Title: Monday Morning Local Politics

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Did you hear that Mayor Adams might run for reelection as a Republican next year? He wouldn't rule that out when asked about it on NY1 on Friday.

Mayor Adams: The party that's the most important for me is the American party. I'm a part of the American party. I love this country.

Brian Lehrer: With us now to talk about that and more is NY1 political anchor and New York Magazine columnist, Errol Louis. With Errol's law background, we'll also get his take on the hung jury on one of the Daniel Penny subway chokehold killer charges and the charge the jury is still considering as we speak. Also, the possibility of Donald Trump as president pardoning January 6th rioters and President Biden offering preemptive pardons to people who Trump world may go after, including Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and Anthony Fauci. Also, Trump's vow to attack the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which includes birthright citizenship for anyone born in this country. Tying it all together with Trump coming into office and with our possibly party-switching and pardon-hungry mayor still in charge here, Errol has a New York Magazine column called Will Eric Adams Defend the City from Trump's Mass Deportation? Errol, always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Errol Louis: Great to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You gave me a shudder the other day when you posted on Thursday that it's now 201 days until the New York mayoral primary. That would make today 197 days. I don't know if anybody's ready yet.

Errol Louis: I don't know if people are, but people had better get ready, I'll tell you that. You know how this goes, Brian, to an extent that I don't know if people fully understand. These candidates are already out here. They're going to forums, they're making promises, they're talking about issues. Once those statements are out of their mouths, that's where that candidate stands. I would urge everybody listening, if you're part of any kind of activism, even if it's just putting a stop sign on your block, you better go find these candidates right now and tell them what it is you want.

Brian Lehrer: On Eric Adams maybe switching parties, he used to be a registered Republican. 1995 to 2002, I think, are the exact years. Do you as a political analyst see that as a real possibility for him next year?

Errol Louis: Oh, absolutely. New York makes it very easy to switch parties and to get the nomination of a party, even if you haven't been active in that political party. Sometimes it's the only way to make it onto the ballot. There have been two times in the history of modern New York, meaning since 1898, that there are mayors who won without the backing of either the Democratic or the Republican Party. If that's the only path that's available to Eric Adams, it's not like it couldn't happen. He might, in fact, create something called the American Party. He might look for a third party that might support him, or he might try and run as a Republican. All of those are available to him. Strategically, it's not out of the question.

Brian Lehrer: It's probably worth saying that if we look back at the last 30 years of mayors of New York, even though this is blue New York in national politics, we had two terms of Giuliani, followed by three terms of Bloomberg, who originally got elected as a Republican, then one actual liberal Democrat, de Blasio, and then the voters elected Eric Adams over the other progressive alternatives. New Yorkers will vote center right for mayor even these days. Maybe if you get Eric Adams versus one of the progressive Dems who've declared, like Scott Stringer or Zohran Mamdani or Zellnor Myrie or others, it's a contest maybe.

Errol Louis: It could be. I tend to think that what you just described is true because New Yorkers really adhere to, regardless of whatever other ideology they have, in the end, the mayor is about or is selected for their competence, their ability to execute. That's not really closely tied to party labels. I think competence and ability to get the job done is what people are looking for, and then only as a secondary consideration, well, you happen to be a Democrat, you happen to be a Republican, left or right or conservative. Whatever you think about foreign policy is great, but I-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: It also depends on competence toward what? Giuliani got elected so much on crime. Eric Adams got elected so much on crime. The voters weren't thinking, well, these are going to be the most competent guys to solve the housing shortage or inequality.

Errol Louis: Well, no, I mean, but here again, the early stage of the political season is where you define what the terrain is going to be. What is the issue? What are the issues that you have to get elected on? I mean, go back to Bill de Blasio when he was running in 2013. His big issues were he put the biggest number out there as far as units of affordable housing that he was promising. I think it was about 200,000. He promised to end stop and frisk. If you didn't want to grade him on any other curve, you could ask whether or not he had done those things that he had promised. I think it contributed to his election.

Brian Lehrer: And universal pre-k. Another scenario for next year might be that all those progressives could split the progressive vote in the Democratic primary, and Adams could get renominated that way as a Dem. Or do you think, Errol, that the new ranked choice voting system makes that more unlikely than in the past?

Errol Louis: Exactly, right. The ranked choice voting changes everything in a way that I don't know if the strategists have fully absorbed. Several of the progressives, for example, or whatever you want to call them, could run, in effect, as a team, and say, look, vote for whichever of us you like, but don't vote for that person over there. That is a perfectly sound strategy. To the extent that it's been tried in the short history of ranked choice voting in New York, it seems to have worked.

There have been a couple of special elections and, in fact, the mayoral primary itself in 2021, we may have forgotten, but there was a point at which Andrew Yang said that he was going to be in an alliance with another candidate. If you don't like one of us, vote for the other. Just don't vote for anybody else.

Brian Lehrer: Or just put the other one second because that's the point of ranked choice. You can list your candidates in order of preference. If you put a couple of the progressives in there, one, two, three, and you don't list Adams at all, well, then it doesn't matter if the progressive split the vote, right?

Errol Louis: That's right. I mean, Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang made an alliance, neither of them won, but she came in second, and she had never been elected to anything, came within 6,000 or 7,000 votes of actually winning. There's something there that I've talked about this with many of the candidates and many of the campaign managers, and nobody ever wants to put that forward as an opening strategy. Coming down the home stretch, it's far from inconceivable, and it does not make life easier for Eric Adams.

Brian Lehrer: Now, some of this, of course, will depend on what happens in the city once Trump takes office. To your article called, Will Eric Adams Defend the City from Trump's Mass Deportation? What can a mayor do, and to defend whom?

Errol Louis: Well, there are a couple of things that the mayor can do. Look, first of all, when we talk about sanctuary city policy in New York, our policy is not the most aggressive that's out there. There are a number of places, especially jurisdictions outside the city, where there's going to be a fair amount of cooperation with customs enforcement. If you are swept up for any number of different reasons, like not driving without a license or something like that, but if you're outside of the city, there's a very good chance you're going to be turned over to immigration officials.

Look, what America can do is reiterate and make clear to people that the city is not interested in doing immigration enforcement. This mayor has said quite the opposite. He has more or less said that if you are arrested that, as far as he's concerned, you should be turned over even before you've had your day in court. If your immigration status seems to be a little bit dodgy, you should be turned over to federal officials. It's really a legally acceptable but politically very different interpretation of sanctuary city.

Brian Lehrer: That's just on people who've committed or are charged with committing crimes. On Meet the Press yesterday, Trump repeated his intention to avoid family separation in his second term, but how? By deporting whole families together. To do that, he said he would like to abolish the guarantee in the US Constitution that anyone born here is automatically a US Citizen so that he can deport undocumented parents who have US citizen kids and deport the kids with them. Here's a little of Trump on that.

President Trump: Well, if we can't through executive action-- I was going to do it through executive action, but then we had to fix COVID first, to be honest with you.

Brian Lehrer: Trump on Meet the Press on NBC. Think he can do it with an executive order, think he would try to undo part of the Constitution, think he would dare?

Errol Louis: Well, I mean, he could try. It would go to court the next day, and it would probably be stayed pending the Supreme Court getting a look at it. The Supreme Court has ruled on this multiple times. US Citizens cannot be deported, period. You don't get to do that. Now, at the same time, we have fairly harsh situations, which I think the former president was alluding to, where if the parents are subject to deportation, they can be forced into a really bitter, cruel choice where you either accept deportation and leave your child behind, or you accept deportation and take the child with you. Now that's another kettle of fish. I think that's the scenario that he's most likely to try and bring about.

Brian Lehrer: His political argument is that very few countries have that provision. It was enacted after the Civil War to make sure Black Americans were recognized as having full citizenship. They weren't thinking about undocumented immigrants who then had babies here. Does he have a point?

Errol Louis: No, actually, he's wrong about that. I think there's something like 20 or 30 countries that have birthright citizenship. It's one of these talking points that come up from time to time where anti-immigrant forces make up some facts and expect everybody to repeat it or not catch it. I was a little disappointed that Kristen Welker didn't catch it in real time when she was doing the interview yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Trump's so-called border czar, Tom Homan, has said there'll be workplace raids. I wonder how you think they might occur in New York, like at every restaurant that uses delivery people, or what do you think is coming on that?

Errol Louis: Well, it's really been very interesting because there's been all this tough talk on the campaign trail, but I think there's something like 6,000 ICE enforcement agents nationwide. I don't know. My feeling is you could send all of them to New York City, and I'm not sure they would be able to get it together enough to make a dent in our situation.

What I immediately thought of, Brian, was, I'm sure you've seen this from time to time, there's a lot of Prohibition era architecture and infrastructure in New York where you go into a store, and there's a room behind the room, and then there's another room behind that, and then there's a staircase downstairs, and a whole big room down there from the old bootlegging days. That's all ready to spring back to life.

If they want to bring a couple of thousand enforcement agents here and with almost no cooperation, either official or unofficial, try and round up everybody here who might be out of status, I think that would be a very, very poor use of their time, a very disruptive and futile exercise. I think of all the things to worry about, that's the one I think is least likely to happen.

Brian Lehrer: We can take some text or phone calls for Errol Louis, political anchor at NY1, he hosts Inside City Hall, Monday through Thursday nights at 7:00, and their national politics show Friday nights at 8:00, as well as his podcast called You Decide with Errol Louis. We're going to have a little bit of fun toward the end of the segment, previewing his upcoming podcast on the history of Mayor John Lindsay in the 1960s and '70s.

Errol, I pulled a few clips of John Lindsay to help with this. That will play in a little while. That'll, I think, hopefully at least make you laugh, and then you'll be able to plug your your podcast coming up. Listeners, any questions on any of the things or comments that we've been talking about so far with Errol or on the Daniel Penny trial, which we're going to get to? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Well, let's talk about the Penny trial now. Let's talk about what happened on Friday. Why couldn't they reach a verdict on manslaughter, as far as you could tell? Keep your lawyer's hat on.

Errol Louis: We won't know for sure until we talk with the jurors, if any of them choose to speak, which they're able to. They're anonymous right now. After the trial is over, I'm sure a lot of people would like to know, was this 11:1, was this 6:6? Was this a closely contested decision that they ultimately made to come back to the court and say, "We can't arrive at a verdict"? Were they stumbling over expert testimony? Did they not fully agree on what the law should be?

As is often the case, this is a question of what would a reasonable person do, faced with these very difficult circumstances. They couldn't find, beyond a reasonable doubt, unanimously, that it constituted manslaughter. We'll know a lot more. They're in deliberation right now, I believe. If they can find the lesser included offense of criminally negligent homicide, that would tell us a lot. If they have a full acquittal, and just say, look, what Daniel Penny did was not criminal in any dimension, that would say something, too.

Your listeners, by the way, should be prepared for that possible outcome. We have a very, very tough standard in this town. Those who remember the Bernhard Goetz case should remember that this was a person who pulled out an unlicensed handgun and shot four teenagers, one of them twice, and crippled them. He was never convicted of any form of a violent felony in that case. That is the standard for New York.

Brian Lehrer: The judge said something on Friday, if I understand this correctly, about the jury being undecided on the issue or torn on the issue of justification. Do you know what that means?

Errol Louis: I believe what they were trying to figure out was this self defense issue. In this case, it wasn't self defense, but it's a close cousin to it. Justification in using what turned out to be deadly force. Was he justified in doing what he did? I believe the bare facts of the case are a chokehold. Much of it caught on videotape that lasted for six minutes. The question is, was he justified in doing that? If they don't all agree that he was not justified in doing that, then you get the outcome that we seem to be moving towards. I mean, the prosecution basically asked for the top charge to be dropped just to try and preserve the case, because if they had deadlocked on that fully, there would have been a mistrial, and you'd have to start all over again.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That may yet be the outcome. If they couldn't come to a verdict on manslaughter, maybe they won't be able to come to a verdict on criminally negligent homicide either, and then the ball would be back in DA Alvin Bragg's court to decide whether to try Daniel Penny again, or just drop it?

Errol Louis: Yes. That's really where we are. Again, we've had a couple of these cases. The Goetz case was from way back when, but in the '80s. You had the more recent case in 2022 of Jose Alba, that was the bodega store owner, who had somebody, for complicated reasons, rush behind the counter and put hands on him, and he stabbed the man to death. The Manhattan DA did not charge the case. There were no criminal charges against Jose Alba.

Brian Lehrer: They seem to me to be different. The Alba case and the two subway cases. Tell me your impression. If I have the history of the Bernhard Goetz case right, he, like Daniel Penny, was not physically assaulted. Alba in his store was. It was in both cases, sort of a preventive assault. Bernhard Goetz, I think, these kids surrounded him and asked him for $5. He had a history of being mugged. He thought he was going to get roughed up or whatever, and he shot them. He got off.

I think, in this case, I don't think, you tell me because you've had a reporter in the courtroom every day, I know, I don't think Jordan Neely ever actually touched anybody, but he was seen as a huge potential threat, and that's why Penny intervened. It was preventive violence in both of those cases. You think I'm reading that right?

Errol Louis: No, that's exactly right. In fact, our reporter Dan Rivoli was very clear that they brought forward a number of witnesses who said that they were absolutely terrified, that they thought Jordan Neely might do anything, that all kinds of fear was running amok in that subway car. For those of us who have encountered things that are very disruptive, maybe a little bit scary, it scans differently, depending on who you are and what your experience has been. In fact, that's the standard.

The standard is both objective but also subjective. Did you really believe that this person was a threat? I've talked with a number of people who felt about it, this Jordan Neely case, the same way I did, which was, whatever else is going on, once you get to the next stop and the doors have popped open, it's over. You can leave, you can call for help, you can run. That it's over. To the extent that you're still choking the guy out while you're sitting in a subway station with the doors open, and everyone can leave, where then is the justification?

Brian Lehrer: Desmond in Crown Heights wants to talk about the implications of Daniel Penny getting off, I think. Desmond, you're on WNYC with Errol Louis from NY1 and New York Magazine. Hi.

Desmond: Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for taking my call. I'd like just to make the point that during the testimony, the former Marines trainer made the point that he was trained in three different holds, and that there was a clear statement that if once the person has lost consciousness, then you're supposed to release them. An indicator that the person is in trauma is if they defecate on themselves or urinate on themselves, which had happened. The former Marine continued to apply the chokehold.

If you're going to talk about the level of fear being the case, well, then in this racist country, every Black person who's ever been faced by police terrorizing them, or in other places, just the threat of being lynched and being in other fear for their lives, then they had the right, and unfortunately usually did not have the arms, which is a major fort in the Black community, is that they didn't have the arms to repel with superior force the people who were coming who were inducing fear.

Many times Black people attempt to arm themselves, they are immediately sequestered and called on being terrorists, when the real terrorists are the people who keep doing this. The former Marine came there with military training in how to disarm someone and overstepped his bounds. If you can remember Bernard Goetz, for everything that happened with him, at that time, there was a history of Black youth assaulting people. I don't believe in anyone having that kind of agency to go around and basically crime. I'm a Black man. At that point, when he shot one person, that typically will make the other three people scatter. He was judge, jury, and executioner. He overstepped his bounds. Being a white man, he was allowed to go free. I fear that's what's going to happen now.

Brian Lehrer: Desmond, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you very much for your call. There's really two big things from Desmond's call that maybe you can comment on, Errol. One is the larger social meaning. If Daniel Penny gets off, to a lot of people, and of course, the city is divided on this, a lot of people would think it's justified. He was trying to help in a threatening situation.

A lot of people will think exactly the kind of thing that Desmond was just articulating about, well, there's so much irrational fear of Black people that it justifies taking people's lives or otherwise attacking them in cases where it shouldn't happen, where they're not really threats, and then the shoe can't be on the other foot when it's the Black people who feel the fear in a confrontation with a police officer or being accosted by a police officer or whatever. Then there's the particular point of evidence.

I wonder, Earl, if you think that this is where the jury is right now. They let him off on mans-- or they came to a hung jury, couldn't reach a verdict, on manslaughter. Now they have the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide. Do you think the point that Desmond was raising, which was in the testimony, that he kept the chokehold going in a way that and for longer than his Marine trainer said he was trained to do that, that could be the thing that gets him ruled criminally negligent?

Errol Louis: I think what Desmond was alluding to, and I think a lot of us saw this because it was broadcast, was footage of a bystander saying to Daniel Penny, "He has defecated on himself. You're killing him. You're going to get charged with a crime. You can let him go now." He doesn't let him go. Sure, I think-- Now, we didn't hear everything that was said by all of the different experts and all of the different witnesses, but that one snippet does stay with me as the kind of thing that would convince you that whatever else we do, it can't be okay when people are telling you, "You're killing the man. There is no threat. You're in the station. The doors are open. Everyone can walk away, including you. The guy is unconscious. Please let him go."

I don't know if the standard in Manhattan is going to be you can do whatever you want. If people are scared enough, you can just kind of act any which way you want, and even if the person is clearly dying in your hands, you're eligible to keep squeezing. I hope that that's not the standard. Again, that Goetz case, I remember when it happened, and it has haunted me ever since. We have a very, very tough standard here of what juries will put up with, in part because I think, inappropriately, fear is always in the room. To me, the whole point of a system of criminal law is that you put emotions on a low simmer and try and talk rationally about how can we have millions of people living on top of each other if fear justifies deadly force anytime somebody feels a little bit spooked.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we'll see what happens maybe today with that criminally negligent homicide charge. We're just about out of time. Let's end with a little bit of fun. I see you have a new podcast coming on former Mayor John Lindsay, who was in office 1966 to 1973. To set you up to promote it, I pulled a couple of clips of Lindsay on The Dick Cavett Show. I think this was 1972, after Lindsay tried and failed to get the Democratic nomination for president, even though he had been elected mayor of New York as a Republican. He was asked by Cavett about a cab driver who didn't like that Lindsay had closed Central Park to cars.

Dick Cavett: No kidding. He doesn't like us closing Central Park to cars?

Mayor John Lindsay: No. Because apparently it slows down the traffic.

Dick Cavett: Well, it's just tough. Cars have to get back and let people walk around for a while and breathe.

Brian Lehrer: That sounds like a very contemporary issue, even though it was from 50 years ago. Lindsay was also asked about landing on President Richard Nixon's enemies list.

Dick Cavett: Were you disappointed, shocked, surprised when you made the enemies list? Were you disappointed that you weren't in the top 20 or any of the above?

Mayor John Lindsay: No, listen, I made it. What more can you ask? If you're nice to me tonight, I'll see to it you get on the list too, Dick.

Brian Lehrer: Where do you want to start with John Lindsay?

Errol Louis: Oh, that's great stuff. Look, Lindsay was way ahead of his time on many, many different things. It's really actually striking. Listening to some of the speeches he gave on the campaign trail in 1965, 60 years ago, literally would work in 2025 around a lot of different issues, including congestion in the city. He had been a congressman, of course, from Manhattan, and so he understood traffic issues. He was part of a very famous fight to try and stop a roadway from running through the middle of Washington Square Park, which was part of his district down in the Village.

He really came politically of age with a lot of these issues and never really yielded on it. He closed the park to cars, or started the process. He actually wanted to have a flat out ban on cars in midtown. They had even made up the signs and posted them and so forth. In the end, he backed down from that particular thing. He killed the Lower Manhattan Expressway, he killed the Mid Manhattan Expressway, fought with Robert Moses all over the place, and won more than he lost. A really interesting character who-- When you hear the podcast, you'll realize this is somebody who would be very, very competitive in today's politics if his ideas and certainly his personality were available to us.

Brian Lehrer: Errol's podcast called Crisis and Accomplishment, The Rise and Fall of John Lindsay, will be out on Thursday. You can see Errol on NY1 as host of Inside City Hall, 7:00, Monday through Thursday, and their national politics show, Friday nights at 8:00. He's a New York Magazine columnist. Errol, thanks for joining us today. Thanks as always.

Errol Louis: Thanks a lot, Brian.

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