[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here we go again. I'm going to start the show exactly the way we did last Thursday and Friday by saying, "This is a Supreme Court decision day." As many of you know, they released their decisions just after ten o'clock. We are watching their feed once again this morning to see if any of the big ones are about to come down.

Presidential immunity from prosecution for Donald Trump, of course, also, the so-called Fischer January 6th case, which could void hundreds of people's January 6th related charges, including one of Trump's. Can social media platforms remove content they deem to be false? I'm really interested in how the two cases on that turnout. Conservatives want the platforms, basically, not to have editing rights against misinformation, and disinformation, or the government to have the power over that at all.

There is yet another abortion case they'll rule on as well. We're watching for those and a few others, and we'll tell you what we learn immediately when we learn it, and we'll add a segment to the show to analyze any big decision that does get announced. Again, today, a programming heads up, if we get the Presidential immunity ruling today, I'm going to step aside, and we'll be handing off to NPR in Washington for special coverage with Nina Totenberg and others, and the greater resources they bring to bear at the network in DC. Just letting you know that might happen.

Meanwhile, we'll pretend that we have a regular show to do, that won't be preempted for Supreme Court stuff, and see how far we get. We have our lead, Eric Adams, reporter Elizabeth Kim, scheduled as usual on Wednesdays with fresh excerpts and analysis from the Mayor's Tuesday News Conference headline. It seems he has his own plan to fight congestion in Manhattan Central Business District that doesn't include the word "pricing", and therefore, won't pay for improvements in mass transit, but it might produce more parking tickets, and change how some people get deliveries. We'll explain. That's coming up, if we don't get preempted.

Also today, Caroline Hopkins Health and Science Reporter talks about her New York Times article, what Gen Z Gets Wrong about Sunscreen. Did you see that? She'll explain the new wave of misinformation about sunscreen. Did you know there's a sunscreen denialism meme going around on TikTok?

We begin now on a combination of local and national politics, New York primary election results and more with Errol Louis, Lead Political Anchor as host of Inside City Hall on Spectrum News, NY1 weeknights at 7:00. He also hosts their weekly national politics program special to this election season called The Big Deal with Errol Louis Friday Nights at 8:00, and he is a New York magazine columnist. Errol, thanks for some morning after time with us. Thanks for getting up for it after a late night. Welcome back to WNYC.

Errol Louis: Great to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Errol, I will tell the listeners that you also went to law school, so if the Supreme Court does make a pronouncement on anything in the coming minutes, you'll get the first crack at commenting on it, [laughter], but first to the nomination of George Latimer over Jamaal Bowman, what just happened here, as you see it?

Errol Louis: Yes. Interesting. Let me preface this by saying, Brian, I actually grew up in that district. I grew up in New Rochelle, from elementary school through high school. Got a lot of relatives up there. I was up in Scarsdale, in fact, with my brother-in-Law and sister-in-law just the other day, the final weekend for completely unrelated events. You noticed the signs, the lawn sign, and that sort of a thing.

Brian Lehrer: Well, were the lawn signs divided? Tell us a little bit since you brought that up. New Rochelle, how diverse a district is it racially? I think that was supposed to be one of Bowman's strongholds.

Errol Louis: It is. The town is, it's a very special place. It's Italian, Black, Latino, and Jewish. It was very Jewish when I was growing up there almost half a century ago. I think I went to something like seven Bar Mitzvahs across five different temples when we all turned 13. A lot of those friends are now raising their kids in that same area. When October 7th happened, I was a little startled.

I'm a product of my youth like many of us are. I couldn't quite believe that the rhetoric that was coming out, not just from Jamaal Bowman, but from a lot of other people was so insensitive to how I knew that community was going to react, that they were clearly traumatized, deeply wounded. There were a lot of really pressing immediate concerns. A lot of people have family in the Middle East.

A lot of people have businesses, they have kids who are over there. There was a lot of confusion in those first days after October 7th about what all of this would mean. Could you reach people? Was travel going to be shut down? What did you need to do with the State Department? I would've thought that the employees of the federal government, like the member of Congress would have been focused on that almost to the exclusion of everything else, but it so quickly shot off in an ideological direction.

I will tell you, like I said, just from my growing up there that, I remember thinking, "This is going to be really bad news, that this community is going to feel very aggrieved, very much under attack." People were very upfront about the pain that they were feeling, greatest massacre since the Holocaust. For people who then immediately start throwing around words like "ceasefire" and "genocide", and so forth, I was in a bit of a state of shock.

I could not believe that the conversation was going in that direction. Of course, politically, it was going to be a huge headache. I don't know if Jamaal Bowman fully appreciated how much resentment was building, and how much pain and anguish was going to make itself felt. It didn't necessarily manifest itself immediately in the context of a reelection campaign. As we've seen, it built and it grew, and it turned into a force that swept him out of office.

Brian Lehrer: This was the most expensive race in the history of Congressional primaries in the United States with the large majority of the money, as has been widely reported coming via the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which made it, you might call it an unfair fight in campaign spending terms with the left not able to compete equally on that playing field. Though I think I hear you saying that given the demographics of the district, and given the positions that Bowman staked out, maybe it would have turned out the same, even if it was a fair fight?

Errol Louis: Well, that's a fair way to put it. He was going to have it-- It was going to be a problem regardless. Something people should know about AIPAC, by the way, is that it's not just the money. AIPAC has chapters in every Congressional district in the country. They are playing the long game. They work with college Democrats and college Republicans. Why? Because those are the groups from which a disproportionate number of future members of Congress are going to emerge. They're on the ground, and they have people telling them what's going on.

Famously, it's circulating as a talking point. I haven't individually verified it, but what I keep seeing online is that, as early as April before any ad money was spent by AIPAC, or anybody else Latimer had a 17-point lead, meaning whatever Jamaal Bowman was doing, or not doing, had already rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and he was going to have a political problem.

In some ways, being on the ground as AIPAC is in every Congressional district, it pays some real benefits. If you've got political intelligence that tells you, "Hey, this guy's got a problem, if you want to bump him off, he's vulnerable," that's an important piece of information. I think that might be how he ended up in their crosshairs.

Brian Lehrer: We have a Supreme Court decision on at least one of the social media cases. I will read some of that in a second, but let me ask you one follow-up, which is that, at the same time as everything you said may be true, I wonder if Latimer got something of a pass. I'm not sure he got scrutinized in the press nearly as much as Bowman did. As we've discussed on this show, his possessions have arguably been to the right of the district on the Israel Palestine issue.

I don't think Westchester Jews as, to over-generalize as a group are in love with Netanyahu. Latimer ran on a consistent refusal to critique anything about how Netanyahu is fighting the war. That put Latimer to the right of Chuck Schumer, who calls for new elections to challenge Netanyahu. Latimer in his interview here with me, refused to back Schumer on that.

President Biden has a cease-fire plan that Netanyahu will not publicly endorse. Latimer refused to take Biden's side in that argument. He completely towed the AIPAC line, which is never to criticize an Israeli leader, even Netanyahu now, and I don't know if the district became aware of it, maybe they would have voted for him anyway, because of everything having to do with Bowman, but I'm not even sure that the district became aware that Latimer may have been to the right of many of them.

Errol Louis: Well, we tried to wrestle him to the ground. My co-anchor Susan Arbetter and I, we were the moderators of a debate between Bowman and Latimer. Just as you say, you couldn't get him to say a word about where he stood or anything. He basically hid behind the White House and said, "Well, I'm just here to support the President in whichever way he goes. At any given point, I'll be in the mix, and I'll confer with my colleagues, and then I'll make up my mind."

By the way, I don't know if I'd call it a pass, I'd say he eluded scrutiny, because he refused to allow himself to be pinned down on some really important issues. I was wrestling with him during that debate trying to get him to say what he thought about congestion pricing. He just said, "Well, that's up to the governor and so forth." I said, "As Westchester County Executive, you have an appointee on the MTA board that has to vote on this pause. Are you saying you haven't even spoken with that person?"

He said exactly that, "I haven't spoken with her. They're completely independent. My hands are washed." He was almost disinterested in it. What that spoke to I think, and what worked to his political benefit is that, he campaigned as, "I'm George Latimer. I've been a fixture in Westchester politics for 35 years, you know me. I was there at your wedding. I was there at your graduation. I spoke at all kinds of different social events. I've been to the political clubs. I know the names of all of the mayors of the different towns and villages," and that's who he was.

Look, it worked. You can't say it didn't mean anything, but he really tried to avoid substantive issues. He talked more about not so much what he was going to do, but how he was going to do it. Jamaal Bowman, who has such a flashy style, really made that a relevant consideration.

Brian Lehrer: I guess that all begs the question of what kind of Congressman George Latimer is actually going to be now. I'm going to play a couple of clips from his victory speech last night, which were as nondescript as how you were just describing his campaign. Here's one.

George Latimer: This country cannot afford to splinter into little pieces, and every single representative has to understand the necessity for unity, so that we can move forward as a nation.

[crowd cheers]

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: There's a little off mic, so I'll say it. "This country cannot afford to splinter into little pieces," and he endorsed the idea of unity, which is such a general claim that doesn't take a position on anything. Here's one more like that from last night.

George Latimer: There are good men and women in Washington who feel the same way we do, and we have to find each other, and link with each other. We have to look at the arguments of the far right, and the far left, and say, "You cannot destroy this country."

Brian Lehrer: He didn't really sound like he stood for anything in particular last night, just like he didn't really sound like he stood for anything in particular during the campaign, except a vague notion of centrism, and working with a broad coalition of people. Any sense of what he'll get involved with, or try to actually do down there, because a lot of the pro Latimer commercials did call him a progressive?

Errol Louis: Right. Look, I would compare what you just played, and probably, how he'll behave in Washington to another Congressman that we're familiar with, which is Tom Suozzi who also says, "Look, there are serious problems. If you want to pin me down, I'll give you a couple of moves that might cure that problem." Really, it's more about the style, and more about saying, "We need to work better together. We need less shouting and more listening. We need more conferring, and compromise, as opposed to conflict."

I think there is an appetite out there for that approach. It almost speaks to the idea of taking people outside of politics. Maybe they're exhausted by a lot of the rancor that you find in the news media, and you find in Washington, and you find in City Hall, and in Albany. That if the idea is to say, "Let's just be reasonable, put our heads together, stop shouting, and figure out how to get through various problems." That's enough politics for them. They don't necessarily [chuckles] need a perfect solution to healthcare, or abortion, or any of the other issues that so divide the actual representatives in Congress.

George Latimer made the case that he's the guy. Now, that's his politics, and just like I said it, it just happened to meet the moment perfectly, because they had a representative who had a very different approach to politics.

Brian Lehrer: Errol Louis is my guest. Political Anchor for New York 1 on Inside City Hall weeknights at 7:00, and their national politics show weekly Friday nights at 8:00, and this election season called The Big Deal with Errol Louis. He's a New York Magazine columnist. Listeners, we invite you in here, who wants to say anything, or ask anything about any of the New York primary results.

We're going to talk about some of the others including another Congressional Democratic primary that took place yesterday, or with anything in advance of tomorrow night's Trump-Biden debate. We will give Errol a chance to suggest a question that he might like to hear the moderators ask tomorrow. You can continue to suggest those too. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned at the top, Errol was also a lawyer, and so has a trained eye with which to watch Supreme Court decisions. Errol, we have one now on one of the cases we've been waiting for. I'll read The Washington Post headline on this from their article that just dropped. "Supreme Court allows White House Contacts with Social Media Firms, and it says, "The Supreme Court rejected a Republican-led effort to sharply limit White House officials, and other federal employees from pressuring social media companies to remove posts from their platforms that the US government deems problematic." Familiar with this case?

Errol Louis: A little bit. I'm familiar with the issue for sure. This was, in part, an ideologically-driven belief by a lot of Conservatives that there was censorship going on. That it was a big scary federal government that was going to force social media platforms to not deviate from official doctrine on things like of vaccines, on things like COVID, and the spread of COVID.

It's, I guess, legitimately there's a short step that could take you into the realm of prior censorship. If you think of the social media platforms the way you would say a media organization. If you and your folks at WNYC got a call from the Department of Justice saying, "Hey, we want to have a conversation with you about your coverage of the Supreme Court. We think you are maybe getting some of it wrong, and we want to just have a friendly conversation."

It wouldn't necessarily be that friendly of a conversation. You know what I mean? The lawyers would start getting involved, and you'd probably turn it into a story, and wonder what the hell is going on here. The Supreme Court I believe is trying to give some guidance on this question about, whether or not what they're calling jawboning, the government's having a somewhat casual conversation with a media platform would be acceptable or would amount to infringing on free speech rights.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The context was the pandemic, the case was known as Murthy v. Missouri. Murthy being the US Surgeon General. Vivek Murthy, who was, I guess, trying to get the social media platforms to remove, or somehow mediate disinformation and misinformation about vaccines, and other pandemic medical questions. For the moment, anyway, they upheld his right to at least have that contact with the social media platforms.

In a 6-3 ruling says The Washington Post, "The majority said the challengers did not have legal grounds or standing to bring the case against the Biden administration." It says, "The decision could have major implications for the US government's efforts to combat foreign disinformation during a critical election year when nearly half of the world's population will go to the polls."

This case could come back, I guess, from my reading of that, Errol, because it was a standing based decision. They weren't saying that the government was right on the issue. They were saying that the group that challenged the government didn't have standing to bring it. This is the same way the Mifepristone case was ruled this year.

The justices upheld the ability of the abortion pill to be distributed, but not because they ruled on the merits. They ruled that the anti-abortion group that brought the case, didn't have standing. This one may return to the Supreme Court in another way.

Errol Louis: That's exactly right. It's always a little disappointing when something that's important, and substantive and meaty, has made its way all the way up to the Supreme Court, only to find out, "Well, you're the wrong people who brought the case." We should remind ourselves though that this is an important limit on the court's power. You don't want them taking up speculatively different questions, and start pontificating about them, and start drawing constitutional lines willy-nilly. There has to be a real case between real people, who are fighting out a substantive question that's going to get resolved. That's probably the right way to do it.

In this particular case, I haven't read it, so I'm not clear on what the standing question was that this turned on, but it's probably for the best, and it'll let the issue germinate a little bit more. Maybe bubble and boil a little bit more, and then when it's fully cooked, it will probably end up back before the Supreme Court, because these questions are not going away.

I thought of this case, and I think of this case as one where the basic issue about whether or not we're going to defend facts in reality against people who are very specifically and deliberately trying to challenge the notion of what is factually true, and try to take a big player off the field in the form of the federal government on something as important as the pandemic, or projecting outward, as you suggest, foreign interference in our elections.

We cannot afford to reduce the government to a bystander on these questions. They've got to be able to pick up the phone, and talk to social media platforms that are acting as irresponsibly as we've seen them act in recent years. To me, there's no question about that. The right way to do it, and how and when we do it, hopefully, we'll figure it out before it goes back to the Supreme Court.

Brian Lehrer: Surprising to me is that the Supreme Court did not rule on the two social media cases together. There's the other one yet to come, which to my mind, and you tell me if you think I'm seeing this wrong, because you're more trained in this than I am, but to my mind is the bigger case. This one was specifically as we've been discussing about whether government officials can even raise the topic with the social media platform leaders about disinformation on their sites.

The other case challenges, the right of the social media owners to edit information on their platform at all, even without the government leaning on them to do it. Is that your understanding of it?

Errol Louis: No, that I'm not so sure about. That second case that you're talking about, I think it might have even greater standing issues than this first one that we were discussing. Meaning, unless the case really deals with what a particular company can or can't do, and they're the ones who are pushing it, I think a lot of this other ideologically-driven conversation about trying to insulate them from any contact with the government, I think that fails almost immediately. I'm not sure why the Supreme Court severed the cases though.

Brian Lehrer: They've finished their business for the day. I can tell you, listeners, that we are not going to get [chuckles] preempted for special coverage of the Presidential immunity ruling, or have any of the other major cases that we've been waiting for to talk about today. There you go. That's what the Supreme Court did today. That and one other smaller case, even though they added this as a decision day, it's usually Thursdays and Fridays in June, they added Wednesday, but they only did this little bit of work.

We will be back, and starting the show the same way tomorrow, as we expect more major Supreme Court decisions tomorrow, and almost certainly on Friday as well, but we will take a short break here, and then continue with Errol Louis from New York 1 and New York Magazine. We'll shift back to talking about primary results, and also previewing tomorrow night's Biden-Trump debate. Stay with us.

[MUSIC]

Jamaal Bowman: This race was never about me and me alone. It was never about this district, and this district alone. It was always about all of us.

Brian Lehrer: Jamaal Bowman in defeat last night. We heard a couple of clips of George Latimer earlier, as we talk about New York primary results, and other local and national politics with Errol Louis from New York 1 and New York Magazine. Let's take a call from that district. Daniel in Scarsdale, you're on WNYC. Hi, Daniel. Thank you for calling in.

Daniel: Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I just wanted to say, because I'm sure there's a lot of external analysis of what this all means, but just as someone who got the mail, and felt the brunt of what was AIPAC-funded, that this was the Democratic primary in a diverse district, and the vast majority of this district is almost 60% non-white. If Congressman Bowman could only carry 40% of the vote there, this is clearly something more going on here than just a single Demographic voting Bowman out.

I think Errol made just a great point, and something that I don't know, Bowman might have lost anyway, because I voted with the bright light on Bowman, it turned out he pulled the fire alarm and all that a couple of days ago. He referred to Jewish people as "The Jews," which does not sound great. He name checked his own voters. We're Democrats here. I'm sure that a lot of folks who dislike him most, couldn't vote for him, or vote him out yet anyway yesterday, because this was a closed primary.

There was more going on here than just the fact that this was a single issue. I'm sure to the point about whether or not he answered your question, Mr. Louis. I'll bet that he was just advised not to as a matter of strategy, because Bowman's campaign appeared to be imploding all on its own. That's my guess there. Anyway, thank you for-

Brian Lehrer: Daniel, thank you.

Daniel: -for hearing my thoughts on it.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Anything on that, Errol, including the makeup. I guess, there are at least two ways to look at the demographic makeup of the district, both being true. I think it's accurate what Daniel said that it was maybe about 50/50, or even a little bit non-white majority, but at the same time as we've kept hearing, it's got the third biggest concentration of Jewish voters of any Congressional district in America. How do we integrate those two facts?

Errol Louis: Well, I mean, look, the two candidates were different along a lot of different axes. Latimer is in his early 70s. Jamaal Bowman is 48. Bowman is from the urban part of the district, which is actually one of the poorest counties in the United States. Latimer represented Westchester County, which is one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. It breaks down in some ways quite cleanly, that if you are whiter, wealthier, and in the Westchester part of the district, you're more likely to be a Latimer supporter.

If you are poorer, or you're a Black and Latino, or more urban, or from the southern part of the district, especially, the Bronx, you're more likely to be a Jamaal Bowman supporter. The Bronx side of the district, that was only about 10% of the district. This was really a Westchester district, and there was a Westchester conversation that really needed to be answered, if you wanted to understand what was going to happen in this district. I think there's just no getting around that, but it doesn't break cleanly.

There are a lot of Black homeowners. That's my folks, that's my family, that's my past. Some of them are quite moderate, some of them, in fact, were standing next to George Latimer at his victory party last night. There are a lot of different ways to look at this. I do tend to think that you'll get closer to the truth, if you think of it more as people wanting a public servant who is going to just stick to the needs of the district.

When you hear somebody say something like, "Hey, this was never just about us. This was never just about you, and your petty concerns, your safety, and your schools, and your property, and your family." [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Well, in fairness-[crosstalk]

Errol Louis: This is about something less-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: -he didn't say that. He said, "It was never about me, it was about you," and he talked in the debate that you moderated, they went back and forth on what parts of the district they were each focusing their attentions on. Bowman would talk about things in the lower income, and more Black parts of the district, where there were certain needs, where he said he was trying to get things done. Then, Latimer said, "Oh, well, you don't even know who the mayor of Scarsdale or Rye is." Which are the white, or wealthier parts of the district?

Errol Louis: Yes. Look, in a lot of places, and there are a lot of people, and you and I both know them. We could name them, where what the representative does is, attend to the local needs, the very, very, very local needs at a granular level, including knowing people's names, sending them birthday cards, and all of that kind of a thing. That buys you the right, and that buys you the security, and that establishes the base from which you can venture out, and start talking about international affairs, but it takes time to build that up.

It's not that easy to do in just two or three terms, and this is the first elected office Jamaal Bowman ever held, and I don't think he really appreciated of that style of laying low, attend to the needs of your district slavishly in a very focused manner. Real quick--

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that kind of politics, that kind of behavior in office, still matters in the age when so many people get their political information from social media, and places?

Errol Louis: No question about it. If anything, you need more of it. I heard one thinker who said, it might even have been on your show that, the new AI is artificial intimacy. The people are craving real connection. Million years ago when I was in high school, I was actually working for a Republican Conservative Assemblyman, John Perone, who represented Larchmont, Mamaroneck, this part of this district.

My job was to go through the local newspapers, and find generic stuff that had nothing to do with him, but find when people were having graduations, birthdays, it might get written up in a community newspaper. I would clip it out, I would give it to him, he would send a personal handwritten note saying, "Hey, I was just reading about you in the paper." He would just insinuate himself into people's lives, and into the social life of the district. It was a lot of work. It's a lot of work. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You're saying Latimer has done that in his career, and Bowman in his two terms in Congress, not so much?

Errol Louis: Exactly right. That old style of politics, if you want to call it that, but it is who George Latimer is. That's why the speech that he gave last night was really flat, and he was just talking about it in a generic sense. "I'm here, you know me, let's all work together, let's stop shouting." That's who he is. That is a kind of politics. It's a kind of politics that I think is really very appealing.

It's really politics 101. We often lose sight of it, because we're in the media. We're here to talk about the exception and not the rule, but the rule in most districts at every level of government is that, you make sure people know who you are, you show up at the meeting, you ask about their kids every time you see them, remember their names. It's worth a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take one more call on this race, and then we're going to move on. We just had a Latimer voter. Here is Dorian in the Bronx, who if I understand this call right was trying to be a Bowman voter yesterday. Hi, Dorian, you're on WNYC. Did I get that right?

Dorian: Not yesterday, but early voting last Wednesday.

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Dorian: I wasn't able to vote, the screen came up, it said, "No contest," and I've tried to find out what that was. Apparently, not only for me, but quite a few people that attended, we were redistrict. I voted in District 16th all the time. Now, I'm told, Ritchie Torres', District 15, and I don't know when that happened. I think Bowman might been a victim of that also.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Dorian. Yes, there was a redistricting earlier this year. Although, Errol, I think it was widely reported that the redistricting was expected to help Bowman a little bit, because it brought Co-op City into that district. I guess, whichever part of the Bronx Dorian is in, got districted out.

Errol Louis: Exactly right. There's an area a little bit to the west, like Riverdale and so forth that ended up with Ritchie Torres, and so that might have been what happened in this case.

Brian Lehrer: All right. There was the other New York Congressional primary and Suffolk County, and again, somebody who we might call a centrist one. John Avlon, the former CNN commentator, and author of several books promoting a centrist worldview. I guess a little full disclosure is in order here, because you once edited a book with John Avlon, right?

Errol Louis: Yes. The two-edition anthology of the best newspaper columns in American history called Deadline Artists with makes a great gift by the way, [chuckles] a great July 4th gift if anybody's thinking about it. Yes, I've known John for a long time.

Brian Lehrer: That would be a pretty appropriate July 4th gift actually, if anybody gives July 4th gifts, right? Good column writing about the state of the country and other things.

Errol Louis: It's a great book. We used to probably bring potato salad, if you're going to really go to somebody's house. [chuckles] The point is, he has written-- His first book, in fact, is called Independent Nation: How the Vital Center is Changing American Politics. He is dyed-in-the-wool passionate centrist. That's who he is.

Brian Lehrer: He beat Nancy Goroff, who was the Democratic nominee in that district, a couple of cycles ago, and lost. Do you think that he has a chance of beating Nick LaLota? We remember that in the 2022 midterm elections, the red wave that was predicted did not materialize in Congressional elections around the country. There's usually a backlash in those midterm elections against whichever party has the President, but it didn't materialize nationally, it did materialize in the suburbs of New York City, including for Nick LaLota.

Errol Louis: Yes. It's interesting that the DCCC believes that this is a winnable seat. They let it be known that if Avlon is the candidate, they're going to come into that district, they're going to put in real resources, and they're going to try and win that district. Now, where that ranks compared with some other relatively easier pickups elsewhere in the state, and elsewhere in the region, I don't know, but that actually became the issue in this race, that a lot of what was at stake in the campaign actually became the issue that the candidates talked about, which was, who was more likely to be able to try and flip this seat.

Is it Nancy Goroff, who tried twice, and failed twice? Or is it John Avlon, who's got a different approach, a higher profile, and perhaps, a lot more support from active Democrats, including all kinds of county executives and party leaders in the DCCC, who have all signaled, some of them openly, some will now come on board after the primary, to say like, "Yes, we think we can win this."

Now, to be fair, I also spoke with the State Republican Chairman Ed Cox, who thinks that the Democrats are kidding themselves, that there are a lot of working-class communities in this district, not just the Hamptons, and that they're going to hold on to it, but we will see. It's going to be a knockdown drag-out, it's going to be a pretty high-profile fight.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul's congestion pricing pause, which we're going to talk about again in our next segment with a lead Eric Adams' reporter Elizabeth Kim, because the mayor yesterday was proposing an alternative to congestion pricing. That doesn't include the word "pricing", [chuckles] but does include the word "congestion".

Hochul's pause is widely being analyzed as a way to back up the suburban Democratic hopefuls, who have opposed congestion pricing on behalf of their commuting and car-owning constituents, but it was still seen as a Democratic Party toll for which the Democrats would pay a price in November. Do you think it actually adds points for any of those candidates?

Errol Louis: I think that the notion-- I think somebody is getting this wrong. [chuckles] It might be the governor, it might be me, it might be others, but I don't think-- I've asked everybody that I could ask. I asked the candidates in that debate, I asked the Chair of the State Democratic Party last night, I asked the Chair of the State Republican Party last night, "Hey, how all of this is supposed to be playing out?"

Nobody seemed to have any real evidence, or solid sense that this was going to carry all the way over into, either this year's elections, or next year's, or the year after. To the extent that Republicans will try and characterize it as a tax, it falls into a very familiar set of complaints that, "Democrats always raise your taxes, and that means property tax, and inheritance tax, and this tax, and that tax." I don't know if that marginally makes it any better, or worse.

On the Democratic side, I think we've got an entirely new phenomenon here that we haven't seen before, which is, there's a very large and increasingly vocal constituency within the Democratic party that wants to see this done. Not because it's a tax, but because they see it as a way to, number one, reduce congestion, but also to fund mass transit, and mass transit and density and urban life is an important constituency within the Democratic base.

For once, they're not just rolling over and playing dead, and for once they can't just be swept aside. I think that's the conflict that Governor Hochul was encountering that maybe she did not expect, but there's a lot of different groups that are out there. If you think about it, Brian, I think there's something like four, maybe five community boards in Manhattan, who are still at this point writing letters, organizing people, and complaining that this congestion pricing plan didn't happen. That doesn't happen very often.

What it suggests is that, years and years of discussion about this, have really taken hold. There are some Democrats who are going to insist that schemes or innovations, whatever you want to call it like this, get full due attention, and that we break the car culture once and for all.

Brian Lehrer: Travis in Dyker Heights has a question about New York primaries, generally. Travis, you're on WNYC with Errol Louis. Hello?

Travis: Thanks very much. I just need to get a little wonky, but I'm sure you both can handle that. We have this situation where we don't have ranked choice voting in these state and federal primaries. Do you recall two years ago, Dan Goldman won with fewer than 30% of the vote, and he had many candidates to the left that-- He won fair and square, but he almost certainly wouldn't have won, if there was ranked choice voting.

I'm wondering if there are any races. I see a couple of races. For example, in Manhattan, the 68th Assembly District, the incumbent one with less than 45% of the votes, someone named Edward Gibbs. Is that maybe the reason why the State Legislature doesn't want to approve ranked choice voting throughout the state because unpopular [chuckles] incumbents would, perhaps, draw a lot of challengers that would split the vote against the incumbent. We just have to see asymmetry now with ranked choice.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting. We do have ranked choice voting for New York City offices like mayor and city council, public advocate, but there is not ranked choice voting for New Yorkers running for Congress, or New Yorkers running for state level offices like Governor. Errol, it can get confusing, but Travis had an analysis there of who it helps, and who it hurts.

Errol Louis: Well, I think he's right, in the sense that, who it helps and who it hurts, is what lies at the root of why we don't have it. My experience has been that, everyone who is elected to office, immediately figures that the rules are pretty good as they are, and we should probably just leave them there. I think that applies to all 200 plus members of the legislature. They figure, "Whatever the rules are, I won, so let's not start changing the rules now."

One thing that it would almost guarantee, and this is what Travis wants, but it gets a lot more candidates into the fields. It's much easier for them to get in. Questions about whether you'll be a spoiler, go away. Questions about whether you can influence the race even if you don't win. That also comes into play. Some people think that's a good thing, but there are a lot of candidates, especially incumbents, who don't think it's such a great thing. They don't want all of this pressure, they don't want all of this campaigning.

They don't want all these new candidates to start bubbling up, and saying plausibly, "Hey, you don't have to throw the guy out, just vote for me." Then, that changes everybody's calculus. That really starts to get pretty complicated. In case you can't tell, I'm a little skeptical about the purported benefits of ranked choice voting. I don't think it does what its proponents have touted as its greatest benefits. I think the jury is still out on that.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, let's just touch national politics quickly. Your Friday national show will come this week at eight o'clock on the day after the Trump-Biden debate. What will you be watching for?

Errol Louis: I'm going to be watching for how the rules affect this. This is not just the earliest debate, but it's the first one we've ever had where they're going to absolutely cut off mics right after the 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever the designated response time is. I think that's a mistake, by the way. I think it's going to be a real problem. You and I have moderated debates together, Brian.

As we have discovered, and as I think CNN should realize, the rules and how long they have to respond, that's just a framework to enable a discussion to happen. If you strictly adhere to the framework, rather than the conversation, then you get all framework, and less conversation. I think the shutting off of mics, and the lack of the studio audience, and the lack of feedback that the candidates will get, the fact that the candidates during their two breaks during this 90-minute debate cannot meet with their advisors to get like a little boost, a little encouragement, a little reminder. "Oh, hey, re remind them about this program, or that program." I don't think that's going to help.

It'll give us some insight into how these two candidates can handle a particular set of constraints. I don't think these are the right kind of constraints to enable us as voters to figure out where they're coming from, and what they think.

Brian Lehrer: The other side of that, of course, is that there was so much shouting over each other in their debates in 2020, that voters who actually wanted to compare their positions on issues, may have had a hard time coming away from that debate being able to do so. I guess the trick for the moderators is to see if they can avoid it becoming a sterile exercise like you were just describing, and have it still be a meaningful exchange with some back and forth, but in a structured way that lets voters hear things more clearly. We'll see if either of us, and all our listeners, and your viewers think it actually works or not.

Last thing then, I mentioned yesterday that I would like to hear the moderators ask a specific question on what they would each do about housing costs. Arguably, the biggest affordability burden facing the country when people consistently rank inflation as the number one issue. Listeners, I'm going to renew my invitation to you right now to text us any question that you would like to hear the moderators ask, and we'll put some of them in our Thursday newsletter, but text if you want to us right now at 212-433-WNYC. What question you would like to hear Biden and Trump asked at tomorrow night's debate? Errol, you're not Eric, you're Errol, can you name one that you are hoping for a version of?

Errol Louis: Oh, yes, sure. It's not as concise as yours, but something that has really struck me in the discussion about the economy is that, we always, whether we're talking about inflation, job creation, or anything else, we assume that voters are going to go one way or the other on "the economy." The reality is, where you are in your economic life cycle is a crucial determinant about whether or not the economy is working for you.

I'm very struck, as I get older, at how many things work for people like me in this economy, and don't work for my younger colleagues who want to buy their first house, or start a family. I wish that they would frame the question in such a way that you can point out that certain things, whether it's the mortgage interest deduction, or capping the price of insulin that helps older people, older voters, or even the debt relief for student debt.

It's associated with young people, but it doesn't help young people. It helps the people who are young 20 or 30 years ago. What are we going to do for young people trying to start a family, get their first home, get a job that actually pays decently, and helps them start on a career? What specifically are you going to do?

I wish they would frame the question in a way where you foreclose the usual talking points about student debt, and capping prescription drug prices. Young invincibles don't need drugs. They don't need to cap the price of insulin. They need to get a house, and they need some help from their government to do so. Telling them that you might forgive their student debt in 10 years, is not going to answer it at all. Something a little bit more concrete, I would love to hear the candidates talk about.

Brian Lehrer: Errol Louis, Lead Political Anchor as host of Inside City Hall on Spectrum News New York 1, weeknights at 7:00. He also hosts their weekly national politics program special to the election season called The Big Deal with Errol Louis Friday Nights at 8:00, and he's a New York Magazine columnist. Errol, thanks as always.

Errol Louis: Thank you, Brian.

 

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