Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. In the New York City mayoral race, every major candidate not named Mamdani is asking everyone else not named Mamdan to drop out. The candidates named Adams, Cuomo, and Sliwa are all doing it. We'll see how that circular firing squad works out. What we know today is this, Zohran Mamdani, Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa are all in it for now, and they are all claiming to represent working-class New Yorkers. Yesterday we had First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro on the show making the case for Eric Adams. Today we'll speak to the two leaders of the Working Families Party, which endorsed Assemblymember Mamdani as number one in the ranked choice Democratic primary. He will also have the WFP's additional ballot line in the fall. The name Working Families Party suggests who they say they represent. Here in that context is Zohran Mamdani on this show on June 25th, the morning after the primary, speaking about being the nominee of the Democratic Party.

Zohran Mamdani: It has been tempting, I think, for some to claim as if the party has gone too left, when in fact what has occurred for far too long is the abandonment of the same working-class voters who then abandoned this party. If we want to truly prove ourselves as champions for the working class, we must prove it in the commitments that we make and we must prove it in the policies we put forward, and ultimately we must prove it in the outcomes that we deliver.

Brian Lehrer: Assemblymember Mamdani here on June 25th. Now, here, by contrast, is Mayor Adams speaking Yesterday on Channel 7, WABC-TV.

Eric Adams: This candidate is not a blue-collar working-class person. I spent 22 years as a police officer. I'm a blue-collar working-class mayor. He came from wealth. He went to some of the most prestigious schools. His family is from wealth. When you talk about the struggles, I know those struggles because I grew up in those struggles with a single, a mother who was raising six children on her own. I know what homelessness feels like, I know what it is to go without meals. This is a person that did not have one difficult day in his life. Four years in assembly, he wants to run the most complicated city in the country, if not the globe. We deserve better as New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams yesterday. Also, yesterday, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, was here on WNYC with Sean Carlson on All Things Considered in the afternoon and also looked to own that working-class lane.

Curtis Sliwa: Well, I'm the consummate New Yorker in this situation. Born and raised here, I'm the only candidate who rides the subways every day and has a direct link to the blue-collar working-class people of the outer boroughs of which I'm from. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Brooklyn, started the Guardian Angels in the Bronx. I've lived in Queens, and in the last election cycle did extraordinarily well in Staten Island. I understand the needs of folks in the outer boroughs who feel neglected. So much of the focus is on Manhattan.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor, I should say, Curtis Sliwa yesterday. We've now heard Sliwa, Adams, and Mamdani. Now let's talk to the co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, Jasmine Gripper and Anna Maria Archila. Ana Maria and Jasmine, welcome back to WNYC. Hi there.

Jasmine Gripper: Hello. Thanks for having us.

Ana Mara Archila: Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Could we start with a refresher for listeners not totally engaged in politics? What is the Working Families Party? Who started it and when? What does the name represent?

Ana Maria Archila: I can start. This is Ana Maria. The Working Families Party is a political party that started in the state of New York back in 1998 in the wake of welfare reform and all the free trade agreements that began to actually really transform the lives of working class people across the country, including in New York. The party was founded by several labor unions and community organizations with the purpose of making sure that our politics and our government was focused on the needs, the priorities, the dreams, and the struggles of working families of workers, tenants, students.

For the last 25-plus years, we have been pushing Democrats to respond to the material needs of working people, to focus on the issues that matter most; the cost of housing, the cost of childcare, the cost of life in New York. We do this by engaging in primary elections, electing leaders who are rooted in working families communities and who advance an agenda that makes a difference in people's lives.

Some of the things that the Working Families Party has accomplished is multiple increasing to the minimum wage, rent regulation laws that make life better for tenants, expansion of access to college for immigrant New Yorkers and many other issue fights like that. This year we were focused on making sure that the mayor's office would not land in the hands of billionaires again, so we waged a very robust fight, built a coalition of candidates and organizations to make sure that we would be able to elect a mayor that fights for working families and not the rich.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Jasmine, you heard the three clips that we played. The Adams one focused on his background coming from the working class, from poverty as well. Whereas he says Mr. Mamdani comes from the culturally elite and financially-comfortable background of, if you go into more detail on what he was implying, a world renowned filmmaker mother and a Columbia University professor father ranked as one of the top public intellectuals in the world. What would you say to that, in arguing that Mr. Mamdani rather than Mr. Adams is the truest champion of working families in this race and gets it the most?

Jasmine Gripper: It's not simply about where you come from, but where you are right now. Eric Adams is not plugged into working-class New Yorkers and the struggles that they are experiencing. He is very much the candidate of the billionaire class. He has led the city with an overemphasis on what is best for the billionaires and not what's best for working-class New Yorkers, and we see that in his actions.

Every year that he's been in office, he's raised the rent on rent stabilized apartments, where Zohran Mamdani, he himself in his life right now working in the New York State Assembly, it's not a life of privilege, is connected to everyday New Yorkers, and he ran and won on a platform to address what New Yorkers are worried about, the affordability crisis, and made it really simple and plain.

You can't argue with the fact that New Yorkers have overwhelmingly chose him, that he is the preferred candidate of the working class, and that he has an agenda that is centered around working-class New Yorkers that he wants to deliver on. Freezing the rent for rent stabilized apartments, investing in childcare, and making buses fast and free, these are working-class New York issues and we need someone in leadership who is going to prioritize working-class New Yorkers and not the ultra rich, which we have seen this mayor do and other mayors before him in previous years.

Brian Lehrer: Well, since you emphasized the rent freeze a couple of times, or the rent freeze proposal from Mr. Mamdani in that answer, I'm going to play another clip of Mayor Adams on Channel 7 yesterday specifically disagreeing with Mr. Mamdani's position on a rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants. We'll get your reactions on the other side. He argues here that it's bad for the very people the rent freeze says it's supposed to help.

Eric Adams: By raising a modest small rent, you allow these small property owners to be able to pay the increase in taxes, the increase in water bills, electricity, repairs. If you fail to allow that, we're going to return to the '70s when many people were walking away from their properties. No one wanted to insure the properties and we saw urban decay. Who was hurt the most by this are the same people he state he represents.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams yesterday. Actually, I think I got the source wrong. I think that was on Fox Business, but, Anna Maria, your reaction to that, especially the argument that working families get hurt in the long run by rents that are too low for landlords, especially smaller landlords, to even want to stay in the business, so the housing supply shrinks and that pushes all the other rents up.

Ana Maria Archila: Yes, Eric Adams has to defend rent increases, because under his administration, the rent went up by 12% for rent-regulated apartments. Tenants have really suffered the brunt of his administration. Every year the Rent Guidelines Board reviews the data that they use to make decisions about rent regulation and the increases. What their own data shows is that the, by and large, landlords are making a profit that is larger than the expenses that they are spending on the taxes and improvements. Under Eric Adams, tenants have really suffered, and that has had dire consequences for families across the city.

So many people talk about how difficult it is to stay in the city, and one of the powers that the mayor has is the power of appointing who sits on the Rent Guidelines Board. That power is the power that Zohran Mamdani will use to make sure that the Rent Guidelines Board is actually listening to the pleas of tenants who are saying they can no longer afford to stay in New York City.

His commitment is to, actually, instead of just lending his ear to landlords who want to make a profit, and I'm talking about, in fact, not small landlords, but large corporate landlords that are the ones that actually benefit the most from these rent increases, he will actually lend his attention to tenants who have said again and again that they cannot stay in New York because the cost of the rent is so, so high.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite your calls and texts for the two co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, Ana Maria Archila and Jasmine Gripper, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, in the context of the mayoral race or other New York politics. We'll definitely get into why the WFP is against the proposal to have open primaries in New York rather than the traditional party primary system that the city has now.

Callers, maybe you have something on that too. In fact, I see a couple of Working Family Party supporters who are calling in on that right now. 212-433-WNYC, on anything that's related, 212-433-9692, call or text. Jasmine, here's a text that came in that says, "Please ask the Working Families Party leaders why, if Mamdani is indeed a champion of the working class, a plurality of voters in low-income neighborhoods voted for Cuomo, while Zohran did better in middle income and more affluent areas," ask that listener.

Jasmine Gripper: Yes, I think what happens is voters have a short amount of time to get to know new candidate.

Brian Lehrer: Did we lose your line? Do we have Ana Maria?

Ana Maria Archila: I'm here, yes. While we wait for Jasmine. I think what she was starting to say is, in an election like this when voters have a limited amount of time to get to know new candidates, Andrew Cuomo has been on the ballot multiple times; when he ran for attorney general, when he ran for governor. He's the son of a governor. His name has been in New York politics for decades. People, when we saw so many of the polls, his name recognition is what registered the most.

Zohran had to build an operation that would introduce him to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, and he did that. What we saw is that when people got to meet him, when they got to learn about his platform of freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, and making childcare universal, people were super excited and turned their attention away from the name they knew to the person who was actually talking to them about the issues that matter.

Brian Lehrer: I think that what the texter is getting at is, why would that whole process that you were just describing have landed differently percentage-wise in lower income as opposed to more affluent areas?

Ana Mara Archila: I think that when you look at those same areas, the voters that got to know him turned away from Cuomo. I think when you look at the strategy of Zohran's campaign, he started in the places where he was well known in the northwest corners of Queens and Brooklyn, and then fanned out into all the parts of the city where he needed to introduce himself, and he made tremendous progress, but he didn't make it all the way.

The opportunity now, as we look to the general election, is for Zohran to spend a lot more of his time meeting the New Yorkers that have yet gotten to know him, and engaging with New Yorkers that ultimately stand to benefit the most from the vision that he's presenting to the city, which is a vision that will center working-class people and will center the needs and the priorities of workers, of tenants, of students who are struggling so much to stay in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Obviously, Mr. Mamdani won the primary, but is the distribution of the votes similar to what we might say haunted Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 and 2020? The actual working-class, non-college-educated Democratic primary voters trended toward Clinton in 2016, Biden in 2020. Is there a disconnect, or if you see those numbers differently, you can say that too, but is there a disconnect that seems to run through these most progressive Democrats in Democratic primaries who are not connecting as much as the mainstream candidates are in many cases with the exact people they claim to be representing the most?

Ana Maria Archila: When you look at Zohran's electorate, you see a new coalition forming. You see a coalition of young people, you see a coalition of immigrant New Yorkers who have often been left behind, who have often not been courted by political campaigns, and you see middle-class New Yorkers and more upwardly mobile people coming together to demand a different kind of politics, a different approach to governing, and that coalition will only grow.

Andrew Cuomo focused his efforts on what he has always done, which is to come to Black and brown communities to ask for their vote, and then turn and used the vote and the trust that they gave him to deliver for the rich and well-connected. He spent a lot of his-- He didn't try to shake hands or kiss many babies. We know this. He didn't try to campaign. He spent most of his time talking to rich people, but advertising in Black and brown communities across the city.

What Zohran did was create an incredible army of volunteers that went to every corner of the city and who introduce him for the first time in live conversations at the door with people. It takes a tremendous amount of work to do that, but the effort of doing it, by going to people's doors, to listen to them was transformative. It brought hundreds of thousands of people that have never voted in a mayoral election out to vote.

Andrew Cuomo mobilized the people that he targeted with his advertisements. He did that, but Zohran brought not only the people that he expected to bring, the regular voters that participate in primaries, but hundreds of thousands of people that had never voted before in a mayoral primary, young people who registered for the first time, immigrant voters who never felt like this city was that interested in what they had to say. That is the kind of democracy that we want, is a democracy that listens to people, a democracy that actually cares about what they have to say and not just bombards them with advertisement.

Is there work to do? Absolutely. Are there parts of the city that have yet to know Zohran's message and what his vision for the city is? Absolutely. Does he have to do that work from now through the general election? Absolutely. Has he demonstrated that he's willing to actually hit the pavement and listen to New Yorkers and sit and hear their concerns? 100%. Did Andrew Cuomo demonstrate that commitment? Not one bit.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, my guests are Ana Maria Archila, who was just talking, and Jasmine Gripper, whose line, I think, we have connected again, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party in the context of the mayoral race and other New York politics. In a few minutes we'll get into why the WFP is against the proposal to have open primaries in New York rather than the traditional party primary system that the city has now. Also, get their take on what they think of ranked choice, now that we've been through it, in New York City in two mayoral primary seasons.

We'll also ask, in their view, what the heck happened to Jessica Ramos, who they endorsed as part of their ranked choice slate, but then she turned right around and endorsed Andrew Cuomo. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Here's a landlord calling in who wants to continue the conversation about the pros and cons of a rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants. John in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi. Thanks for having me. A little bit earlier, Anna Maria had mentioned that landlords income is more than their expenses, so they're making a profit. A couple of points to that. Isn't that the whole reason that somebody gets into business, is to make a profit? There are plenty of greedy landlords out there. I've owned a small building for about 25 years. I have two tenants that pay about $800 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which is rent-controlled, and it costs me about $1,100 to $1,200 in fuel, taxes, water, electricity, to run that one unit, so I'm at a loss there, and I'm-

Brian Lehrer: Why do you stay in the build-- John, why don't you sell the building? I'm asking seriously, earnestly, why don't you sell the building if that's the math?

John: Why? Because I am making a profit, but on those two apartments, it's a loss. I bought the building. I love My tenants. I treat them like my family. They all have my number, 24 hours a day they can call me. I have a super at the building. I like what I'm doing, and I am making a profit, but isn't that the goal of business? It's like telling McDonald's, "Well, that Big Mac costs McDonald's $4, but you could only charge $3 for it."

Brian Lehrer: John, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you very much. Jasmine, now that you're reconnected, do you want to get in on this and respond to John?

Jasmine Gripper: I think the experience of a tenant paying $800 in rent is not the experience of many people who are renting in New York. Is our system 100% perfect? Absolutely not. Do we write laws based on the experience of the masses? Absolutely. We are trying to solve for a larger problem, which is, overwhelmingly, most tenants in New York City are overspending on their rent to a point that's unsustainable, and most landlords are operating at massive profits.

We need to find the right balance where we give tenants some relief and landlords can continue to operate their business, but not to the point where they are able to drive people into living basically in poverty. That's a balance that any elected official has to have in running the city, and we really have full trust in Zohran to execute a strategy to find that right balance.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to take a break. We'll continue. We have another Eric Adams clip to play from yesterday that's a critique of another aspect of the Mamdani campaign. We are going to get into the question of whether we should move away from the current primary system altogether to one that is open so that anybody who's even not registered in a party can run or vote in an open primary. The Working Families Party opposes that. We'll find out why. The Jessica Ramos question. More of your calls and texts. Stay with us.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we continue with the two co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, Ana Maria Archila and Jasmine Gripper, and you at 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. For whichever of you would like to answer, I'd like to ask about your opposition to the proposal that might be on the ballot in the city in the fall to scrap these party primaries and go to an open primary system where everyone competes at the same time and all registered voters can vote, and the top two, or maybe top few, run in a general election runoff. I see you would even go to court to prevent that outcome. Why are you so opposed to that idea?

Jasmine Gripper: I'll jump in here. One, in New York State, we have fusion voting. That is what has allowed the Working Families Party to build a network, to build a base, to intervene in Democratic primaries while also not being a spoiler in the general election. People are able to vote on the working families ballot line. What the commission is proposing or considering would actually undermine the New York State fusion voting laws, and would not allow political parties to have a distinction on the ballot, and would not allow candidates to run on more than one line.

Even to go back to give it a little history in New York State, the last time that this was proposed in New York City was by Michael Bloomberg when he was fighting against the public sector unions in an attempt to break up their electoral power. We see moneyed interests attempting to say like, "Oh, this is going to expand the electorate. It will help more people vote." The reality is that places that have had open primaries, the expanding of the electorate has been negligible. There's barely any change in the number of people who are voting.

What they are trying to do is to dilute the power that organized labor, organized parties, organized people have. Our biggest fight or our biggest weapon against big moneyed interest is to be able to organize people. Literally we saw it in this just the election that just happened, there was a lot of money on the side of Andrew Cuomo, it being one of the biggest [unintelligible 00:26:17] ever spent in a New York City primary.

We only were able to combat that with organized people working together to build a coalition and to build people power. This attempt would dilute the organized people portion of our electorate in favor of organized money having outside influence. We are against it. The lawsuit part about it is really about the state's constitution, and fusion voting is what is the state law that we would want to make sure we're able to uphold.

Brian Lehrer: Fusion voting, meaning the Working Families Party could continue to endorse candidates on its own line in the general election?

Jasmine Gripper: Correct, that candidates and the [unintelligible 00:27:01] people can vote on their party line. Plenty of voters, over 200,000 often go in to vote on election day and choose to vote on the working families ballot line, and it sends a message to candidates about who their base is, about who's in their district, and what values are important to those voters. Political parties do matter because they are a signal of values, and voters having the ability to vote on the party line that they choose is extremely important to building collective power on behalf of working people.

Brian Lehrer: Here might be a little pushback. We'll see from Lisa in Manhattan, who has been a poll worker. Lisa, you're on WNYS. Thank you for calling in.

Lisa: Thank you for taking my call. Yes, I am a poll worker, and as at every primary, this past primary we had an awful lot of working families voters who registered for Working Families who came in wanting to vote in the Democratic primary. Many of them averred that there was no difference between the Working Families and Democratic Party. Some of them actually shouted at me that their vote would, too, count.

Are you doing right by your party members by putting them in this position? They want to vote in the primary, but they can't. You oppose an open primary, but it seems to me that you're deceiving your voters and not really letting them do what they want, which is to vote in a primary.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you very much. Ana Maria, you want to take that?

Ana Mara Archila: Well, the reason why we are concerned about open primaries, it's essentially what Jasmine said, that they would actually benefit, or it would make it much harder for candidates who are not the candidates of the money class to compete. What we have seen is Working Families Party registrants sometimes, like it happened this year, many of them switch their voter registration to register in the Democratic Party to be able to vote in the mayoral primary. We understand that happens and are okay with that. It is obviously up to people's own choice to decide.

Disappearing the party lines in the primary will essentially just give a tremendous amount of weight to the candidates that have the most money. At the end of the day, that will hurt all New Yorkers. If we only have candidates that are able to compete because they are able to resource their campaigns and not able to actually play on a level playing field, I think all New Yorkers will really suffer. We understand. I am registering the Working Families Party. I was very excited about the mayoral election, I couldn't vote.

Brian Lehrer: You couldn't vote in the Democratic primary.

Ana Maria Archila: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. What you're arguing is the good there comes at the price of locking out the independent voters who aren't registered in one of the major parties.

Ana Maria Archila: That's right, but people have an opportunity to change party registration, as many of them did. 37,000 people registered this year to vote in the Democratic primary. We welcome that development. We think it's tremendously important that that level of excitement was there, and that there was a campaign actually inviting people to become part of our democracy, to enter into it by registering in the Democratic Party.

We also know that there are Working Families Party registrants that are part of our party because they believe in the values of the party and they understand the sacrifice that they're making about not being able to vote in the primaries. That doesn't mean that they're sitting idle watching from the sidelines. They're talking to their neighbors, they're knocking on doors. They are talking to voters all across the city about what's at stake. Many of our registrants did that this year. In fact, we had hundreds and hundreds of Working Families Party registrants volunteering to knock on doors and to talk to voters. They were not excluded from our democracy, their participation was different.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a text that just came in from a listener who says, "Message to WFP members. There is no reason to register as a Working Families Party voter, register as a Democrat, vote in the primary, then vote the WFP line in the general." What do you say to that advice?

Ana Maria Archila: Yes. Well, the fact we have about 50,000 people registered in the Working Families Party across the state, but this last year In November, over 400,000 people voted on the Working Families Party line across the state. There are many Democrats and people who are not registered in our party who vote on the Working Families Party line in the general election because they want to send a message that they want a government that focuses on the priorities and the needs of working families instead of the demands of the rich and well-connected.

Brian Lehrer: Jasmine, what's your opinion of ranked-choice voting under the current system, now that the city has been through two Democratic mayoral primaries with that and the WFP played a role?

Jasmine Gripper: Yes, learning how to adapt to ranked-choice voting was a huge learning curve for all of us in New York, but it was brought to us with the intention of increasing turnout and increasing engagement in order to prevent people having to come out twice for a runoff election. We just had to learn how to use ranked-choice voting and how to leverage it in order to make sure that our side could stay united and that we could be successful in running a ranked-choice system.

I think a lot of us thought, the first time it happened, like, "Oh, we had a runoff, we might have had a different outcome." Then this time we showed we just had to adapt our strategy to work within the system to make sure that our side stayed united. It's not the usual way you run a campaign, which is every man for themselves, but we gather that information and we were able to adapt our strategy by learning from other cities and other places that have long had ranked-choice voting. It's new to New York City, but it's not new everywhere else in the country, or even around the world.

Learning about ranked choice helped us to understand that running a slate was more possible and that candidates could cross-endorse each other. Again, this is the first time it happened in New York City. It's not the first time it's ever happened, and so it took some learning. Now that we understand how to use the system, and now that our side understands how to work together, and it really makes elections more of a team sport than an individual sport, which I think politicians in the political class in New York City aren't used to, but nonetheless, we showed what could be possible. There's a new way that's possible to run and win elections within the ranked-choice voting system [crosstalk] well-connected.

Brian Lehrer: You mostly like it. It does seem that that did help Mamdani eventually win the primary. Jasmine, what's your take on what happened to Jessica Ramos, progressive state senator from Queens by reputation, enough so that you included her among your five ranked-choice selection, and just days after that, she turned around and endorsed Andrew Cuomo? What's your best take on what happened with Jessica Ramos?

Jasmine Gripper: I think Jessica Ramos has to speak for herself on what made her make the decision she made. At the end of the day, I will give her credit for her history in the movement. She is someone who's long had a history with labor and fighting for working-class New Yorkers. She's rooted in the immigrant community and has been well connected. She has, in the past, been a champion for childcare and education, and so we were surprised to see her choice in this election. Strongly disagree with it. She made a bet, she bet wrong, and we'll see what happens from here. Disappointed. I think Jessica Ramos needs to speak for herself on why she did what she did.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned her connection with the labor movement. I wonder if that leads to a thought about changes in your party, the Working Families Party, and who it's for and what it's represented over time. There's an article that's a couple of years old in Jacobin, obviously a Left leaning publication by Ross Barkan, who you're probably familiar with as a former candidate as well as huge critic of Andrew Cuomo, among other things, but this article in Jacobin was called Working-Class Politics without the Working Class.

It says, "Born at the height of the Clinton era, the Working Families Party thought it had found a way to build a labor party in America. Today, it's advancing progressive politics with a far narrower base than expected." It goes on to cite what Barkan calls the often conservatizing influence of New York's unions, which is interesting. Then he goes on to say in a section of the article called the Missing Working Class, "One reason the Working Families Party has sought so zealously, in New York at least, to maintain its status as a political party is that such a designation comes with certain privileges. Political parties in New York can spend virtually unlimited amounts of money in coordination with their endorsed candidates."

That gets back to what you were saying before, I guess, about your reasons for opposing open primaries, but the larger thrust there, Ana Maria, is that the Working Families Party started as a labor-backed party and kind of became disenchanted with the politics of the labor movement or them with you. Now you're advancing a more activist-oriented progressive politics, more detached from the unions. Is that fair representation, in your view?

Ana Maria Archila: Let me explain, maybe, the history here. The party was founded in the late '90s by several labor unions, 1199, CWA, community organizations like Citizen Action and ACORN, and stayed as a labor community coalition for much of the early 2000s. In 2014, the Working Families Party decided to challenge Andrew Cuomo as governor. Why? Because he was reigning over in his administration an attack on public sector unions, an attack on workers. We decided to challenge him in the primary, or threatened to challenge him with Zephyr Teachout, and then again in 2018 with Cynthia Nixon.

Andrew Cuomo essentially broke the Working Families Party coalition. He demanded that many of the labor unions that were at the table of the Working Families Party leave the party. He tried then to kill the Working Families Party by changing the laws to make it much harder for third parties to keep a ballot line. We used to have to get 50,000 votes on a governor's race on our line, now we have to get 130,000 votes every two years. He made it much harder. It was Andrew Cuomo who actually forced the breakup of labor and community that were sitting around the table of the Working Families Party.

The Working Families Party, the DNA of the party is one of being focused on the priorities of workers and their families, so that even though he forced the departure of many of the labor unions, the purpose of the party did not change. It is important to highlight that there are still several important labor unions at the table of the Working Families Party, the nurses, PSC CUNY, the professors at CUNY, UAW, many others, and there are organizations that are not labor unions, but that are rooted in working class communities. Organizations of immigrants Yorkers, organizations of homeless New Yorkers. The party is still very, very rooted in working-class New York. That's the reality.

I think Ross is speaking to something that is attention. There is in fact a question about how to be a party of the working class if we don't have the largest organizations of workers at the table. What I'll say is we want to engage with labor in a sustained way. We want the labor unions that have left to be at the table of a Working Families Party. We also know that some of the power brokers inside the Democratic Party rely on-- that some of the things that are wrong about the Democratic Party, which we're seeing in full display right now, when the Democratic Party mainstream lined up behind Andrew Cuomo, that was also the candidate backed by Trump billionaires like Bill Ackman, by some of the richest New Yorkers like Michael Bloomberg, so that coalition didn't actually attract, didn't actually meet the moment for voters this year.

Voters wanted a different kind of politics, and those are the politics that are expressed in the Working Families Party. A commitment to actually not just allow the power brokers structures to dominate our democracy, but actually allow people to be the ones that lead the way.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to play one more clip of Mayor Adams on Fox Business critiquing Assemblymember Mamdani. You're going to hear him reference public safety, but then he goes on to a larger argument that Mamdani is likely to let many of his supporters down by promising things he can't deliver politically. Listen.

Eric Adams: We facing one who wants to defund our police or one who believes that law enforcement is the prerequisite to our prosperity, and one that understands that a healthy financial ecosystem includes bringing in large companies to hire everyday employees so that they could have equality of life. I think what is most troubling about what the socialist candidate is stating is his calls to give everything away free. Nothing is more troubling when people who are struggling are giving promises that individuals can't live up to. Mayors don't have the power to raise income taxes. That is what is the basis of all the things he's going to pay for.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams on Fox Business one more time. Jasmine, your reaction to that, and then we're out of time.

Jasmine Gripper: Mayor Adams calls himself the get-stuff-done mayor, but what is really deeply saddening about his time in leadership is how little he's actually got done for New Yorkers and how much he's actually taken away. He inherited a city that had just rolled out Universal pre-K and was on the cusp of rolling out Universal 3K for 3-year-olds. Families were excited and anticipating it, and what did he do? He cut 3k. He then tried to close our libraries.

He has failed to get stuff done for everyday working-class New Yorkers who he claims to represent. Because he doesn't have his own record of success to run on, he wants to knock the aspirations and the visions of a candidate who is preparing to do something for New Yorkers and actually make the quality of life better. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: His argument is that those aspirations, many of those, the central aspirations that Mr. Mamdani is articulating aren't achievable politically in Albany.

Jasmine Gripper: I think that's because Eric Adams hasn't tried to achieve any of them. Doesn't mean it's not achievable. People thought it would be hard for de Blasio to get universal pre-K, which he said was going to rely on taxing the rich, and he needed the resources from Albany. What did he do? He went to Albany and got the resources. It's not impossible. There is a record of how we can achieve this.

I think Kathy Hochul sees that voters in New York City are ready for change and that the policies are popular. She too is up for reelection next year, and it is important that our democracy is run by the will of the people and of the masses. The masses have spoken. They want affordable housing, they want free child care, and our elected officials need to find a solution to deliver.

We live in the wealthiest country in the world. We live in one of the wealthiest states and the wealthiest cities. When we talk about our budgets and how we spend, it is not if we have enough, is do we have the moral clarity to make the right priorities. Zohran is saying, "I'm ready to prioritize everyday working-class New Yorkers, which have not been prioritized in the previous administration." We can get it done, and Zohran's going to show us how.

Brian Lehrer: Jasmine Gripper and Ana Maria Archila, the two co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, thank you very much for joining us today. We appreciate it.

Ana Maria Archila: Thank you, Brian.

Jasmine Gripper: Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to continue to cover the mayoral race on this show from many different perspectives. Again, yesterday we had First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro on representing Eric Adams. Today, the Working Families Party. They're obviously backing Zohran Mamdani. Tomorrow we're going to have journalist Jeff Mays covering the race for the New York Times.

Thursday, another Mamdani-oriented take, a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America. You heard Mayor Adams in that last clip refer to Mamdani as the socialist candidate. Of course, his opponents bring up that label more than he does, I think, but we're going to talk to somebody from the DSA about what that really means in the context of a 2025 New York City mayoral election.

Then coming up, we've been in touch with Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. He's going to come on the show. We've already scheduled Jim Walden, the other independent candidate who also wants to stop Mamdani. He's scheduled for next Monday. Just to say, this is your place and one of your places for multiple points of view on the New York City mayoral election, maybe the election that's being most watched anywhere in the world in 2025 at this point. Tomorrow we pick it up with Jeff Mace from the Times. Brian Lehrer, WNYC. We turn the page for today and talk about other things. Next, the climate implications of Trump's so-called one big beautiful bill. Stay with us.

 

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