Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - LIVE REACTION: NY, FL Election Results

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Krystal interviews Huffpost reporter Dan Marans to break down the Florida and NY elections!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 Daniel Marans: https://www.huffpost.com/author/daniel-marans  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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out. Hey guys, welcome to a special Wednesday primary election results breakdown edition of Breaking Points. I, you know, we're normally off on Wednesday, but there was a lot going on in New York and Florida in particular, and we didn't want to wait till Thursday to break it down. So we invited our great friend Dan Marans of the Huffington Post. I guess it's just HuffPost now, right? I can, I'm so old. I can never get that out of my head.

Yeah. I guess it's just HuffPost now, right? I can, I'm so old. I can never get that out of my head. Yeah, you know, though, I will tell you that when I introduce myself to people I'm trying to interview, I often say Huffington Post because if I just say HuffPost fast, they think it's the Washington Post. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? Depends, right? I just don't like to engage in false advertising. Gotcha, gotcha. All right, so we've got Dan here to break down all of the races in Florida and New York.

There were some really pretty stunning, shocking, surprising, interesting results. Maybe the most interesting thing is that New York actually seemed to do a pretty decent job counting their ballots. So we have some results to talk about there. So that's exciting. But I wanted to start with the state of Florida. A couple races here that I had my eye on, at least. The first one was kind of the top of the ticket, the Democrats vying for the title of who gets to take on Ron DeSantis for the governor's race this fall. Talk us through that one, Dan. Yeah, so you had two main contenders,

Charlie Crist, obviously a former governor who at the time was a Republican turned Democrat and Democratic House member from sort of the Tampa area. And Nikki Freed, who is the only current statewide elected official in Florida who is a Democrat. She's the agriculture commissioner. She won in 2018 on a platform of making it easier to obtain medical marijuana licenses and protecting the state's water resources more effectively. I think that that was viewed as a very smart, specific way of connecting her post with issues that Floridians care about. And I think that for whatever reason, she decided there was nowhere to go from there. But I think given Chris' name recognition, but also the fact that I think Freed was trying to make an argument

that she was a little bit more progressive, a little bit more credible. She started engaging in certainly some gimmicks on social media in terms of calling out Ron DeSantis, but really being a little bit too online, never seeming to quite develop a deeper following beyond sort of a narrow subset of people. Chris just has a higher name recognition. And again, in a place like Florida, given the direction of the state, given the fact that back in 2018, when Ron DeSantis won that sort of pole-defying victory over Andrew Gillum, there was a sense at that time that the state could be moving more back in a Democratic direction, that this was very marginal.

That was more like a Democratic wave year. Four years later, obviously, I think we see that Ron DeSantis is very much entrenched. I don't think we can expect- Let me ask you about that. Do Democrats think they have any shot to defeat him? I did see a one lone poll that showed Val Demings, who's the Democratic nominee for Senate ahead, excuse me, of Marco Rubio, probably an outlier. I would not bet on Democrats being able to pick up that Senate seat, but a lot of people got excited about that. Do they have any hope that they could beat DeSantis in the governor's race? It seems like they're very concerned about him, of course, potentially running for president and being relatively formidable opponents. So I'm sure they would love the chance to knock him out right here

and now. I've not seen any indication that the National Democratic Party is prepared to spend money to either oust Ron DeSantis or Marco Rubio, because I think they don't think it's a good bet. And they have other states on the map that are more gettable. And even then are kind of reaches like Wisconsin. I think Georgia is an optimistic hold for them. And Pennsylvania is an optimistic flip. They're playing defense in Nevada, Arizona, New Hampshire, a number of other places. I think Val Demings is an incredibly strong candidate. You see her triangulating in a uniquely Floridian way, sort of calling Marco Rubio soft on Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro.

Sorry. You know, I would think that that has some play there. But yeah, look, DeSantis is very firmly entrenched at this point. I think that he's a polarizing figure. I think that there's, you know, 35 to 40 percent of the population that dislikes him. But I think overall, his approach to COVID and some of the population that dislikes him. But I think overall his approach to COVID and some of these other issues has been popular, the state's economy doing well, people moving in from other states. Well, in a midterm election, the fact that you energize

your side matters a lot. And, you know, I haven't dug too far into these results, but I know you made a bunch of endorsements in school board races that were very successful last night for the right. So it seems like he has a lot of pull with the base there for sure. I want to move on to another Florida race, which is really something. Laura Loomer, who is this sort of, you know, truly far right figure who has openly said she's good with the white ethno state, that she supports that idea and calls herself a proud Islamophobe. I mean, she really is like a far right extremist type character, came very close to ousting an incumbent Republican and won the villages that, you know, large sort of like senior community, which has a lot of political weight in Florida politics, but appears to have clearly lost,

but went ahead and gave this whole speech saying, no, really, I won and I'm refusing to concede. And guess what? The vote was rigged. Yeah, it's a really peculiar thing when it's so transparently selective how, how, when these people call election fraud. Obviously, I talked about in Western Michigan, there was this guy, John Gibbs, who is sort of an election denier out there who the DCCC, the House Democratic campaign arm, elevated because they preferred to run against him. He didn't seem to dispute his own victory when he won. It only seems to be when they're on the other side of the coin that they play this. And I guess there is such a distrust of institutions that this can at least help their personal brand, help them make money, maybe.

But I don't think this is going anywhere. It is very interesting that she was able to bring it this close against a guy named Daniel Webster, sort of a run-of-the-mill dime-a-dozen but deeply conservative Central Florida Republican. it does say something. I think it also probably says something about, as you were talking about energizing the base in a midterm year, but also especially in a primary election. I mean, this is probably even a smaller universe of the total Republican and or conservative electorate in these states. Yeah, so the most diehard came out and many of them voted for Laura Loomer. There was a little bit of a left wing or progressive or Bernie Sanders victory in one of these primaries as well. Maxwell Frost, 25 years old, I understand.

I think he'd be the first Zoomer in Congress. Break that one down for us, Dan. Yeah, so that's Florida's 10th congressional district. That's also a central Florida seat, sort of in and around Orlando. That's Val Demings' seat that she's vacating in order to run for Senate. And it initially looked like it was going to be another one of these big, expensive blowout contests because Maxwell Frost, who is an anti-gun violence activist, was up against a sitting state senator, Randolph Bracey, and Randolph Bracey got the backing of a pro-Israel group, the Democratic majority for Israel. Looked like it could be stepping up to be shaping up to be sort of one of these expensive proxy contests.

But Frost sort of established himself by building a coalition beyond just the activist left. He had the support of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He had the support of a number of influential labor unions and environmental groups. And he also had the support of Protect Our Future, which is a super PAC funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried that has the professed policy goal of investing in pandemic preparedness. That's sort of their thing, that they will, quote unquote, back candidates who support funding for greater research and preparedness for the next pandemic. And actually, if you do look at their endorsements, it's not just centrist candidates. There are a number of progressives. There was Jasmine Crockett in the Dallas area in Texas, for example.

But and they spent close to a million dollars on his behalf. So if you're an outside spender looking at that and thinking, is this even competitive? You might want to stay out. And that's actually what the pro-Israel groups did. So he did have this base of progressive support. He had the support of Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, but also the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which spent like a quarter million on him and this sort of pandemic preparedness group. Moral of the story is, if you're capable of broadening that coalition without compromising your values, that is certainly something to consider. But he is under fire actually from a local pro-Palestinian group from

abandoning some of his sort of policy positions on that. To be honest with you, I haven't borrowed into the details on that. But I think one of the dynamics here is if you're running and trying to build that coalition, that sort of bigger tent coalition, it's not always that you will take a stance that is further right or what have you. So much as sometimes you might not be the person sticking your neck out on that specific issue. Right. Greg Kassar in Austin, Texas, who sort of said, I'm not pro BDS. He kind of watered down his stance on, on, uh, he basically made it sound like he doesn't really want to condition,

uh, put imposed tougher conditions on USA to Israel, just sort of saying like, Hey, nothing to see here, move along. And that I think is the dynamic that I'm going to be really interested in on this issue of cryptocurrency regulation, which is that even if Protect Our Future, their outright policy agenda is not about cryptocurrency and it is about pandemic preparedness. And you have these guys like Bankman Freed who are by all appearances, true believing, quote, effective altruists, right, who believe that you have to do these sort of quantitative calculations to determine how to maximize good in the world and all that sort of stuff. Bankman Freed is still sort of a believing investor in cryptocurrency, and he supports another

super PAC called Web3 that is more explicit in wanting lighter regulation. We know what that what this industry as a whole wants from Congress, which is to be treated more like a derivative, which has a lighter regulatory touch than let's say, a stock or a bond, or, or something of that nature that would be regulated by the SEC. And I think it's just hard for me to believe that a progressive who comes in on that, under that, you know, with the backing of one of these groups is going to sort of say to themselves, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be the next Elizabeth Warren. Right. And really take them on. Yeah. If you benefited from a million dollars in your primary from a cryptocurrency billionaire, and he helped you get across the finish line,

I'm going to be skeptical that when push comes to shove, you're not going to ultimately vote the way that they want you to vote, even if potentially you're not the one really driving the train of saying we got to deregulate in the crypto space and we got to make sure they want it to be lightly regulated, but they still want to benefit from the sort of safety net, the banking safety net that we have set up for established institutions. So yeah, that is an interesting dynamic that is definitely worth keeping an eye on as well. I want to move to New York. So a bunch of interesting races here. Big headline for Democrats is there was a special election in upstate New York really seen as a bellwether

race. And analysts have been looking towards this one for months now because it's in a district Biden won by a point and a half. It is as swingy of a district as you can get. It's won sometimes by Republicans, sometimes by Democrats, true barometer of sort of the sentiment of the voting public. And you had two candidates, the Republican and the Democrat, Molinar is the Republican, Ryan is the Democrat, who are both sort of well-established politicians, well-known in the region, so fairly fair fight between them. And the Republican was running almost exclusively on, you know, exclusively on a message about inflation in the economy, Democrat leaning very hard into the new

post-Roe abortion messaging. So Dan, what came out of this very closely watched race? Yeah, I mean, I think this race is interesting on a number of different levels. But one thing I did point out in my reporting is that Pat Ryan, the Democrat, will only be serving there for four months. He's filling a vacancy created by Antonio Delgado, who was picked to replace a New York lieutenant governor who got indicted. And so Pat Ryan is going to be finishing out that term and then running in a different district in November with because his home was drawn into those new boundaries. Molinaro is going to be running in that district once again. So that should be an interesting dynamic. This is not one where in terms of hard numbers, the math of the House was affected, but it gives Democrats an ability to basically say, look, not only did you guys try to make this a referendum on the economy,

and we tried to make it a referendum on abortion, but you actually poured in more money than we did. I mean, I don't have the exact post-election figures because some of this stuff just gets sorted out in the end run there. But the National Republican Campaign Committee spent more than a million dollars propping up Molinaro. And the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is, of course, the House Republican Super PAC, spent another $650,000 at last glance. And of course, Molinaro himself raised a million and a half, though that was less than the two million Ryan raised. The DTRIP, all they would say was that they made a six-figure buy, which usually means raised $1.5 million, though that was less than the $2 million Ryan raised. The DTRIP, all they would say was that they made a six-figure buy, which usually means $100 or $200, and both vets spent another $500,000 for him. So we're really looking at something like

a two-to-one Republican advantage in the outside spending at the very least. So there's no question that they felt that this had high stakes, the Republicans. And I think they felt that because after Kansas, after a relatively narrow win in a Southern Minnesota special election, and a seat that Trump carried heavily, though one that has been a little bit closer in congressional races, that there's this narrative developing that the great red wave might have crested a little too early, that Democrats are offsetting that red wave with this excitement and appeal to independence that the threat to abortion rights has created. And though I was not on the ground during early voting and election day, what I can say is I actually think Democrats have a real case

here that abortion rights was an issue, was an issue in exciting the base and potentially even in getting independence over to their side because Mark Molinaro is not actually a far right guy. I mean, period, but especially on abortion rights, he said that it's up to the states. He would not support any kind of federal restrictions. At least that's what he has said. He has said that on a personal level, he supports exceptions for incest, rape, and the life of the mother, and that he sort of believes that it should be limited, but in a reasonable way, somewhere in the middle. But that said, it's just up to the states. And Pat Ryan was still able to say, still effectively able to polarize the race and say, this guy has an R next to his name.

And at the end of the day, in the abortion rights debate, that's all that matters because this is the party that has said that they're against abortion rights and we're the party that says we're for it. There's another dynamic here, which is that since the pandemic, a lot of, especially wealthier residents of New York City have moved out to the Hudson Valley, two hours, sometimes three hours north. It's a very beautiful region, homes either in the mountains, the Catskills, or in the valley itself. And I have to think that that has had an impact on the electorate up there in towns like Woodstock, Kingston, Rhinebeck, Hudson, New York, Kinderhook. These are places where there has been an influx of people from at least closer to the New York City metropolitan area.

You've got people who are like able to work from home now, so they have more flexibility. They can move on a little further, a little about quality of life, maybe cheaper housing, but probably still very expensive. So, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And the other thing here you were pointing to that there have been a few special elections now, in addition to that Kansas ballot initiative that obviously swung hard for Democrats or for the pro-choice position, I should say, because I think there were some significant number, minority of Republicans who voted for the pro-choice position there as well.

But you had Nebraska won post-obs. That was a Trump plus 11 district that the Republicans only won by five. You had Minnesota's first district that was a Trump plus 10 district and Republicans only won by four. So their margin significantly diminished. You have this one, which was a Biden plus 1.5. It looks like Pat Ryan is going to exceed that just by a little bit, not a whole lot, but outperform a little bit there. And then there was actually another special election yesterday in a much redder part of the state that Trump won by 11 and the Republican only won by seven. So you have kind of a consistent trend. And then the other thing that was very interesting to me, Dan, is we're used to pollsters underestimating the Republican side of the ledger. So Republicans sort of outperforming where the polls are. We've now had a couple instances where

actually Democrats have been outperforming what the polls are predicting. And this was a really clear example of that, this special election. So I'm looking at a tweet from Polling USA and the polls leading up to this special election, there was Triton polling, had Molinaro plus 10, Data for Progress, which is actually a progressive pollster, Molinaro plus eight, PPP, Molinaro plus three, DCCC targeting, Molinaro plus three. And then ultimately, so every single poll leading up to this election had the Republican winning, and then the Democrat ends up winning. And, you know, it was fairly close, but it wasn't so close that it's like going to a recount and that the result is ultimately in doubt here. So that's an interesting dynamic as well. Yeah, it certainly is. And I think it speaks to this question of turnout. I mean, I looked at

the turnout in this New York 19th special election. I mean, it looked like something like 130 or 140,000 people showed up to vote in a late August special election. I mean, I don't think that there were really competitive primaries at the top of the ballot that those same people might have been showing up to vote in. Otherwise, I think that they managed to get the message out pretty effectively. And in terms of the polling, the only caveat I have to offer on that is that I do know I was familiar with like one or two of those polling figures. Yeah.

It does sort of look like it tightened over time. And so I wonder if the trend line itself was accurate. I mean, that data for progress one came out literally on election day is when I saw that and it had Molinari plus eight. But well, let's turn to some of the city districts. There was a lot of Dem on Dem violence in these primaries because you had the whole map is being redrawn. So you had incumbents versus incumbents. You had the Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the DCCC, the Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee, sort of big

footing another incumbent and pushing him out of his district. Let's start with one that was, I was actually quite shocked at how lopsided the result was. Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler, and also a third candidate named Suraj Patel, who has challenged Carolyn Maloney in the past, they were drawn together into this district that put the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side in one district together. And they're both longtime incumbents, you know, both like have been there a long time and both, you know, colleagues for years and years. And I think they both chair committees, right? So they're, you know, relatively senior in terms of Democratic Party leadership. And they were pitted against each other in this primary. Nadler just dominated. I mean, it ended up not being close at all. What did you think of that one, Dan? It was pretty interesting. I spoke to Nadler and Patel yesterday, though Maloney

didn't make herself available to the press, and I got a chance to talk to some voters as well. When you look at the dynamics of the race and who Nadler is and who Maloney is, I think Nadler just has a very, very clear and strong brand as sort of this lawyerly liberal. He's the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, much like in the New York's 10th congressional district just below it, where the winner was a guy who was seen as sort of a Democratic Party hero vis-a-vis Trump. Jerry Nadler obviously was heavily involved in investigations against Trump in sort of the impeachment process. I also think that the Upper West Side and generally the West Side of Manhattan tends to be has a higher voting rate than the Upper East Side and tends to be extremely politically engaged.

It's a bit more left leaning, though. The Upper East Side used to be sort of a moderate Republican redoubt. They called it the Silk Stocking District. But now it's sort of just regular rank and file Democrats. But it leans just a bit more affluent, a bit more traditional, a bit more conservative. I know the Breaking Points producer, James Lynch, is from there. I'm sure he could confirm what I'm saying. So I think that's one dynamic. Another dynamic is that she had basically already shown that she just wasn't great at running a campaign because Patel had run against her twice before. And he actually, in a crowded field, held her to just a four point win last time. He had hammered her for her sort of history of vaccine skepticism.

She was somebody who had amplified sort of saying, I'm having a just asking questions approach to the link between childhood vaccines and autism. She used her position in hearings to sort of give a platform to some of these folks. Patel had really initiated that and put that on the map last cycle as the vaccine was coming online. And then Nadler really took it to a new height by red boxing it and sort of a red box, obviously being the way that candidates signal to super PACs without directly communicating with them, saying voters need to know that Carolyn Maloney is a vaccine skeptic and a super PAC did come in and spend a couple hundred grand blasting that out there. And then I think, uh, I think Nadler's selling point was I'm a good liberal. I opposed the Iraq war. She supported it. I supported the Iran nuclear deal, even though I'm Jewish and she's not, she opposed it. And, and, and, and essentially saying that, that he, you know,

he wanted to continue the progress that he had made, that, that he's this sort of fierce, lawyerly kind of opponent. If you look at her messaging, it was all, you can't send a man to do a woman's job, say no to the old boys club. And in the very end, it was that it was really nasty. It was like that Nadler's senile. Now, you did have some sort of infirm moments. Having been around Carolyn Maloney, I'm not sure if she's really in a position to make this case. Maybe someone could, but I'm not sure she's the one. That's right. Somebody actually said to me, it's the pot calling the kettle black there. So, yeah, I mean, these are both 30 year veterans of Congress in their mid 70s. I do think this does raise, again, once again, issues of Democratic Party gerontocracy.

Yeah. But ultimately, it was an interesting one. And and though Jerry Nadler is not sort of a hardcore left guy, I think that the sort of institutional left had rallied around him, seeing him as the best alternative. The better choice. OK, so let's talk about the one that you referenced that included parts of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, which was this relatively wide open primary. You have this guy named Dan Goldman. He's wealthy heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, will be one of the wealthiest members of Congress. Very sort of like, you know, standard issue resistance liberal type of Democrat came to prominence because he was a lawyer on the first Trump impeachment and won the backing kind of controversially of The New York Times because he's close with the Salzburg. And they didn't disclose that they had a conflict of interest. kind of controversially of the New York Times because he's close with the Sulzberg and they

didn't disclose that they had a conflict of interest. So they put their finger on the scale heavily in favor of Dan Goldman. And then you had a number of more progressive candidates also vying for this seat, including notably Mondaire Jones, who was a squad member who was kind of big footed and pushed out of his district by Sean Patrick Maloney. I would call him squad adjacent. We'll say squad adjacent. Yeah. I mean, he's ended up being in my view, rather even more disappointing than I've been in some of the other squad members. And part of why he decided to run in this district is because, you know, he thought it would be sort of easier in the general election to win. And he didn't really

want to go up against Sean Patrick Maloney, which could have been a more interesting primary. So he jumps into this race. There was another progressive candidate, Carlina Rivera is her name, correct? So ultimately, Yulene New, who represents a part of this lower Manhattan district already in the state legislature, she the race has not been called to my knowledge. Right. It's still very, very close. The Associated Press did call it. But yeah, so ended up being very close, which, you know, calls into question if Mondaire Jones had run for a different seat, if the left had been able to consolidate behind a single candidate, what Dan Goldman was able to get 20 some percent of the vote or something like that in this district. It seems like there was an opportunity here for a more left candidate that didn't come together thanks to the New York Times and also thanks to the inability of the left to consolidate around one candidate. Yeah, we saw this most prominently in last year's New York City mayor's race, where there were essentially three contenders of one left-leaning flavor or another who took a long time to consolidate. I think we saw a similar effect, though, in the end,

that when the progressive segment of the electorate sort of got a very clear message in the final days that this is the person you need to turn to. In that case, it was Maya Wiley. In this case, it's Yulene New. There was some consolidation effect, but the mere fact that there were so many candidates sort of laying claim to that lane in one form or another is absolutely an indictment of the progressive ecosystem in New York City, which, as we'll talk about later, has matured considerably in just four or five years' time, but is still really not quite capable of sort of laying down the law and reading the Riot Act to individual candidates. This was obviously a very difficult circumstance. The state legislature Democrats map was thrown

out in late April. There was like sort of an initial indication of what the new court ordered map would look like in mid-May and then finally in late May, about a week after that, whose home was drawn into Mondaire's district and Mondaire's home was drawn into Jamal Bowman's district. So this is in terms of residency, these things are complicated, though Mondaire did represent a much larger share of the district. It's been reported at this point that Mondaire looked at that and said, this is going to be a general election toss up. Biden only carried the new district by about, by just over 10 points. He's not a sort of, he wasn't comporting himself like a frontline member. He was more of a, I mean. Yeah yeah ready to run a safe blue seat right and how pathetic is

that though that you're afraid of a biden plus 10 district sorry but and this was i mean this was sean patrick maloney too the the district that would have been logical for him to run in which contained more of his current district was what biden plus. And he's like, Oh, this is too hard for me. I got to run in the Biden plus 10 district. And this is the guy who's supposed to be in charge of, you know, helping the Democrats keep the house. And he's not even confident enough to win in a Biden plus six or seven district himself. He's got to go and jump into the Biden plus 10 district. Yeah, very, very bizarre. And certainly in that brief one week period where there was this jostling, he took a ton of heat for that. I mean, Richie Torres from

the Bronx, again, who is, you know, maybe a mainstream liberal, but does not really have a relationship with the organized left was hitting him very hard because Richie Torres and Mondaire are the first two openly gay Black members. And Trump, I think Maloney is gay, but he's white and wealthy and moderate. It's hard to think what a counterfactual would look like where Mondaire Jones stays in this, sort of prosecutes this kind of case against Maloney that he's put himself above the party. He's nudged out, sort of a path-breaking black progressive. And does Maloney even say to that, eh, actually, I'll go to New York 18th,

the one that I'm currently holding. That's a possibility we'll never be able to know. I think certainly Mondaire's legacy on the left would be less tarnished. And there would be, he would at least have everybody rallying to his side against Patrick Maloney. And then as a frontliner, I mean, look, Katie Porter manages to do it. I mean, she walks a more manages to do it. I mean, she walks a more careful line out in orange County, California, but it is not absolutely unheard of.

Well, Mondaire Jones hasn't been, I mean, to my chagrin, he hasn't been the real like bomb thrower. He's tried to, in a lot of ways, kind of walk a more establishment friendly line.

he's the freshman represent. He's the representative for the freshman class to a democratic house leadership. more establishment-friendly line. So it's not- He's the representative for the freshman class to Democratic House leadership. And I think that really tells you that he saw himself as being the guy in the room with Pelosi. But now I happen to think that that works in the suburbs, but yeah, it works in the suburbs.

So stick in the suburbs. And it turns out that New York City people are pretty damn parochial. I mean, you, I heard it a lot. Like he says he was, you know, he likes the village cause he's gay and it was important to him as a young person. That doesn't mean, you know, the village, you know, that doesn't mean that people felt like he was kind of a carpetbagger, which he kind of was. I mean, I'm sympathetic to, I was very sympathetic to him when Sean Patrick Filoni did this and really did this to both him and Jabal Bowman and put both of them potentially in a difficult situation. I know Jabal Bowman, ultimately, he had a primary challenge that he was able to easily dispatch with. But yeah,

I mean, now you like sort of sold out the left when you were in Congress and then you screwed over the left in terms of winning this lower Manhattan and Brooklyn seat. So I think there are going to be some reflections and some hard feelings there. And then on the other hand, the district that Sean Patrick Maloney did run in, he was challenged by someone who's considered kind of a progressive rising star, Alessandra Biagi, who had taken out a longtime incumbent state Maloney in this very suburban district, which is, you know, sort of like Clinton territory. She beat Bernie in this district. She and Bill actually live in this district in Chappaqua. So too many hurdles for Alessandra Biaggi to overcome there. And I know that's a race you were covering carefully, too, Dan. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a person who was endorsed by AOC.

I mean, when AOC won in June 2018, the state legislative primaries were a couple months later in September, and that's when Cynthia Nixon ran against Cuomo as well. And at that point, this breakaway faction of eight state Senate Democrats had actually disbanded. Cuomo did it to sort of protect his left flank. He sort of said, okay, guys, enough of this shtick. I don't

need you there anymore, sort of blocking progressive legislation. Now I'm running against the left challenger, got to quit it. But the Working Families Party and a lot of other folks on the left basically said, we're not forgetting. And they ran eight candidates against these sort of ex-Independent Democratic Conference members, this rogue faction, and won six of those races. Hers was the highest profile. I mean, because the guy that she took on was the former leader of that group. of forcibly kissing a staffer. And she beat that person out. The person had a much higher fundraising haul. And Biagi has an interesting trajectory. I mean, she worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, and then she worked for the Cuomo administration and she became disillusioned because she learned about the IDC and all that. And subsequent to that, she really did become part of this new crop of hardcore progressives. I don't think she identifies as a socialist,

but I think that she worked very closely with people like Julia Salazar, who is a socialist, to do things like strengthen tenant protections. One of the things that I did look at, I mean, you can't talk about this race without noting that Biagi had to move in order to or she did move to run there. She bought a very nice house in Bedford, New York, which is, again, of that sort of Chappaqua ilk. By the way, that Clintonian sort of nice Westchester area, that's the most Democratic part of the district. So there are other counties by the river go further up Putnam and part of Dutchess. You start getting into even some Trumpy territory there. So she had that issue that she didn't have these ready-made relationships. There were a ton of progressives who were early opponents of this rogue democratic faction in the

state Senate and early supporters of Mondaire Jones, including people who told me they would have supported Mondaire against Maloney. People like sort of state Senator Elijah Reikland Melnick, Croton Mayor Brian Pugh. These are people who were basically overall progressive. They might be called more of the soft progressives than the sort of the hardcore progressives. And they basically said, we don't know her. We don't have a relationship with her. And they were nervous about her general election prospects.

And one of the reasons they were nervous about that is two tweets she put out in sort of the aftermath of George Floyd's killing in 2021, essentially saying, what do we mean by defund the police? Well, read this article. It wasn't like the most outright endorsement of the defund slogan, but it's there on the record. And then the bigger deal was that she posted a video of Philly cops engaging in an act of brutality against a woman in front of her child and said, the police in this country are soulless. You could see how, frankly, look, what we've seen citywide in New York City, I think that message would have a really hard time playing at this point in time with the uptick in crime and the backlash and things like that. I think it would do well in sort of the, it would be fine in sort of the socialist redoubts of Northwest Queens and Northwest Brooklyn. And we can get into that

when we talk about the socialists. But that's, I cannot think of a single instance of somebody with that kind of baggage winning a general election in what is sort of a suburban light blue. In a potentially tough year as well. Well, I do want to talk about, I think this is the last piece I want to talk about some of the socialist or socialist aligned victories. Because I think this was the biggest bright spot, at least for the left, who, you know, there were some missed opportunities at the federal level. But in terms of the state legislature, quite actually a dominant showing from the DSA left in New York here.

Yeah, we saw some folks sort of take over new districts. That would be people like Kristen Gonzalez in Northwest Queens. She happens to be an employee of American Express, but she is a total Democratic Socialist. And I think we'll join this crop that I think we could see getting close to 10 people who identify as Democratic Socialists in the New York State Legislature. And prior to 2018, it was zero. And other people held their spots, people like Jabari Brisport in Brooklyn, who had a challenger. There were other progressives. Well, and I think it's important to note, Dan, that a lot of these folks, I know Jabari Brisport's opponent in particular, were backed by Mayor Adams. So this

was kind of a power play from Mayor Eric Adams to put his stamp on the legislature and push out some of the further left factions that he disagrees with and did not work out well for him, a kind of also a demonstration of his political weakness right now? I think it is. I think what we've seen is that the power of the machine has gotten, and sort of just general traditional patronage politics, whether in New York City or places like Pittsburgh, I've covered that a lot, it has gotten a lot weaker at the local and state level, where the kind of organizing that DSA does very effectively, door knocking, changing margin, being able to move margins of votes in the hundreds, right, rather than the thousands, remains really powerful. And perhaps also because

at the state and local level, when it comes to issues like housing and protecting renters, rental protections, those are easier cells and you don't sort of get into the kind of federal realm of, oh, what does this person think about Trump? Or even the policing issues as much, which tend to be more local. So I should say maybe just at the state legislative level. I think that there was a really interesting race as well in the Bronx where Gustavo Rivera went up again. He's a progressive, not a socialist, but very firmly aligned with those folks, went up against sort of a Bronx machine candidate, also endorsed by Adriano Espaillat, who's the congressman from upper Manhattan and part of the South Bronx? And he defeated her, including in a district that now has the community of Riverdale, which is more affluent, also has a lot of pro-Israel voters.

I think you did start to see some some outside groups with those pro-Israel leanings intervening there. Yeah, I mean, without getting into a case by case and going into all of the details, I know it does look like in Central and South Brooklyn, one of these more sort of centrist Democratic candidates was able to hold on, though that person was an incumbent, Kevin Parker, is still heavily neighborhood and region dependent. But we are sort of seeing a bit of a socialist fertile crescent emerge in Northwest Brooklyn and Northwest Queens along the water there where a lot of the young people who live there are just very left-leaning, sometimes because they've been priced out of Manhattan and have created these communities there. Sometimes just because that's their ideology and that's sort of where these seats have come up and been created.

Obviously, we know that in Northwest Queens, AOC is the member of Congress. So that fits. In Northwest Brooklyn, it's Nydia Velasquez. And she obviously went hard for city councilwoman Carlina Rivera in the New York 10th primary. She's sort of viewed as one of the older generation of progressive, but not going to really stick her neck out against party leadership. If she does ultimately decide to retire or frankly, if she sticks around too long, I think that's where people will have their eye on for a new, a new sort of truly left-wing member of Congress.

Well, I saw a Ross Barkin who's another friend of the show and also great New York city political observer pointing out that, you know, just a few years ago, you wouldn't laugh down in the room. If you said the DSA endorsement was going to matter. So even though, you know, it's very small steps forward, the fact of the matter is they're sort of brick by brick building out a real political operation and a real political bench with, you know, established legislators who can then go on and run for those congressional seats and run for higher office. So a lot of very interesting results here. It's never dull. And extremely grateful to you, Dan, for helping us understand all of it.

Always happy to be here, Crystal. This was super in-depth and yeah, great time. Hopefully people got everything they needed to know out of the Florida and New York primary landscape and also what it might mean for the fall. Dan, great to see you and everybody out there. Thank you for watching. We're going to have more for you later. This is an iHeart Podcast.