What A Day - The Promised Cleveland with Mayor-Elect Justin Bibb

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Mayor-elect of Cleveland, Justin Bibb, comes on the show to discuss his win and what he hopes to achieve in his first 100 days. The 34-year-old had never run for political office before but during the race, he prioritized public safety and policing among other issues, which proved to be successful. And in headlines: Pfizer asked the FDA for authorization of its COVID treatment pill, current and former employees of Activision Blizzard staged a walkout, and a prominent New York real estate developer and his ex-wife held what some are calling the most valuable single-owner auction ever staged.For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Wednesday, November 17th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And this is What A Day, where we hope the newly announced Harry Potter reunion will tell us exactly how much of the magic was real. Yeah, like, which actors actually could fly? I know it wasn't all of them. I am not an idiot.

Yeah, and just be straight with us, HBO Max. Like, we can handle knowing about magic. I think I can, at least. I don't know. On today's show, Pfizer applies for FDA authorization of its COVID treatment pill. Plus, we talk about Lady Gaga's approach to acting that's less method and more BBC nature documentary. That is very promising. Intriguing, intriguing. But first, we're going to continue our set of features on local candidates people should be paying some attention to. Yeah, so Gideon, you spoke with 34-year-old Justin Bibb, who went from candidate to mayor-elect in Cleveland just over two weeks ago. So what's the story there? Yeah, so Bibb had never run for

political office before. He was among seven candidates that were on the ballot earlier this year and went on to win by a really wide margin. And among the many issues that came up throughout the race was policing and public safety, part of a broader conversation that had been happening nationally. And Bibb prioritized that, and it was really an asset to him. Yeah, listeners might remember that in Minneapolis, there was a high-profile ballot question that would have changed the police department there. And that was voted down during the elections earlier this month. But in Cleveland, as we've talked about before, things went differently. Yeah, they did. So as a reminder, Cleveland voters saw issue 24 on their ballot. That was a police

oversight charter amendment. And Bibb's opponent emphasized his opposition to it while Bibb backed it. And in the end, the issue and Bibb won huge approval from the city's voters. And now he's focused on the implementation of that amendment, establishing a civilian review board for police oversight, as well as a range of other big priorities as he takes over in January. So Josie, I wanted to share this conversation I had with Bibb on Monday about these big plans, how he communicated them during the campaign. And I also asked him some questions from residents of the land. But I started with how the last couple of weeks have gone since he won. It's really been nonstop since election night. Now we're just trying to engage the community, get some feedback on our first 100 day priorities and trying to do everything we can to

hit the ground running come January 2022. Can you tell people that are both in the city and outside of it what some of those 100-day priorities are? What are the things that you're really focused on right now? One of the biggest things I ran on was police reform and police accountability. We had a significant piece of legislation passed called Issue 24. Secondly, many of the technology that we're using right now inside our city government is completely outdated. Our website is like 20 years old. Wow. And some departments can't share documents because planning is on Windows 7 while building and housing is on Windows 10. So basic things you might take for granted inside of a small and medium sized or large corporation.

We haven't really embraced those technologies inside city government in Cleveland. So we have a lot of work to do around that. And then lastly, making sure we really do the hard work of having an inclusive comeback coming out of this pandemic. Cleveland is the poorest big city in America. One out of two of our children are living in poverty. And we received the eighth largest amount of money from President Biden through the American Rescue Plan. And so I'm going to have a large amount of resources to start to tackle some of these issues as the next mayor. Right. Your opponent, Kevin Kelly, was, I think, at the end of the race telling people not to vote for issue 24 pretty explicitly for listeners. That's the police oversight charter amendment. Obviously, voters overwhelmingly voted

for it and you. Can you talk a little bit more about why you think that is? I'm wondering if you've thought more about it in the days since the election. I think my competitor took for granted how frustrated voters were around Cleveland's sincerity and focus on police accountability. You know, we are currently under a federal consent decree. We had two historic cases, one, the tragic murder of Tremere Rice, the other, the Brillo case, which officers were accused of shooting at a car with over 137 shots. And we've had a pattern of police misconduct that has really made us a national case study of what not to do in terms of policing. And so we get this consent decree.

And what happens is that the current administration really didn't embrace these reforms. Right now, we are only compliant with about 30 percent of the reforms since the consent decree was agreed upon since 2014. So we're about seven years into this and we're only achieved 30 percent of the mandates that have been required. And over the last 10 years, we've also spent over 30 million dollars selling police misconduct claims. And so when we talked about police reform and adding additional oversight of the police department, we tapped into this frustration that we weren't doing enough, that we weren't embracing these reforms in a more focused way. And I think my sincerity about that really resonated with voters. And I'll say this. We were concerned about the rhetoric coming from the other side because there was a lot of discussion about Justin is for defunding the police. To me, it was insulting because I'm a son of a cop, But I'm also a black man who's experienced his own

fair share of fear when I interact with police in the city. And so we tried to weave that narrative of this notion of us being able to do both because we can and must in this moment, embracing it full on, allowed us to really be successful in the election. What was the communication like on this issue? You mentioned that the rhetoric coming from the other side was what it was. But how did you sort of go about communicating this? and we really had to tap into the basic social contract that I think every resident wants in their city. I don't care if you're a black resident on the east side or a white resident on the west side of Cleveland. At the end of the day, voters want the police to show up when you call, and voters want them to respect their constitutional rights, protect and serve. We said that over and over and over and over again. And we also said that

this was not about an anti-police agenda. This was about bringing more community voices around the table and sharing power with the people to finally get the right training and culture in place. And on the topic of lived experiences, I am not from cleveland i am from cincinnati but that's skyline chili huh yes yes um you can you get it in cleveland you can't you can't get that okay but i did have some questions from audience members who are in cleveland um if you wouldn't mind me asking a few of those so yeah one person wrote to me and said i'm interested in hearing about plans to attract people in businesses to the area. Also, any goals around improving accessibility and affordability of our transit system?

One of the best things I can do as mayor is create the right conditions for good quality job creation in Cleveland. Right now, we are one of the worst cities in the county and in the state to do business with. We've lost so many small businesses in Cleveland due to the fact that the way we execute our permits is outdated. You got to talk to four or five departments to build land in the city of Cleveland sometimes. What we have to do inside city government is we have to move at the speed of business and commerce in order to attract good investment and attract good talent. In terms of public transit, look, outside of housing, public transit is the biggest pain point we have for our resident. Housing and

transit make up 40% of all the expenses going out of the door for many of our residents. And so one of the things I'm looking at is finding additional revenue models in Cleveland to tap into like smart parking meters, making sure we get our fair share of public transit investment from the governor of Ohio and our state legislature, and incentivizing people over cars in terms of how we make transit oriented development and mobility development investment decisions across city as well, too. This is a kind of a challenging one, but I'm just going to throw it out there. My boyfriend, I currently live in Chicago, but he was recently presented with a great job opportunity in cleveland oh i need some convincing though with all due respect why should we move there that is not my my terminology that is uh a nice

terminology well uh listen um i'm telling everybody to bet on the land number one calves basketball is back oh my god We're getting ready to take over the VA in the East. I'm excited about it. We have the second largest theater district outside of New York, right in Cleveland. Some of the best art and culture institutions in Cleveland. And I think Cleveland is going to really shock the nation in terms of our ability to embrace our lake and embrace climate resiliency long term. It's going to be cities like Cleveland that I think lead America to a more climate resilient future. And if I were that couple, I'd want to invest early on a booming stock like the land. So tell them I'm ready for it. Yeah, there you go. So that is my conversation

from earlier this week with Cleveland's mayor elect Justin Bibb. Look out for more on our social feeds, including our excitement for the best Cleveland Cavalier season in ages. That was before Evan Mobley went down. I hope I did not make that happen by bringing it up. Next time he stops by the show, Justin can also talk about the time that he apparently got coffee for Tommy Vitor and Jon Favreau when he was interning on the Obama campaign way back in the day. Everybody is connected in an insane way. As a Hawks fan, I can't say I'm excited about the Cavaliers, but as an Ohio fan, I am very

excited about Justin Bibb. There you go. And so we'll keep covering local candidates and issues going into next year, but that's the latest for now. It's Wednesday, WOD Squad, and today we're talking about the actress who Bradley Cooper once tricked so he could take another look at her. It's Lady Gaga, who has stepped in front of the camera once again to star in the upcoming drama House of Gucci by her own account. Gaga worked very hard to inhabit the character of Patricia Reggiani, who married into the Gucci fashion empire in the 80s. I spent six months working on her accent.

I spent a lot of time talking this way, just as Stephanie, myself. Then I did all the research on who she was as a person. Wow, what a shift right in the middle there. Just perfectly executed. She allegedly spoke in this accent, Gideon, both on and off set during production, absolutely blessing any customer service representatives she may have gotten on the phone with during that time. But true actors know that transforming one's voice

is just one aspect of a good performance. So another thing Gaga had mentioned during press for House of Gucci is her decision to study and channel a biblical arcsworth of animals to become her character. Just amazing. Hearing her talk about this, truly, truly delightful. Yeah. You know that animals all have Italian accents. So that's just canon, right? Like, she was learning to use that accent from, you know, watching nature documentaries. It's true. It's true. That's like the number one thing you learned from National Geographic.

But Gideon, I want to test your knowledge of Gaga's process. So I'm going to read you three things Gaga has said about her process. Two of them are real. One of them is fake. And we'll see if you can spot the fake one. Okay? Okay. Okay. We're calling this Animorphs Gaga's version. Number one, earlier in her life, I channeled a cat like a house cat. In the middle of the film, I was a fox. And then I studied panthers for the end. I watched lots of videos about the way that panthers hunt. Okay, number two, I transformed from a fox into a panther. It's something that I worked on studying the panther.

What are the ways in which the panther seduces its prey? And number three, i decorated my trailer with photos of panthers lions and foxes i didn't want to let myself forget about the seductive power of the animal kingdom one two or three which one is it okay i really really hope that the third one is real because uh the turn of phrase seductive power of the animal kingdom is very very funny. It would be funnier in the accent that she's doing for the movie. But I think three is fake.

You are correct. Yeah. But, you know, it's believable. And that's what matters. Yeah, it's totally believable. This is the kind of thing that, like, I don't know if it's real or not. But if I were doing tons of interviews like this, I would keep inventing other things that I was doing for, like, Method. Like, yeah, like, I crush walnuts in my bare hands, like just keep making it more elaborate. It's very fun. It's amazing. Truly. That was Animorphs Gaga's version. We'll be back

after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Pfizer asked the FDA yesterday to authorize its pill to treat unvaccinated people infected with covid 19 called paxlovid which is just really terrible name it's geared to older people or others with underlying conditions the company's own study showed that when the drug is taken shortly after symptoms first appear it was 89 effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization patients would have to get a prescription from a doctor and then down a series of 30 pills over five days. Paxlovid is the second antiviral COVID drug in the works. The company Merck is waiting for approval of its own pill, and the FDA will hold a meeting about it at the end of this month. The agency hasn't set a meeting

on Pfizer's request yet, but in anticipation, the Biden administration is reportedly planning to put down over $5 billion to pre-order 10 million courses of the treatment. Pfizer also said it made an agreement with other manufacturers so the pill can be made and sold more cheaply in 95 developing countries. More than 100 current and former employees of the video game giant Activision Blizzard staged a walkout yesterday at the company's campus in Irvine, California, and they also called on CEO Bobby Kotick to resign. Last July, California's Fair Employment Agency said the company repeatedly ignored complaints from female employees who said they were victims of discrimination, sexual harassment, assault, or more in recent years. Kotick has repeatedly claimed

to the company's board that he had no knowledge about these allegations and others as they were happening. But a new Wall Street Journal report says he had no knowledge about these allegations and others as they were happening. But a new Wall Street Journal report says he had, in fact, known about many of them for years and hid the details from directors. A collective of employees called the ABK Workers Alliance organized yesterday's protest and said on Twitter, quote, We will not be silenced until Bobby Kotick has been replaced as CEO. But in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, the board said it is, quote, confident in Bobby Kodak's leadership. Yeah, it's not great. Despite rising costs for everyday goods like gas and groceries, Americans are still treating themselves this holiday season. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales jumped 1.7 percent in October, with consumers

spending $638 million at stores and restaurants. That's 16% more than last October's spending levels and 21% more than pre-pandemic times. Walmart and Home Depot are just two of the many major retailers that have profited from this spending surge with consumers emptying their pockets for luxury items like electronics, fitness equipment, and more. But retail therapy has its consequences. Supply chain issues and shipping delays are worsening

with these high volumes of spending, particularly on consumer goods rather than services. Good reminder to get your holiday shopping done ahead of time or start dropping hints to your friends and family that you've renounced materialism and believe that the best gift is a life without clutter. If you are my husband and you are listening, I have not renounced materialism. Just want you to know. Yeah, we want to make that very clear.

That's the only thing that you should pick up from today's show. Two prominent New Yorkers are going through one of the hardest phases of a divorce when strangers come to spend the operating budget of the Cincinnati public school system on your stuff. Some of the art owned by real estate developer Harry Macklow and his former wife Linda was auctioned off this Monday. It brought in $676.1 million in what some are calling the most valuable single owner auction ever staged. The former couple's massive collection includes works by Rothko, Warhol, Picasso, and Pollock, the law firm name of artists that you can have.

A divorce court ordered them to sell it since they couldn't agree on how to divide it up. If you're wondering why finding another solution was so hard, it's worth noting that Harry is a very specific type of guy. The type of guy that processes his split from his ex-wife by hanging a 1,000 square foot photograph of him and his new wife on the side of a building he owns in Manhattan. Psycho. He did

that in 2019. The auction this Monday didn't cover the whole Macklo collection. There's a second session planned for the spring. And according to a former vice chairman of Sotheby's, quote, the art world will be fighting over it. I love the idea of posting your new wife's photo on the side of a building. That is petty to the most massive extent. I have to give him credit for that. You're not renouncing materialism and you're looking for a thousand square foot photograph. What I am saying is that if he is in the market for a third wife, I'm sure we could probably

figure something out. All right. I'm going to leave that up to you and to get out of this conversation. Those are the headlines. Hey, Wild Squad, one more thing before we go. We have a quick favor to ask. If you love listening to this podcast, why not leave us a review? Tell us what you like, what you don't like, or any other thoughts you might have about

What A Day. We really can't wait to read what you think. And we do read them. So please leave us a review. And be nice. That is all for today. If you are into reading and not just descriptions of Panthers by Lady Gaga like me,

What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. I'm Gideon Resnick. And we'll see you on the side of an enormous building. The bigger the better. Yeah. If you leave us a review,

we will put your picture on the side of an enormous building in the middle of Manhattan. a picture of you and us and that's just very sweet yeah and not weird at all not weird not at all What a day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance, Jazzy Marine, and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Leo Duran

and me, Gideon Reznik. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.