit of excellence.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
During the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, it was a Trump
supporter I'm looking up. It was actually the founder of
Latinos for Trump who said that if Trump didn't win,
there would be taco trucks on every corner, which sounds
really good to me.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
You have also proposed.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Neoliberalism for halal cards, which I really like chicken over rice,
so I'd be very happy to see more of them
and be cheaper. But I'm curious how far you'd extend.
So reduce the permits make it easier to open a
Increase the permits, yes, oh, increase the number of permits
make it easier, therefore to get.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
It is true that the halal guys in Midtown, I
think the original one. You go by there in the
afternoon and the line stretches around the block. We've kind
of insane.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
They used to say, a chicken in every pot. I'm
saying a helal in every hand.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Okay, what about hotels? Their hotel prices are insanely expensive.
Airbnb is no longer legal. I know someone visiting the
city right now who had to get a place in
Jersey City because it's just too crazy. In New York,
it's insanely difficult to build a new hotel, apparently due
to opposition both from existing hotel owners to new hotels
(40:06):
for reasons and the hotel worker unions. Do you support
liberal in the same way that we need more wolog cards?
Would you support liberalization of hotel development in New York City?
Speaker 5 (40:16):
Now, I am not as interested in the concerns of
existing hotel owners, but I am very interested in the
concerns of hotel workers, and I think that that is
something that I would love to explore. Is there a
way to expand the number of hotels while ensuring that
we also retain the protections for those workers, because so
(40:36):
often we've seen this very fight, and it's going to
be one that will intensify in the next year as
there's contract renegotiations coming to a head during the World Cup,
where hotel owners have put hotel workers on the front
lines of so much of the work without giving them
the pay that is requisite for that. With Airbnb, one
of my concerns has been the transformation of what would
be housing into effectively small scale hotels and the proposal
(41:01):
that they're pushing. I think they've currently they're putting I
think more than a million dollars into spending on local races.
Has the prospect of turning a double digit number of
one and two family homes, taking them off of the
market and making them these vacant units.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
I'd just say Tracy is someone who has lived in
multi family housing my entire life in New York City.
I'm not thrilled with Airbnb because I like to know
who the neighbors are in my building and sometimes you
get loud, noisy, crazy people.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Anyway, keep going here.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh, I think that's a concern that a lot of
people would share. I have just one more question. It's
the most important one. But you have a little experience
in Bollywood. I suppose I'm a big Bollywood fan. Everything
I look I know about cricket I learned from Lagan.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
Which is great film.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, great film. Okay, So here's my question. Amer Khan
or Shower Khan, who one.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Wow, Why why would you do this to me? Amir
Khan for my head, chau Khan for my.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense to me.
I think I would say a similar thing.
Speaker 6 (42:04):
Well, you know, why didn't we spend the interview on
these questions.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Do a Bollywood episode?
Speaker 5 (42:08):
I would love to do a Bollywood episode.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Wait for those who don't know, what is the Bollywood.
Speaker 5 (42:12):
So the body connection is that my mother, her name
is Mira, and I are. She is a filmmaker. She
is an Indian filmmaker who's made a number of films,
my favorite of which is Mississippi Massala and I actually haven't.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Seen that one. I saw Monsoon Wedding and that was great.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
Great film, great film.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
You have to see Missip Massala because it's also the
reason that I'm alive. She met my father while researching
for that film.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Huh sore and Mom, Donnie, thank you so much for
coming on the thrill that we could.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Make it happen.
Speaker 6 (42:36):
Thank you so much, the pleasure to be here, Tracy.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
If he wins, maybe he'll come back on.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
We can do a Bollywood Well we have, we'd have
a lot of other stuff to talk about. But I
would definitely, I would definitely. I don't know much about it.
I love Legan, so we should talk more about that sometimes.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I really love Bollywood movies. I need to catch Mississippi Massala.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I guess, yeah, I mean Moms.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, yeah, that was obviously a very interesting conversation. I
do think, you know, there's this sort of knee jerk
reaction against socialism in America for you know, reasons.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Or reasons reasons.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, but you know, examples of some of the stuff
do exist, and I think the bx's and the military
commissaries are a really good example of, you know, we
do have subsidized groceries that exist in America, and why
not have them in New York.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
I think a really key thing, which is there's this
bad cycle with the public provision of goods in the US,
which is just that people look at them and don't
think they're particularly well run, and then it's like and
now you want to have more, and so it's like,
you know, like I said, I love the New York
City subway. I take it every day. What I want
a grocery store that sort of resembles the New York
(43:59):
City subway, Probably not, I'm not saying it would. But
I'm saying this is my experience interfacing with New York
City public goods when I want a grocery store that
like resembles the bathrooms at Tompkins Square Park or has
similar No, not not at all. I mean so I
just feel like, like it's fine. I love living in
New York City. I think these public provisions are great,
(44:20):
and some of them are absolutely incredible, like the libraries.
But by and large, I think that the tenders of
public goods, for various reasons, have not done a great
job of Like, no, these are actually really good services.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That's fair, And obviously the government's core competency is probably
not running grocery stores right like they wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
I wouldn't n't.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
They would have to learn a lot in order to
get up to speed. But my point is, you know,
the commissaries at military bases, they're pretty good, like you
can buy everything and service is great. They still bag
your groceries at least the last time I was there,
So examples do exist. All I'm saying is it's possible.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
You know the other thing, and obviously we only had
so much time. Is I'm really interested further in this
tension between deregulation is good when it's small things like
a log cart or Zorn recently didn't add which we
didn't get around to talking about, how like, you know,
there should be make it easier for bodega owners and
(45:23):
you know, less regulations for them, which sounds great.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
I like, I like all of my like.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
The three local bodegas within a forty five second walk
from my apartment is great. But why do those sort
of basic principles of sort of liberalizing the rules around
X not then apply to some of the bigger things
such as hotels which are insanely expensive in New York
or other areas like real estate.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
He did mention allowing more single family stairs, so they're
all the single family stare nerds on Twitter. Well, I'm
sure be very excited about that also, which we talked
about episode once.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, oh yeah, we did. Yeah, all right, So this
is actually a.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Core It is a core Odd Lots episode.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Okay, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
I'm Joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest zoron Mumdannie. He's at zoron k Mumdanie.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
Bennett at Dashbot at Caleebrooks at Calebrooks. From our Oddlaws content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash od Lots, where we
have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and
(46:34):
you can chat about all of these topics twenty four
to seven in our discord discord dot gg slash odlines.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
when we talk to New York City mayoral candidates, then
please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All
you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on
Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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