[music]

Brian: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. This is the week that early voting starts in the New York primary, this Saturday to be specific. You can also mail in your absentee ballot any time. You can also still apply for an absentee ballot. Did you know that? If you would rather vote that way, just go to ncyabsentee.com. It takes about one minute to fill it out online, really, one minute to fill it out online. You basically just have to know who you are and where you live. nycabsentee.com. There was big endorsement news over this hot weekend with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, getting behind Maya Wiley in the democratic mayoral primary.

Maybe you heard that with Dianne Morales having labor problems in her campaign and Scott Stringer now accused of sexual misconduct by a second woman. Other progressives are also migrating toward Wiley. The working families party, the Jim Al's liberal democratic club, big one in the city, and the New York progressive action network are among those who have now dropped Morales and endorsed Wiley. If you go by significant endorsements, you now have a range to choose from scanning from left to right across your radio dial. You have AOC, and these others now for Wiley.

The New York times and daily news for Katherine Garcia, the New York post for Eric Adams, and then you can decide for yourself where other significant endorsements fit into your way of thinking and whether these are the ones you want to follow. The UFT is a big one still for Scott Stringer, Congressman Ritchie Torres, one of the big ones for Andrew Yang, and you can look up others. We'll continue to follow the endorsement rollouts. We're expecting Al Sharpton for example, possibly tomorrow, he has previously said he would endorse two weeks before the primary. If he meant two weeks for the day, that will be tomorrow.

While we talked mostly on the show about the mayoral race, and we will continue to cover these races every single day between now and primary day, June 22nd, there is one other city-wide office that has a competitive primary and people don't pay that much attention. It's the race to succeed Scott Stringer as the New York city controller as Stringer is term-limited out. Controller is a really important job, but one that most people don't understand all that well. To help you decide how to choose in that city-wide race, we will talk to several past controllers this week who will also be interesting to hear from on other things going on in this primary month.

There's also a big controllers debate coming on Thursday night. It's a WNYC New York 1 and news organization the city debate that'll be live on the station Thursday night at seven o'clock. With us right now for this is Elizabeth Holtzman. If you have come to be interested in politics, just in the last few years, you might think of Elizabeth Holtzman as that legendary Congresswoman from Brooklyn, who was so prominent in the Watergate hearings and was on this show and elsewhere quite frequently during the Donald Trump impeachment and Russia investigation, because of her knowledge of how those things work.

Maybe you know Elizabeth Holtzman's most recent book, The Case For Impeaching Trump, which came out in 2019. What you may not know is that Elizabeth Holtzman was the first and so far only woman to be New York city controller, 1989 to 1993. Before that, she was the first and so far only woman to be the Brooklyn District Attorney from 1981 to 1989. That is also very relevant right now because the DA positions are up.

The race that everybody's following is the Manhattan DA race as Cy Vance is retiring after this year. Elizabeth Holtzman also worked in a New York City mayoral administration. She was a staffer for Mayor John Lindsay in the late 1960s. With that entire wealth of experience, let's see what we can learn today from Elizabeth Holtzman. Liz, it's always great to have you and nice to pivot from investigating a president to serving the city of New York. Welcome back to WNYC.

Elizabeth: Thanks, Brian. It's always wonderful to be on your show and to be talking to your listeners.

Brian: What does a controller do?

Elizabeth: The real question is what does a controller must do. I can give you some examples. Controller and some of those powers came into being when I first became controller because it was the new city charter in effect. That was in 1993, probably before many of your listeners were even born. The controller has basically concerns over the fiscal operations of the city. Let's start with the budget. The controller now has the power to review the budget and say, "Hey, wait a minute, what's the purpose of the review?" To say, "Wait a minute your revenue numbers are off, the city's going to go into a deficit situation or the expenses are not properly being reported".

That's number one area, which is to give an overview. What's the significance of that? When I became controller, there was no capability for the city of New York of determining what the budget situation was going to be. We did the first budget analysis, and unfortunately, it shows that the city was going into a serious recession. Nobody had predicted that. That allowed us to then talk to the mayor prepare for a different scenario than what they were thinking about. That's one situation budget predictions. Second is managing the debt of the city.

The city sells billions of dollars of bonds in order to finance capital constructions, whether it's construction. for example, new schools, new water pipes, that kind of thing. In that area, the controller can be very innovative in terms of trying to figure out ways that we can get the lowest interest on the debt because when you're selling billions of dollars, every minuscule increase can cause taxpayers money. That's the second financial and complicated issue. The third area is a pension fund area. The city has about 250 somewhat billion dollars in pension funds to invest. The question is how do you invest that? How do you invest it to get an appropriate return?

Then secondly, when you're investing in stocks, what do you do about the companies that you invest in? One of the things we did was to fight ExxonMobil about the Valdez oil spill and to magnify our power by meeting with the controller of the state of California and having a meeting with the head of the ExxonMobil to complain about the Valdez oil spill. We were magnifying our power through our investments. Then of course the other area is not really-- well, it is spelled out why the city can't settle any agreement for payment of money without the controller sign-on.

I'll give you a good example and this also involved Exxon. When I became controller, Exxon we discovered that there was an oil spill off in Arthur kill off Staten island. Exxon said, "We don't know any money for this after all the waters around Staten island, so polluted, what difference does it make?" The city at that time, the corporation counsel Victor Conor caved into Exxon, and they were going to sign an agreement. One of us to sign an agreement, that would have given the-- required Exxon basically is doing almost nothing about cleaning up the oil spill. I refused. I said, "Oh no, Exxon it's going to pay for it and it's going to remediate it". Since I stood my ground, despite what the corporation council wanted, and we got Exxon to agree to do that. That's another area.

Then it was just a bully called it. You can speak out on many things and try to make a difference. We found out, for example, that city-owned hospitals and municipal hospitals were doing screening mammograms for women for breast cancer. I got that problem changed. Probably the biggest issue on the bully pulpit big from a financial point of view was I sat down with the environmental groups, maybe 15 of them, when I became controller, I said, "What's the biggest problem? If you can give me one issue to focus on that has real financial implications for the city let's talk about it."

They all said you should do something about-- as the plan then to build nine additional garbage incinerators in New York City, would have been hugely expensive and it would have polluted the air. We started, as the controller I said this is affect to my office, even though its not in the city charter, we had a right to look at the physical impact of this program. We did, we issued five or six reports, which showed that it would cost less not to build them. We would save money by not building them and doing recycling and other programs instead of building these incinerators that were billion dollars of construction. Then we also found that of course, they were polluting, they would be polluting. They would release dioxins. In fact, the existing city incinerators are releasing dioxins into our own environment in New York City.

It wasn't pollution just in Vietnam. We were releasing dioxins to the city. As a result ultimately of our reports the whole proposal to build the incinerators was not only a sign aid stop ended, but the city closed down the 16 incinerate.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Huge physical consequences and made a big impact on the city and gave the city cleaner air and more money to do other important things.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite your questions for former New York City controller, former Brooklyn DA, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. We're looking for questions for this segment on how to be a good New York City controller or district attorney of the borough to help you decide who to vote for in those races in the June primary (646) 435-7280. If you want to call in on anything like that, (646) 435-7280, or you can tweet a question @BrianLehrer.

That's so much list that you laid out that a controller can do. There's a famous line from Mayor LaGuardia that I'm sure you know. That there's no democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage. I was thinking, as you were telling those stories about busting Exxon as the city controller and some of the other environmental stuff as well as gender equity stuff, do you think there's a more progressive and a more conservative way to be in New York City controller?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Oh yes. Sure. You can have a controller who just wants to sit by and not be innovative. I think if you really want to have an agenda that reflects the values of the people in New York City and attends to the money so that the taxpayer expenditures can be on things that people really want and need, in my mind you had to be progressive and so that's what we did. Fighting Exxonmobile then we got cleaner on the Arthur kill oil spill. Then we got some cleaner water and we set a precedent for that in the future. Yes, I guess if you don't care about the environment, if you just take what the oil companies tell you when you follow him, they say, "Well, so polluted, we can't, what difference does it make if we continue to pollute?"

Yes, I guess there's a difference, but the fact that you can be a progressive controller and I don't know if it's progressive or not, but one of the issues we undertook when I was controller was we fought employment discrimination by Ford Motor company. They were discriminating. We invested because we had to invest in most of the biggest companies in America. We had so much money to invest.

Brian Lehrer: The pension fund.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Ford was discriminating against Catholic workers in Northern Ireland, where it had a plant. We protested Ford. In fact, I went to Northern ireland and I got rifles pointed at me by the British soldiers. Well, it's that stuff, but we did fight that kind of discrimination. Now is that Republican or democratic or independent or green or blue or purple? I don't know, but it was the right thing to do and ultimately we made a difference. We fought and we fought the SEC on this too and a democratic administration. We fought the idea that there was a company called Cracker Barrel that was discriminating in the employment practices and refuse to hire gays and lesbians.

Well, we sued them, not as suits them, we filed proxy statements. The SEC sued us. We sued the SEC. We fought that ultimately our position prevails, not in court, but ultimately our government agreed that pension funds could protest discrimination in employment and that ultimately had an important impact on everybody in this country. If you believe in non-discrimination, if you believe in cleaning up the environment, if you believe in green tomorrow, sure you can make a big difference as controller.

Brian Lehrer: Am so glad you're telling these stories. These are such great stories because I think a lot of people when it comes to the controller's race and who they're going to vote for, they just think, "Oh, this is the city's accountant." Which was the first number of things that you described in your first answer. Now you've made it so clear as you've been walking through these things how controller can also use that accountant's position to influence policy.

I want to go on to another office. This is why it's so rich listeners, to have Liz Holtzman on today because besides being a controller, she was also Brooklyn District Attorney, 1981 to 1989. As I said at the top of the show, if you weren't listening yet then, DA's come up this year too. The Manhattan DA's race with Cy Vance retiring and how influential the Manhattan DA is even in national context of justice.

This is a big year for running for DA and for voters trying to evaluate DA candidates. These days Liz, I don't have to tell you running for DA in New York, seems largely about how much of a progressive prosecutor someone is promising to be. Meaning what kind of balance between prosecuting criminals and reducing mass incarceration. How much, if at all, was that the conversation when you first ran for DA and the high crime and high incarceration era of 1981?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, when I ran for a DA and was elected DA, first of all, the race against me was based on gender. There was an ad, a radio commercial Ryan, your listeners who care about radio might remember this. It was a radio commercial attacking me and they had my opponent who was real-- it was unknown. He had a radio commercial saying that Liz Holtzman is a woman's voice. Liz Holtzman, she's a very nice girl. Might like her for my daughter, but not DA. The message was no woman for DA. That resonated. In fact, when I was campaigning the streets of Brooklyn, people said to me, he goes, "Well, I liked you a lot, and we voted for you, but this is not a job for a woman."

That was the first hurdle that I had overcome. I was the first woman ever elected to DA in New York City and only the second in the entire state of New York. That was the biggest hurdle at the outset. Nobody talks about progressive or reform or anything like that. When I became DA, I was horrified by what I've found. I had been in the south in the civil rights movement in 1963 working for a Black civil rights attorney in Southwest Georgia. I saw the horrors of Jim Crow. This is before the federal government even intervene to help civil rights workers. I knew the danger and I knew the horrors at segregation and I thought have the criminal justice system used to squelch basic human rights. When I came to Brooklyn, what I found was not only in my own office was the office segregated.

They'd never been a black person, any minority person in a position, a high position in the opposite, never been a woman in a high position in the office, but they had never been a minority person in the homicide bureau stop and think about that. Also, the Brooklyn DA's office was part and so it was every DA's office in New York City, part of a terrible discriminatory system because of peremptory challenges, which is the right to remove juror from the jury panel.

Those challenges were being done on a discriminatory and racial basis. In New York City, it was legal when I became DE for defense counsel or for the prosecutor to remove a prospective juror solely on the basis of rates and it could be explicit. You could say, "I don't like this person. He or she is black." The jury, "That was fine." I was horrified. I couldn't believe it. I said this is Brooklyn. Even if it was 1982, it's still, it was an honor. One of the things that I did, and sadly, I was the only prosecutor in America to do this we fought the system of using peremptory challenges on a racial basis. We started that in Brooklyn. We started that and we said, "There should be no peremptory challenges used on a racial basis, whether it's by the defendant or by the prosecutor, because this is not just an issue of justice for the defendant. This is also an issue of using the whole governmental system to discriminate against prospective tourists." We wase, we litigated that case through the courts in New York state's highest court. This graceful opinion said that it was okay, you got that? It was okay for prosecutors to discriminate or anybody, a defense counsel to discriminate on the basis of race in jury selection. In fact, two concurring justices of the Supreme court said it was obligatory. In other words, you had to discriminate on the basis of race if you were representing, if you're-- in other words, it's the prosecutor thought they could win by he or she could win by removing Blacks. You had to remove Blacks from the jury.

I was living in a crazy world. We went to the US Supreme court and the Supreme court, there was a federal case that stood in our way. The Supreme court, in an amazing decision, said that this is a really important issue. We need the advice of lower courts. We want lower courts to re-examine the federal precedent. Can you imagine they didn't overrule it, but they invited lower courts and the federal system to re-examine an existing Supreme court precedent? We went back to the district that most federal court in Brooklyn, the federal district judge, judge Nickerson overruled a Supreme court case that it was no longer good law. You couldn't discriminate on the basis of race in jury selection and action.

This is almost unheard of it went up to the federal appeals court in New York, the second circuit. The second circuit agreed. Imagine they said, "No, you can't discriminate." That's the same case, by the way, that do our state courts said, "Oh yes, you can discriminate." Then we went to the Supreme court again, but the Supreme court said, "You know something? because the ACLU was on the other side of us in this case, you and the ACLU basically taking the same side, we can't take your case. They took a case from Kentucky where the prosecutor said he wanted the right to discriminate. The defense said, "No, you can't have that right."

They took that case and they overruled the right to remove the jury peremptory challenge basis and mentioned our case, justice Stevens who wrote the opinion, mentioned the work of our office in a footnote, describing the history and thanking us really for the litigation that led to that point. When you say, what can a DA do? We ended racial discrimination in jury selection, at least in principle. In theory, how it's been enforced a different story, but we fought the right to discriminate and we won to stop that. That was before you had a name for what we were doing and I didn't think it was progressive or regressive was just the right thing but when we went to the Supreme court, we called on prosecutors all over America to join us in our brief and nobody joined us. It was so unpopular at that time.

No other DA in America joined us in saying that prosecutors and defense councils should not be able to discriminate in jury selection on a basis of race. Nobody joined it. It was shocking, but the amazing thing is the Supreme court then did the right thing. It just did the right thing. What can a DA do? You can change. What can a DA do a da can take to change?

Brian: We're talking about what makes a good DA, what makes a good controller in this election year for both in New York City, with former Brooklyn, DA and former New York city controller, Elizabeth Holtzman, 646-435-7280. We'll continue after this.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC with former New York City controller, former Brooklyn, DA Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman as well and author of the Case for Impeaching Trump, which came out in 2019, Liz, a listener tweets, what oversight is there for controllers seems like a job, right for corruption, kickbacks et cetera?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, the oversight over the controller is the same oversight as there is for the mayor. You do have a criminal justice system. You do have a department of investigation. You do have a conflict of interest board. You do have the district attorneys in all the five counties and you do have the federal prosecutors. They're there but the fact is that although the controller has power, in most aspects, the power is limited by the Mayor. I'll give you an example. Actually, I'm the corruption point. When I was controller, the controller was given the power to hold contracts on a basis of corruption but on the other hand, the mayor was given the power to overturn that ruling.

In one case we decided that because of the mafia connections, organized crime connections of a particular contractor that we would object to the contract, and the Mayor overruled us, we took the case to court and we lost. That's a good example of where the controller has some power, but not complete power. Even with regard to bonds, the issuance of the debt, and overseeing the debt that the controller doesn't have complete power, the controller operates coordinately with the Mayor. On the pension funds, their trustees, every one of the pension funds has trustees. The controller isn't the only voice here.

There are many, many checks on the process, can there be corruption? Of course, it can be corruption, but the part of it has to do with reforming the larger issues, campaign contributions. That's why public financing is so important in our system of public financing and the city is important. That eliminates some of the pressures for that. The controller's powers is otherwise in many ways.

Brian: As you noted the first woman ever elected to BDA in any New York City Bar, you're the first and so far the only woman elected New York City controller, New York has a pretty poor record electing women. You have those firsts in your background of which there have been no seconds, not in Brooklyn, not in controller, controller money manager as a money manager and DA as a prosecutor, our guests, I guess, are both traditionally male roles and I don't want to be reductionist about men do this or women do that but do you think it meant anything at a policy level that you brought a woman's eye to these jobs for the first time? Or how do you think about that beyond the inherent importance of breaking those glass ceilings and those opportunities being equal?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Right. Well, I think one way, and I made a difference was to give women who've been working in the office, an opportunity to apply for it and hold the top jobs in the office. When I became da the first woman, DA in New York City, there had never, to my knowledge, been a woman who was bureau chief, not just in the Brooklyn DA's office, but in any office in the city, I was able to change that. That was an important change. I did that, not just for women, but for minorities as well but I would say that the perspective I brought was specifically perspective from women's rights. For example, when I became DA, I discovered that the laws on rape were horrific.

They treated women as perpetrators, not as victims. The women who were raped were treated as victims. For example, when I became DA, did to have corroboration of other words, a woman who was raped, the woman's word wasn't sufficient. Williams, what worthless, top liver you had to have for women's work, women were robbed, or the woman was assaulted other than sexually, you didn't need corroboration, but for rape, for sexual violence, you needed corroboration. I thought that when they changed that law in state legislature, they required, Okay, the woman didn't have to have corroboration, but she had to put up what was known as honest resistance. In other words, the woman had to fight back. Well, if the perpetrator has got a gun or a knife and your life is at stake, so we had to fight that too.

I can't tell you how many we had to change the legislation just to have a decent there law that didn't treat women as culprits in rape cases. With anybody else taking up the cudgels, maybe a few women in the state legislature, but the guys of the other DAs weren't doing that. There's another very good case where involving marital rape. In New York State, it was legal for a husband to rape his wife. Even if a couple was separated it was still legal. I'm sorry. Unless a couple were separated, legally separated, it was legal. We came in as a friend of the court when I was DA came in a case where we presented ourselves as a friend of the court, neither party argued that the law was unconstitutional, but we did. The court of appeals agreed with us and declared New York's exemption for marital rape. In other words, New York allowing marital rape to be legal was unconstitutional.

We did that as a friend of the court, wouldn't have happened-- it didn't happen because there was no one else to join with us in that matter. It just gives you an example of what difference a woman can make. When a woman is there she will bring up a specific perspective that oftentimes too often has been lacking and it's swirling down.

Brian Lehrer: Great examples. Hasani in Park Slope, you're on WNYC with Elizabeth Holtzman. Hello, Hasani.

Hasani: Hi, I just want to say, first of all, [unintelligible 00:31:09] and I just want to thank you so much for your value, your advocacy of civil rights and women's rights. There's two questions I have. Were you considered an activist controller or activist DA, and really, how did you navigate the politics of the party bosses in New York City as a woman? Knowing a little bit of what I know about politics, I just don't know how you accomplished all the things you do, but I'm absolutely in all of you I just want to give you a big hug and just say thank you for making so many strides for all of us women. Thank you, Brian. I am a sustaining member of WNYC. I listen to you just about every day, but Elizabeth, today, this is like a highlight of my week. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much Hasani. Elizabeth, what would you like to say?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, first of all, I'm very thank you for those kind words. When I look back, sometimes what I was able to accomplish, but when you're in the middle of it, you have to fight. When I was in the middle and discovered that there was racial injustice in removing Blacks on the jury, I said, "I only got to fight this." I didn't know whether we were going to win or not. I didn't consider myself an activist or not activist. I didn't put labels on myself. I don't like to put labels on myself, but I fought as hard as I could. We didn't know whether we were going to win fact, one of the most prominent legal scholars in America said, "You'll never win in the Supreme court.

Well, we did, but you just keep fighting. Number two, how did I deal with the bosses? In a way, it was really easy because they were against me. I came in, I ran as a reform Democrat. That's the first liberal I'll take. I ran as a reform Democrat against the machine for the position of state committee. The machine fought me tooth and nail. I had to get the law changed because it put in comments first on the ballot, which meant they gave incumbent preference meant that the machine got preference, that the political bosses got preference in the system. We got that law changed. Brian, you'll be very pleased to know that the name of that law case was Holtzman against Power and Power lost. I liked that case a lot because of the name and also what it accomplished.

Anyway, we won that and I said, "Listen, I can be my own person. I never I need Esposito when I were on the opposite side from the beginning to the end when I went for my race for congress seat." He was the county leader. He ultimately was convicted of crimes. We won't go into that but talk about corruption. Yes, he said, "Oh, that Holtzman and her squash." Talk about politically incorrect.

[crosstalk]

Whatever he wanted to say, but the caller asks a very important question. "How do you do it?" You can never really do it by yourself. You have to be able to have the support of wonderful courageous people who are with you, giving you guidance. When we talked about the controller's job, I never started out as a financial expert, but I was fortunate enough to have brilliant people who were willing to come to work for me, honorable people, honest people. That's how I was able to make such a difference. Also the support of the people I represented.

Brian Lehrer: We just have a minute left, but maybe that's a good point to end on DA and controller are such different jobs so as a member of Congress, which you also worked for eight years. People might wonder, well, as they evaluate any candidates today can a good professional politician just go from one to another and succeed at money management and succeed at criminal justice and succeed at legislation, they seem so different. How transferable are the skills and we have a minute left?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Okay. You have to be honest, you have to be hardworking. You have to be willing to fight and innovate and you have to be willing to have really smart people around you to help you and that's a formula for success no matter what position you hold.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Holtzman, former New York City controller, former Brooklyn DA, author of the Case for Impeaching Trump published in 2019 former member of Congress. We'll do another one like this with former controller, John Lu on tomorrow's show. Liz, this was, I can tell you the callers are just exploding with love and respect. Thank you very, very much.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Thank you and thanks to them.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.