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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll talk to the two directors of the New York Working Families Party to begin the show today. Why? There's a lot going on this week that is very relevant to them and very relevant to many of you. In the New York State governor's race, did you hear this? They declined to endorse the progressive challenger who was primary Governor Hochul. That was her Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado. Within a day after the Working Families Party decided to stay out of that race, Delgado dropped out.

The progressive candidate the Working Families Party backed in the New Jersey congressional primary this week has apparently won that race, Analilia Mejia, who was the most progressive candidate in that multi candidate field looking to succeed Mikie Sherrill there. [unintelligible 00:00:58] is what they call Tin Cup Day in Albany.

You know about Tin Cup Day? That's when the mayor of New York and others go in person to ask the state legislature to approve their agenda. In Mayor Mamdani's case and backed by the Working Families Party, the mayor wants to increase taxes on the wealthiest New York individuals and corporations, as you know, to pay for universal childcare and other affordability priorities.

Now, on Monday's show, on that question, we heard an argument against those tax hikes from Steve Fulop, president of the Partnership for New York City. Yes, that's Steve Fulop, who used to be the Jersey City mayor, Democrat. Now he's president of the Partnership for New York city, which represents 300 major businesses in the city. Here's one of the ways Fulop made his case against Mamdani's call and his base's call to tax the rich.

Steve Fulop: The talking point that he had, Brian, was that we need to move New York tax rates on the corporate side to replicate New Jersey. Coincidentally, I have familiarity with both of those. Currently, when you layer on all of the different taxes for corporations in New York, you are at 17%, which is marginally more than New Jersey already. If you replicate the tax rate for New Jersey, you would move New York City to 22% versus New Jersey staying at 11%.

All I said was that at some point you hit a tripwire and people do make a decision to leave. If your taxes are 100% higher than you could have them a mile away, people are going to make that decision. It's not overnight, but some people make that decision, and it will be bad for New York.

Brian Lehrer: Steve Fulop, president of the Partnership for New York City, the business group here on Monday. We'll hear the other side of that now. We'll talk about Hochul Delgado, Analilia Mejia, Tin Cup Day in Albany, and maybe more. As I said, there's a lot going on this week that is very relevant to the Working Families Party. Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila are the co-directors of the New York Working Families Party and they join me now. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jasmine Gripper: Thank you for having us.

Ana María Archila: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Would you start by addressing Steve Fulop's argument in the clip? Mamdani's pitch to level up New York's corporate tax with New Jerseys would actually make the city's corporate taxes significantly more than New Jersey's, he says, not level because of additional city taxes that already exist. Do you question the math first of all, and do you question how that might affect companies decisions about whether to stay or create new jobs here if they can be cheaper right across the river? To many people that argument might sound like common sense.

Jasmine Gripper: Yes, it would sound like common sense if you don't understand who pays the corporate tax and how. One, our corporate tax rate is only paid by corporations who net a profit of $1 million or more. That already eliminates all of the small mom and pop businesses and struggling small businesses. This is the ultra rich corporations who are netting huge profits.

You pay New York's corporate tax rate not because you are based in New York. You pay New York's corporate tax rate if you do business in New York. Businesses like Amazon aren't leaving New York, [chuckles] they're not going to leave our market. It is too big of a sales market for them to go. Amazon can absolutely afford to pay more in corporate taxes to New York State and they are not going anywhere.

Being really clear that a corporate tax has nothing to do where an organization or business is headquartered; it has all to do with if they do business in New York and they earn $1 million in profit or more. That's only taxing the ultra wealthy corporations and the ones who won't leave New York because they know they want to be here. This market is strong and they want to do business here and we have no threat of them going anywhere.

The rich always complain they're going to leave, they're going to leave, they're going to leave, and guess what? They never leave. [chuckles] This is New York. They want to be here. This is the playground of the ultra wealthy. Corporations want to be here and do business in New York and it's actually not going to threaten us at all.

Brian Lehrer: "They could be in Jersey City," Fulop, the former mayor of Jersey City argued,-

Jasmine Gripper: You can be in Jersey city.

Brian Lehrer: -"and still be in the metro area."

Jasmine Gripper: If you do business in New York, you pay New York's corporate tax rate. [chuckles] It doesn't matter where you go. As long as you want to operate your business and sell in New York and do business with New Yorkers, you have to pay our corporate tax rate. It doesn't matter if you go across the river. You can be deported in Texas, you still can pay the New York corporate tax rate.

Brian Lehrer: How far does that go? Let's say Amazon was headquartered in Texas, which I don't think it is, but let's just say, they ship obviously to a lot of New Yorkers because they're delivering to New Yorkers addresses-

Jasmine Gripper: Yes, and because they do business in New York.

Brian Lehrer: -they need to pay New York's corporate tax rate?

Jasmine Gripper: Exactly. Yes. That is the way the bill is written. That's the way the law has been. I think Steve Fulop is being misleading [chuckles] about businesses leaving. We know it's untrue.

Brian Lehrer: Steve Fulop, yes. Here's one more Fulop clip from Monday's show where he argues that raising taxes wouldn't just ding the oligarchs. New York City's high taxes have already begun to deter job creation for regular working families. He says the 300 companies they represent, they may be a lot of the banks, et cetera, what you might think of as the oligarchy, the masters of the universe companies, but they have 800,000 workers in New York. You want those jobs to stay and you want them to bring more jobs. Here's what he said about that.

Steve Fulop: The biggest way to confront the affordability conversation is better jobs which lead to better paychecks. You're not talking about the top 1%. You're talking about across the board. When places like, use what you said earlier, let's say the oligarchs, and we classify them, but if you talk about their companies, let's say JPMorgan has more jobs for the first time in Texas than New York. Think about that. Goldman Sachs hasn't created a net job in New York for whatever, seven, eight years, they say, right? Those things are indicators that you're not going to confront the affordability conversation if you're not creating more jobs for more people.

Brian Lehrer: Jasmine or Ana María, your reaction to that?

Jasmine Gripper: The wealthy and the well connected want to constantly say we need to look out for them at the expense of the working class. We know that's simply not true. The people who are leaving New York in droves, the people who can't afford to stay here are the working class New Yorkers. We need government to look out for them. We have one. Let's be mindful that Trump already gave a permanent tax break to the wealthy. New York's wealthy are getting a $12 billion tax reduction because of the Trump tax cuts. Not the working class, the ultra wealthy. [chuckles]

This idea that we can expect them to pay a little bit more so that the rest of us can thrive is actually completely unrealistic. They want to continue to sell us trickle down economics when we know that that's failed year over year and time after time. What we need to do is invest in working class. We need to demand more from our corporations.

We need to raise taxes on the ultra wealthy and the wealthy corporations in order for the city and the state to provide more for working class New Yorkers who are the ones who are feeling pushed to the margins, who are the ones who can't be here, who are the ones who are leaving New York and can't fill jobs because they can't afford to live here. This idea that we have to handle the ultra rich with delicate white gloves is simply untrue, and we really need to push back against the scarcity mindset that there's not enough for everybody.

We live in the wealthiest country in the world. We live in one of the wealthiest states. Budgets are about priorities. The ultra rich are thriving like never before. They have more money than they can even spending a lifetime. It is okay for us to ask them to pay their fair share in order to have enough for everyone else to thrive.

Brian Lehrer: On the specific stats that he quoted there for those two major investment companies: JPMorgan has more jobs for the first time in Texas than New York, Goldman Sachs hasn't created a net job in New York for seven or eight years.

Jasmine Gripper: I honestly don't know the facts around that and that might be factually true. Jobs and industries are always shifting. New markets are emerging and oftentimes new markets emerge here in New York, and so We're not at a shortage of jobs as much as we're dealing with a shifting globalized economy. Shifts happen, yes, that's real, but that doesn't mean that New York is now all of a sudden falling behind on jobs overall.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing on this, then we'll go to some of the other news. The actual stats for New York City job creation for last year came out recently, and they were shockingly bad. It was only 30,000 something net jobs created last year, and just about all of them were in what's been described as low paying healthcare fields, especially home health aides. What does that tell you? Does there need to be a policy response to that?

Jasmine Gripper: We should be careful in New York that we have no low wage paying jobs [chuckles] for any New Yorker because how could you afford to live here if you're not making more? We really need to make sure every industry is paying workers a quality wage. Then we also need to examine how industries are coming to New York and doing business here. We can't afford to continue to give tax breaks and tax giveaways. We have enough of those. We really need everyone to come to New York to contribute equally to our economy.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now listeners, if you are a Working Families Party member, any opinion about not endorsing Delgado against Hochul for a Democratic primary? We're going to talk about that next. 212-433-WNYC. For anyone else, now that we've had two views this week of the case for and against higher taxes on certain corporations and the highest income individuals in New York City as part of that, although that wasn't in the particular exchange we played, does anyone want to weigh in with a reaction?

Did you get swayed by either side or do you have a question? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. Any Analilia Mejia voters on that apparent primary win for a progressive WFP backed candidate to succeed Mikie Sherrill in Congress? In Jersey or anything else for Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, the co-directors of the New York Working Families Party. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

All right. Next topic. After Mamdani's win as the progressive in the mayoral race, Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado decided to primary Governor Hochul from the left. This week, you at the Working Families Party declined to endorse Delgado as you had endorsed Mamdani. You didn't endorse either. Poof. Delgado dropped out within a day. Why did you make that decision not to endorse?

Ana María Archila: The Working Families Party has always been focused on using the power of our party to advance an agenda that improves the lives of workers and their families. That is what motivates every political decision we make. That's what animates everything that we do in the daily life of the party.

As we assessed the two candidates, we saw, obviously, Governor Hochul showing a real willingness to listen to the more than a million voters who in New York City voted for Mayor Mamdani and who demanded access to childcare and real progress towards universal childcare. We saw the huge commitment that she made on childcare the first week of this year.

We also saw her moving on immigration in a moment when we really need our state government to step up its commitment and to protect immigrant New Yorkers from Trump's deportation machine. Those two things, those two very concrete policy decisions that she made early this year really signaled to our party, the members of our party, that the governor was listening and listening to our priorities.

On the other hand, we also saw Lieutenant Governor Delgado's campaign run a very spirited campaign to lift up a vision of the state that really prioritizes workers and their families, that talks about access to universal child care and health care and affordable housing.

As the party assessed, and the party has a very robust internal democracy, this decision was made by a body of 200 people from across the state, ultimately, our members decided that both Delgado's campaign was an incredibly important contribution to the conversation and Governor Hochul's position indicated that we should really continue to build a relationship with her to advance this agenda.

The decision that ultimately was made was to not endorse either candidate, but instead do a technical designation called a placeholder, so that we indicate we are going to have a candidate for governor, but at this moment, we are not making an endorsement.

Brian Lehrer: I'm curious if you were coordinating at all with Mayor Mamdani, who endorsed Hochul last week, as you know. Here's the mayor on the show last Thursday as he was rolling this endorsement out.

Mayor Mamdani: On day eight of our administration, Brian, I stood with Governor Hochul on stage in our city to announce more than $1 billion in funding from the state to deliver universal child care. As I was sharing with you earlier, this is the kind of cost that pushes working families out of the city. That was a commitment that not only fixes the childcare we provide for three year olds to ensure that it can meet the demand of every three year old, but also delivers, for the first time in New York City history, childcare for every two year old.

Brian Lehrer: Was the mayor's endorsement a reason for you? Did you know it was coming in advance? Did you actually coordinate on this? How did that go?

Ana María Archila: Obviously, the mayor's endorsement is an incredibly important signal that there is a coalescing around the governor that was an important factor in our decision. We communicate with the mayor's team on a regular basis. Obviously, one, we are very committed to helping advance the agenda that the mayor ran on: so childcare, freezing the rent, delivering on the buses, making sure that we put in place an approach to safety that is humane, access to food that is affordable for everybody. All of these elements are priorities of us.

We, of course, looked at the mayor's public endorsement of the governor as a really important element that would shape how we would approach the election. Quite frankly, as you think about challenging the most powerful person in the state, the governor, you have to assess the power of that challenge. If we have, let's imagine the Working Families Party supporting the challenger, Lieutenant Governor Delgado, and the standard bearer of the left saying we should support the governor, both messages are going to be incoherent and confusing to voters.

Ultimately the question was, will that help us deliver on the agenda? At the end of the day, the members of our party, after a very robust debate, our convention was an incredibly robust debate, not a coronation, our members decided that we needed to not endorse the challenger in this moment and actually keep our options open.

Brian Lehrer: Here are a couple of texts that are coming in on this question. One more supportive. "I'm a Working Families Party member and I'm torn. I appreciated Delgado's message and felt he could put pressure on Hochul to raise taxes on the wealthy and provide greater support for Mamdani's agenda, but I understand the danger of burning political capital when Hochul looks as powerful as ever and she seems to be somewhat open to working with progressives." That's one text.

Another one says, "I think that the Working Families Party decision to not endorse in the governor's race was a nail in the coffin of Delgado's campaign. I understand if they didn't want to endorse a candidate that didn't have a pathway to win, but we need to encourage primaries, especially when we have a governor who is a Democrat in name only." You may not accept that Democrat in name only characterization of Hochul, but that second text is emphasizing the importance of primaries, which we will not now have. What's your reaction to that?

Ana María Archila: We absolutely believe that primaries are important. The Working Families Party is constantly engaging in primary challenges to Democrats who fail to listen or fail to use their power in service of working families across the state. We believe in primaries and we also believe that at the end of the day, we have to use our power responsibly to accomplish what we set out to accomplish, which is to change the circumstances of people's lives.

The reality is that in New York, we have an incredibly acute affordability crisis. That's what motivated people to go out to vote in historic numbers last year and to vote for Mayor Mamdani and for mayors in Buffalo and Syracuse and Albany and across the state. We believe that sometimes primaries are the ways that you elevate an agenda. That's the way that you create leverage.

Sometimes they exhaust the resources and the energy. Sometimes they demonstrate that there isn't a big enough coalition. Quite frankly, as we looked at this election, some of those were the questions that ultimately shaped our decision. Is Antonio Delgado going to break through even though he has been running for six or seven months? Is the agenda that we are trying to advance going to actually gain momentum with a challenge, or do we turn our attention to doing the other forms of pressure that are available to us and that are important and that we continue to do?

You just heard Jasmine make the case about why it is so important to tax corporations and the rich. We are not stopping that work, quite frankly. We are actually using our leverage to both challenge Democrats in the State assembly and make sure that we protect the congressional seats that we won last year, make sure that we use our energy to win more congressional seats for Democrats in November, and do all the work that the party does every day to both protect our democracy and win concrete improvements in people's lives.

Brian Lehrer: With Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party. Jim in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hello, Jim.

Jim: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a question. How does the party expect to do it, pass the rich, increase revenue, without Delgado, without that pressure on the governor? I think it's a pipe dream to think that Hochul is going to be compliant. I think the reason she was working with progressives was because of that pressure. I think that despite whether Delgado would win or not, having a good primary would have provided some sort of leverage. I don't think you have the leverage now.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, are you critical of Mayor Mamdani in the same way-

Jim: Yes, absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: -for his endorsement?

Jim: Yes, I am. I think that it's a mistake to believe that the current landscape is going to last. I don't think the mayor retains that sort of glow-

Brian Lehrer: Leverage?

Jim: -from the election forever.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, the glow. Jim, thank you. Ana María, Jasmine, how do you react to Jim?

Jasmine Gripper: Thank you for your question, Jim. Mayor Mamdani is in Albany right now testifying before the state legislature and making the case for why we need to raise taxes on the ultra rich in order to help the budget of New York City and really help New Yorkers thrive. The governor is not, by herself, the sole determiner of the state budget. We have the assembly and the Senate as well.

This is not the first time we're dealing with a governor who has been against raising taxes. We've faced this before when Andrew Cuomo was governor of New York and we needed to raise taxes and raise revenue. In that moment, the legislature helped to deliver. There is a coalition in Albany today in addition to the mayors being there for Tin Cup Day, but they invest in our New York coalition. WFP members are in Albany today advocating for the assembly and the Senate to be strong in their demands to raise revenue in the state budget and to pressure Hochul to deliver and comply with those demands. We are still fighting.

Elections and primaries are one tool in our toolbox. It's not the only tool in our toolbox. We've leveraged pressure before to move a governor from not wanting to raise taxes to raising taxes. Andrew Cuomo was actually the last governor who raised the personal income tax rate and the corporate tax rate to its existing amount due to a high pressure campaign on him. It wasn't during an election year.

We will continue to put pressure on the governor and we will also leverage our relationships with the legislature in Albany to help deliver more revenue. We are in a moment where the state budget absolutely needs revenue. They need more resources. They can either balance the budget on the backs of working families, or they can balance the budget on the backs of the ultra rich and the billionaires. I think that's an important question that the legislature is not taking lightly.

Ana María Archila: Brian, can I say one thing?

Brian Lehrer: Please.

Ana María Archila: Just about I really appreciate Jim's question because that was precisely the kind of conversation that we had at our convention. One of the things that the Working Families Party is for New Yorkers is the political expression that tries to advance an agenda and the political party that is perceived and is experienced by New Yorkers as the point of leverage with their powerful government in Albany and across the State. That question was at the center of our convention.

The question of what have we learned from the lessons of previous elections, previous years, when the party has challenged a governor and come short? What has been the impact of those decisions? That's what the Working Families Party is as a space for people, every-day New Yorkers, to come and actually say, "How do we use our collective power to improve our lives?" It was questions like that that ultimately got really debated and discussed in our convention and the days leading up to the convention. Ultimately the body of the state committee made a decision to drive us forward.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "Ana María is making it seem like Hochul supporting universal childcare and her support of some immigrant protections is enough. What Hochul is proposing does not go far enough." Listen writes, "She is only funding universal childcare for two year olds. The immigrant protections aren't anywhere close to what is being proposed in the New York for all bill."

On that, Ana María, even the question, if Hochul is standing with Mamdani on universal childcare for two year olds, it's not universal because it doesn't start at six months like the mayor wants, but she seems to be saying they can do that much without a tax increase. Does that negate the necessity for a tax increase to any degree, in your opinion if the governor is saying we can start with this big piece, childcare for two year olds, without it?

Ana María Archila: I think the commitment that the mayor made to New Yorkers is to deliver universal childcare. Because New Yorkers showed up in such huge numbers and sent such a resounding message, he was able to negotiate very early on with the governor for a very significant investment. Is it everything? Of course not. Is it universal and permanent? No. We still have to win that. That is why the tax fight is so, so important.

I come from the Immigrant Rights Movement. That's how I understood that this country was my home. I know that the windows of the openings to advance pro-immigrant policies always open and close very quickly. We pushed the governor very hard to make sure that she would use the window that opened up in the national debate to use her power to put in place some protections.

The thing that she did was to cancel this thing called the 287(g) agreements, which are contracts between counties and ICE to deputize local police and provide local jails. By canceling those contracts, that will make it much, much harder for ICE to operate in the counties where those contracts were in place. Now, is it everything? Absolutely not. Do we need to keep pushing for more because we need New York for all? Absolutely yes.

For anyone who says that this is nothing, I respectfully disagree. As someone who has been in these movements, I understand how hard fought these victories are. Obviously the proof will be in the pudding of when people are dropping off their two year old to a child care center that did not exist before or that existed and cost $20,000 a year. People will experience a significant relief in their life, and that will make it more possible for them to be able to breathe easy as they live in New York City and call this state their home.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with the co-directors of the New York Working Families Party. There's more to get to, including the victory yesterday of the progressive candidate in the New Jersey congressional district in that primary to succeed Mikie Sherrill. More of your calls and texts. Stay with us.

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Mayor Mamdani: I am proud to support her reelection. In this moment, this is a governor who has chosen to govern with the needs of working people in mind. That is exactly what we have to deliver in what has now become the most expensive city in the United States of America.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Mamdani here last Thursday endorsing Governor Hochul for reelection, including in her primary against her challenger from the left, Antonio Delgado, the Lieutenant governor who has now dropped out. As we continue with Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, the co-directors of the New York Working Families Party. Jake in Midtown, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jake.

Jake: Hey. Thanks for having me on, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: What you got?

Jake: Real quick, I just wanted to say without getting too much in the weeds on numbers, I really want to push back on Mr. Fulop's position of cherry-picked details about jobs for JPMorgan leaving to Texas, which isn't just JPMorgan, to be clear, it's Wells Fargo and a number of other banks, too, that are all moving to Texas.

Brian Lehrer: Let me just say for listeners who didn't hear that clip, which was a half hour ago now, Steve Fulop, who now is the CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents banks and other big businesses, arguing against a corporate tax increase in New York and pointing to as evidence JPMorgan and-- what was the other big bank? JPMorgan Chase-

Jake: Wells Fargo.

Brian Lehrer: -and Goldman Sachs was the one he mentioned-

Jake: [unintelligible 00:31:40]

Brian Lehrer: -not creating any new jobs in years in New York and rather creating new jobs in Texas in JPMorgan's case. On that Jake, go ahead.

Jake: It's a fallacy I think to say it's about the corporate tax rate. Texas has no income tax rate for corporations. Those jobs started to leave during the pandemic when everyone started to work from home. The reason they're not coming back now has much more to do with AI. Their shift last year, which was in several financial articles to Texas, is a temporary shift for temporary positions, effectively, because even in January, the CEO of JPMorgan, without giving exact numbers, said he's going to be shifting away from all of these employees over the next five years for AI.

It's a fallacy to say that the income tax rate is what's driving people out of New York when really we have to think about the broader issue of, how are these people going to employ human beings in the future as they eliminate jobs in general, especially a lot of these coding and engineering jobs that they're trying to open up in Texas. For us in New York here, that matters boots on the ground because, like she said, we're still going to be getting their income tax if we pass this bill because they're still doing business here.

I live just outside the city in Analilia's new perspective district if Ms. Mejia wins. My wife worked on Mejia's campaign and we're very excited. In the same way she needs to address these issues in New Jersey for us, I want to address these issues for New Yorkers and ask the ladies, I love the Working Families Party, what are we doing with this bill and with future bills to also create some sort of guardrails against the complete loss of jobs for AI in the future, in the next five years? I can take my answer off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Jake, thank you for your call.

Jake: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We appreciate it. You want to take on that question, Jasmine, Ana María, AI regulation and does Hochul, does Mamdani, does the legislature have a position on it?

Jasmine Gripper: Yes. Thank you, Jake, for that question. Thank you for you and your wife helping get Analilia over the finish line and voting for her. She's going to be a great addition to Congress. Bringing up those great points that we are living in an economy in a world that is ever shifting because of AI and its presence. It's not going to disappear, so we have to learn how to live with it. We have to learn how to protect New Yorkers and protect jobs.

One of the things that the Working Families Party is doing and that we announced and launched at the end of last year is some new guarantees. That all New Yorkers need some new guarantees from our government. We need guaranteed access to childcare, we need guaranteed access to a home we can afford, and we need guaranteed access to health care we can rely on. We need New York to be a place where immigrants are welcome. We really need our government to look out for us and to protect New Yorkers as our economy changes and grows.

Then we also need to put some guardrails on how AI is being being used, what people can use AI for, and have some job protections. I want to be honest that this is an ever changing emerging field and the information here is still new, and so I don't think we have all of the solutions just yet, but it is something we're keeping an eye on and we're working with other partners who are paying even closer attention to this.

I know NYCLU has a number of bills and in the state legislature around regulating AI and its use in ways that we protect people's data and information, and so we also need to figure out how it relates to protecting people's jobs and income and, again, making sure that everyone still has access to the things that they need. Our economy is absolutely shifting.

Brian Lehrer: NYCLU being the New York Civil Liberties Union. On the Mejia primary victory in NJ11. I know you're Working Families Party of New York co-directors. This was in New York Jersey backed by the Working Families Party there. Maybe you can give us a comment. She got a plurality, not a majority of the votes. Does that primary, when a progressive wins, signal vulnerability against Republicans in November, if not in that particular pretty blue district in Jersey, then around the country generally?

Ana María Archila: First I want to say how excited we are about Analilia's victory. Analilia is someone who came into these role of a candidate after more than 20 years of a very powerful work history. She used to lead the Working Families Party in New Jersey and in that role she led the fight to increase the minimum wage to pass paid sick days. She went on to be the political director of Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020 and now leads a national organization that has been waging many of the fights against Trump. She's someone that comes with a demonstrated history of fighting for people.

Even though she entered the race late, she was the last to enter and she had very little name recognition, when she spoke to people, people understood how she had already impacted their lives. That is what made a huge difference. Plus a people-powered campaign, much like Mamdani's campaign, focused on talking to voters directly. One of the things that happened in that race is that AIPAC tried to confuse voters. They poured in millions of dollars to punish Malinowski for not being [unintelligible 00:37:15] enough.

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:37:15] enough.

Ana María Archila: Exactly. It backfired. What we read in this moment is, one, that voters are very open to candidates who actually show up with a history of fighting for them. Voters are very open to people they don't know, but whose trajectory gives them confidence that they're not going to be bending the knee to donors and to the oligarchs because that already control so much of our democracy. That voters are open to this profile of a candidate not just in a city like New York, but in the suburbs, in Montclair and in Passaic and in this part of New Jersey that is not a bastion of progressivism.

We believe Democrats should be more like Working Families Democrats, more like Analilia, people who actually can very clearly and very succinctly show whose side they are on. Are they on the side of the rich that are always threatening to leave if they don't get more goodies, or are they on the side of the moms who need affordable childcare, of the workers who need buses that are moving efficiently, of the people who need to be able to afford their rent?

Analilia embodies that commitment. That is why she was the one that ultimately broke through, came all the way from behind and broke through in this very competitive special election in New Jersey. We are extremely excited to see her and extremely proud that she is a Working Families Democrat.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, I want to ask you about the contrast between your Working Families Party position on Governor Hochul, which you've been articulating, and the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America New York chapter. Of course, more prominent now after their influence on Mamdani's election.

The DSA issued a statement after Mamdani's Hochul endorsement last week. It began like this. "NYC DSA does not believe that Governor Kathy Hochul has risen to meet this moment in which working people face unprecedented threats. As governor, she is consistently sided with her billionaire donors while offering working class New Yorkers crumbs." Is the DSA more consistent on sticking to its values and the WFP is more like just the progressive flank of the mainstream Democratic Party?

Ana María Archila: First of all, let me just say we love and admire DSA and appreciate just the clarity and the force that they are offering a space especially for young people to use their collective power. Nothing in that statement is something we fundamentally disagree with. In terms of like our critiques of the governor are similar. She has often sided with the wealthiest New Yorkers. We believe that there is something about her politics that is very different from our politics.

The role of the Working Families Party is to actually build a governing majority. That, by definition, requires working with people from the left and people from the center. The reason why we say we are focused on building a governing majority is because it is through a majority that we can actually advance an agenda that makes a difference in people's lives. It is super important to have voices like DSA and some of the DSA electeds, the socialists in office who hold up the long term vision.

We see it as our responsibility to actually struggle with the middle, with the gray zone, and to figure out how to bring people along, not just the ones that are already very clearly having a worldview and an ideology that is described as Democratic socialism but the ones who say, "I don't identify with any of those labels, but I definitely want to be able to afford the rent and I definitely need childcare for my children." The party is a party that is focused on that.

We work with DSA a lot, obviously, as we worked to develop a strategy that would allow us to keep our side together in the primary election for mayor. DSA was very much at the table, as were many stripes of Democrats, Labor Democrats, Liberal Democrats. We, together, worked and held our coalition.Now, as we move into this next phase of New York, where we have a Mayor Mamdani in New York City and we have a Governor Hochul, it is the Working Families Party that can actually bridge the spectrum. We see it as our responsibility to do so.

Brian Lehrer: Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jasmine Gripper: Thanks for having us.

Ana María Archila: Thank you.

 

 

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