Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Veteran city politics reporter, Ben Max, has a new story out of New York Magazine's Intelligencer about the city's progressive left, specifically the crisis that he says it faces in unifying behind and even identifying a candidate capable of challenging centrist incumbent, as they see it, Eric Adams, in the Democratic mayoral primary in 2025.

It seems like a long way off, but Ben Max writes that despite significant disapproval of Adams on the left, there is skepticism about finding a candidate who could appeal to both mainstream and more progressive Democrats while standing up against the incumbent. While some potential candidates may be laying the groundwork, he reports, others remain hesitant.

We'll talk about the particular dynamics of the electoral playing field and get a few more thoughts from Ben Max, veteran New York City politics reporter and host of the Max Politics podcast, including what the City Council election that's underway right now that many consider a low stakes election might tell the progressive left about what kind of candidate might be best to challenge Eric Adams in 2025. Hi, Ben. Welcome back to WNYC. Always glad you can join us.

Ben Max: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You write the mayor's political standing is somewhat hard to diagnose and could change between now and the primary, obviously since it's a year and a half away or more. Do you want to expand on that just to get us started?

Ben Max: Sure. I think Eric Adams seems to continue to have a lot of support from the coalition that he rode into office. It's important to note in all this discussion as I write in the piece that we're really focused in New York City politics other than a few City Council districts and maybe some borough-wide elections on Staten Island, we're mostly always focused on the outcomes of the Democratic primary even as we've seen the city move a little bit back towards the right in certain ways and Lee Zeldin doing a little better than expected in the gubernatorial election last year in New York City and even Curtis Sliwa putting up maybe a little bit of a better number than some people thought in 2021.

So much is about the dynamics of a Democratic primary. Eric Adams rode a coalition into victory in that primary that he probably still has mostly intact at this point. It's very hard though to get a feel for that because public polling is so limited in New York City and it's definitely especially limited between elections. We don't have a great feel for it, but there's little reason to believe he's lost support in just under two years from the very multiracial, multicultural coalition that he rode into office.

Now he's mayor, and he's responsible for everything, and sometimes unfairly, but some very often fairly voters will hold him responsible for everything from how he's handled the migrant crisis, which is obviously the big challenge of his mayoralty so far but everything else as well, including the city's lack of affordability and the number one issue he ran on which, of course, is bringing down crime where he showed some progress already.

Brian Lehrer: You write that New York's left is in the midst of a crisis that might allow the centrist mayor to go practically unchallenged in his re-election campaign. You used the word crisis. What's made it so difficult for the progressive left to identify a challenger and again, knowing that this isn't until 2025, but sometimes there are leading candidates this far in advance?

Ben Max: Right. It's definitely early for anyone to declare or for the left to have identified the person and name that person and start to get behind that person. At the same time, the June 2025 primary is just over a year and a half away. That's not that long of a time. There are many other things that people in politics are focused on now including the 2023 City Council elections, which are a bit under the radar but they're happening right now, but also mainly the 2024 elections which, of course, even though New York City won't have that many competitive elections, there will be some, there will be so much focus in New York on the House races that center in the suburbs, and obviously, that's something you've talked about a lot on the show, and the presidential election.

There's ways in which what happens in 2024 could certainly shift the city's 2025 politics. We could talk about that maybe later, but I think the progressive left has been searching since Adams won the primary in 2021 to start thinking about how to win the mayoralty either in '25 or '29. That's a long way away, obviously, but there's a real challenge in identifying, both a candidate who would run against Adams, and that might include having to give up their current seat to do it in the next city election cycle and could win, which there's a big lane to challenge Adams and maybe give him a run for his money, but you have to find a candidate who could really bridge a lot of Democratic constituencies in that relatively big tent that would be needed to cross over as I write in the piece, the liberal left and the progressive left that would include a lot of the people who were very interested in Kathryn Garcia in the last election but also Maya Wiley and a few other candidates.

That type of candidate isn't easy to identify and so there's a lot of discussions happening, but so far, there's a good bit of despair. The people I spoke with on the progressive left think that there could be a real opportunity to give Adams a strong challenge in '25, but at the same time, people are casting about for that combination of someone who would do it and could really win.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I want to ask you in a minute about where you think the new issue since Adams was elected of the influx of asylum seekers comes into this on the left, what you think about the Working Families Party and its role, and whether it's similarly stuck to what you've been describing and also the role of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is not a political party but is influential and has some internal debates going on right now as well, including about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who's a member, but some DSA members think she's too centrist on the question of Israel right now and things like that.

I want to ask you first about this election that's taking place right now, the 2023 City Council elections. People barely know that it's taking place. Turnout is obviously going to be very low. What we've learned from it might be very limited, but how much do you think the leaders of the progressive left, whoever we consider them to be, are watching this current City Council slate of elections? Every City Council seat is up right now for maybe results from certain bellwether districts or something like that to give it a clue as to what kind of candidate they might want to put up against Adams in '25.

Ben Max: It's so interesting because right now there were a few competitive primaries for these City Council elections back in June, but right now, we're talking about general elections and we're focused on a few districts where a sitting Republican City Council member is facing a tough election like Vickie Paladino in Eastern Queens or you have a Democratic City Council member facing a tough election like Justin Brannan, although that's a unique situation where two sitting City Council members are facing each other, and a few others.

I don't know how much the results of this general election will influence how leaders on the progressive and liberal left think about the 2025 Democratic primary because, in a primary, you just got to win among the Democratic electorate. There will be some signs in this election though certainly about the city's broader political mood and where we've seen Republican gains in recent elections. Will those continue here? Can the limited number of Republicans in the City Council who are facing tough challenges keep those seats? Do a couple of Democratic incumbents lose?

There's an interesting race in the Bronx, for example, Marjorie Velázquez, the sitting Democratic City Council member, facing a Republican challenge. That will give us a little bit of indication about some of the mood of the city. How much that influences decisions about a Democratic primary citywide I think is probably pretty limited. I think there are ways in which people across the political spectrum are constantly evaluating these election results, and there are ways that some of these general elections also show trends that could matter in Democratic primaries.

For example, in recent years, we've clearly seen some Latino and Asian voters moving rightward in the city. Some of that's a response to policies of Bill de Blasio that are no longer particularly relevant as Eric Adams has rolled them back in part because he had a lot of support and spoke to the needs and interests of some of those voters last time around. I think there's elements here, but I don't know how much overall the results of these general elections will influence the primary decisions come 2025.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, calls or texts for Ben Max, New York City politics reporter and host of the Max Politics podcast. His story in New York Magazine's Intelligencer is headlined, The Left Can't Find Anyone to Challenge Eric Adams. 212-433-WNYC. Anybody want to name names? I see some texts coming in with some potential nominees. I'll name those names as we go. Anyone else have one, or anyone else want to talk about just the landscape of this as you see it or the important issues underlying this conversation?

If you consider yourself a member of the progressive left in New York City, maybe you're a DSA member, Working Families Party member, whatever, and you want to say how this all looks to you, and if you think there is someone or a type of person or a candidate with certain views who could defeat Eric Adams in 2025, or if you think the people of New York even really want that, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. Where is the DSA in all of this? The Democratic Socialists of America?

Ben Max: The New York City branch of the DSA has skyrocketed to relevancy over the last handful of years, helping to elect a number of people, especially to the state legislature, several state senators, and state assembly members in parts of Brooklyn and Queens especially, and then a couple of City Council members. The DSA has been a complicated factor overall in Democratic politics and broader politics in New York City with certain concentrations of geography where they've been very successful, as I noted.

Real questions about how the broader electorate, even in a Democratic primary feels about the furthest left policy stances of the DSA, and that's gotten obviously much further complicated by what's been happening related to the war in the Middle East and Israeli politics and Palestinian politics. There's a lot that's obviously exploded around that in recent weeks related to the DSA.

The DSA is a very important organizing force for the broader left but also a force that even its own leaders know they're not ready to run their own candidate for mayor, for example, and that the city's electoral politics, even in a Democratic primary, is something where folks on the far left know they would have to compromise behind a more liberal to moderate candidate in order to feed someone who's more moderate to centrists like Eric Adams.

It's complicated, but also, folks who organize in the DSA and some of the candidates that the DSA has elected would be likely important factors in a broader left coalition, even if the candidate of that broader left coalition would probably have to keep the DSA at some arm's length in some ways to potentially win a Democratic primary in 2025 against Eric Adams.

Brian Lehrer: Where does the Middle East come into it for the DSA? I've been told by a former member that they stand for a one-state solution in the Middle East, and even a two-state solution advocate would be questionable for DSA membership and DSA endorsement.

Ben Max: Well, I think you have a situation in, again, a citywide election where you might not even see something like a DSA endorsement, but you might have the organizing network of the DSA activated behind a candidate that those individuals and members of the DSA feel like would be a significantly better alternative to someone like Mayor Eric Adams, whose policies they disagree with almost across the board. How much Middle East politics would influence that type of organizing effort in a 2025 election I think is very limited.

I think when you get into endorsements for specific seats where you're really talking about, is this a DSA candidate for state legislature or City Council or something like that, then almost every item on the agenda has to match for the DSA to really go in for backing a candidate. On the citywide level, it's a different litmus test and a set of principles.

Brian Lehrer: Mark in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Yes, hi. I have three candidates, all of whom I think could beat Adams fairly easily. One is Jumaane Williams. I don't understand why he ran for governor. That's a really dumb move. I think he could've been elected mayor in the last round. Second is Ritchie Torres, who I think would be a tremendous candidate, although I ran into him one day in the Bronx and he said, "No way, it's too hard a job."

My favorite candidate I think would be Christine Quinn. Okay, she made a dumb mistake. Everybody makes mistakes in their lives, but she is very involved in New York City politics. She's been running a very substantial public service organization, WIN, and I think it's time for a woman mayor. Those would be my three top choices.

Brian Lehrer: Now, Mark, some might say, I'll get Ben's take on this, that of those three, only Jumaane Williams is really to the left of Eric Adams. Do you agree?

Mark: Yes, that's true. That's true, but I think it's more important that we have a competent manager, which Adams isn't. In fact, he has had no executive experience, even in the police department. Neither did Bill de Blasio, for that matter, and I think it showed. I think it's more important at this point that we have someone who can understand city politics and has navigated it through the years and has serious managerial experience. That's my take on the matter.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, thank you very much. Let me go to another caller. Antonio in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Antonio.

Antonio: Hey, Brian. Good morning. Essentially, I wish it would be a DSA candidate, but I would hope that they focus on the content instead of the labeling of the message because if they begin with 'defund the police' and income inequality like that, that's easily going to be roped into political back and forth, but if they say, "Hey, was that $300 subsidy that was enacted but taken away recently by Congress, did that help you at all? Do we need some reform when it comes to incarceration?"

Keeping the message, but we care about police officers and we want our streets safe. Just talking about how, look, no one in the primary that was like these big Bloomberg kind of folks, they didn't get any traction at all in the primary. It's obvious that it's coming down to somebody more closer to the sleeves, so to speak, to the people, which is why they picked a former police captain because they made a pragmatic thought.

Also, they wanted somebody to be the complete opposite of de Blasio, but de Blasio wasn't saying things wrong. He was just like-- I think the thing is, people weren't ready for it, and you have to articulate it in a very careful way. You have to get out of politics and talk about the issues specifically.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Antonio. What were you thinking as you heard those first two callers, Ben?

Ben Max: Oh, there's a lot there. I think the first caller with some specific ideas about candidates, there's a lot to say there. Then the second caller, this question about how to address specific issues and framing and labels, those are really interesting points as well. This is something where ultimately, the candidate of the left in the 2021 mayoral race, and there were all sorts of challenges on the left unifying before she became the candidate of the left for the final weeks, but Maya Wiley did struggle with some of this.

She was a first-time political candidate, and you had real challenges in terms of her identifying some of the ways that she wanted to talk about specific politics and policies and some of the questions around the ways that she gauged, both having a very progressive platform and also the dominance in the mayoral race of the subject of crime and public safety and how her message on that did or did not break through to the electorate.

There was obviously complications on the broader liberal to progressive left about how voters were ultimately splitting overall between Kathryn Garcia for the more technocratic liberal-minded left and Maya Wiley on the further progressive left, and there were other candidates at play as well. All that happened after Scott Stringer, who looked like he was really going to be the candidate of that broader, left. His candidacy obviously flamed out after a sexual misconduct scandal broke.

There's so many interesting dynamics to questions about policy, platform, discussion of key issues, and then how it coincides with the candidate field. No election will be exactly like any other election, so talking about some of the candidates of the last election helps us with some of the framework for some upcoming elections, but it's very unlikely that we'll see any of those same candidates running again against Eric Adams.

Just very briefly on the candidates that the first caller mentioned, there was a lot of sentiment in the many people I spoke with for this article that they wished Jumaane Williams had not run for governor in 2022 and instead waited to potentially challenge Eric Adams in 2025. Not that we know if Jumaane Williams would be up for that, but he seems to be very clearly ruling it out.

I won't go into all the potential candidates or even the other ones that the caller mentioned. I can if you want me to, but Jumaane Williams would seem like a pretty obvious potential challenger. After that tough 2022 gubernatorial performance, that really didn't go well. He's not, I don't think, on the potential list even for '25.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. He might have a much bigger base in the city than he had statewide, I guess some people might argue. Then let's name some other names coming in from our listeners, most of these via text message. Someone says Antonio Reynoso, who's the borough president of Brooklyn who you report was kind of being wooed and mentioned at some meeting of progressive left leaders.

Also, Brad Lander, who somebody writes, "Brad Lander--" He's a current New York City comptroller, a progressive, a founder of the City Council Progressive Caucus when he was in the City Council. Listener writes, "Brad Lander, a mensch for New Yorkers." Let's take those two. Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn Borough president, Comptroller Brad Lander.

Ben Max: Sure. Antonio Reynoso, the New York Times first reported back in the summer, was the guest of honor at a dinner of progressives on Staten Island who were starting to plot for '25. He said immediately after that he's not running. I asked him again in early October, "Is this something you'd look at?" He said, "No, I'm running for re-election as borough president." Now, that's the smart thing for him to say even if he's giving it a little bit of thought.

Really, you don't want to be out there right now necessarily saying, "Yes, I'm really taking a close look at this." That can really complicate things for his relationship with City Hall and the mayor. I think Antonio Reynoso is very, very unlikely to run. He's pretty young. He's got a bright future in politics ahead of him. Declining to seek re-election as Brooklyn Borough president to take on what would really be an all-out political war against Eric Adams is a big undertaking.

I think for just about anybody, especially those in current elected office who would have to give up their seats to run, which also includes Brad Lander, I think it just makes them very unlikely to do it. Reynoso could, of course, change his mind at any point. Politicians do that all the time, and I do think there will be increasing efforts to recruit him specifically as '25 approaches.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Of course, they're all term-limited so they can only run for re-election once, that includes the mayor, and it's always hard to beat an incumbent. You're giving us some of the rationale that people like Lander and Reynoso and maybe the Queens Borough president, Donovan Richards, who you also cite in this category in your article, might just be thinking, "Well, I've got a pretty safe seat that's impactful. I'm going to hold onto this for one more cycle."

Then 2029, though it seems far away, in a certain respect it's not that far away in terms of their careers, might be the time that they really go for mayor. On Brad Lander, who some people think might be the strongest candidate, you report on the importance of race and how that might impact the left's efforts to build an electoral coalition and the optics of nothing else of Brad Lander, who's white, challenging an incumbent Black mayor.

Ben Max: There's a lot of hesitancy across the political left just about the idea of even trying to unseat the city's second-ever Black mayor. That came up in almost every conversation I had where people really dislike some of Eric Adams's policies. We can go into all sorts of details on that, but that includes how he approaches thinking about the city budget and how he's talked about the migrant crisis and a whole bunch of issues, including policing and the Rent Guidelines Board and more. Still, people are saying there can be a lot of accomplishments done through the City Council.

There's different ways to do movement building and affect legislation at the state, which has so much power over the city, and it might not even be the right thing to do to challenge the city's second Black mayor in an election, especially when people on the progressive left are so focused on diverse representation in city government and empowering people of color when Eric Adams's coalition is so centrally, so many voters of color in the city, especially the city's Black voters. At the same time, a number of people I spoke with said that we want to challenge Eric Adams from the left, we need to find the right candidate. It should be a candidate of color.

A few people I spoke with said, "You know what? Brad Lander would be great. Yes, the optics would be tough, but he's a citywide elected official. We love his politics and he would actually have a shot to win," which is the most important thing here for the left to have someone in power who is a progressive, a liberal who wants to run city government with a different type of focus.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a caller who wants to talk about race in the context of anticipating 2025 and a Democratic mayoral primary. Justine in Astoria. Hi, Justine. You're on the air.

Justine: Hi. Thanks again for taking a call from me. I am probably to the left of most people. In the last primary, I voted for Maya Wiley as my first choice. I have an issue with some of the things that Eric Adams has done, but I see an elephant in the room that I think was there in 1993 when David Dinkins was running for re-election and the economy was bad and crime was up.

Even progressive people I know were saying in not so many words that, "Well, maybe we shouldn't have elected a Black mayor." I hear it again. They use coded language that, oh, maybe he wasn't the right type of person, instead of actually criticizing his policies or saying that he's approaching the government the way a policeman would, rather than an administrator or a politician would, but [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Here's a difference, Justine, and let me get your reaction to it. In '93, Dinkins got successfully challenged from the right by Giuliani. Part of the premise of Ben's article is that Eric Adams is not vulnerable from the right. He would only potentially be vulnerable from the left. I wonder if that puts the race question in a different context for you.

Justine: I think it does because if I'm understanding what you say correctly like I was saying, I think that liberals tend to, or ones I know, tend to talk about race in a more indirect kind of way. On the right, I think the racism is more palpable. It's more overt. Whereas I think there's more of an undercurrent this time.

Brian Lehrer: Justine, thank you very much. Ben, you want to take on that question?

Ben Max: Yes, absolutely. This is something--

Brian Lehrer: The difference between questioning a Black mayor from the left and from the right and where racism, either explicit or implicit, might come into it or might not?

Ben Max: I think undoubtedly this is something for everybody to have an antenna up about, and this is something that Mayor Adams has spoken to. Speaking with a number of experts, especially experts of color, including, for example, Dr. Christina Greer, who you have in the program regularly and who's very attuned to this, there's undoubtedly ways in which racism comes into the conversation in certain ways.

You have to be attuned to it and careful about why people are casting aspersions on Eric Adams and then some ways where people have a lot more facts at their fingertips and are pointing to those things. The leaders on the left who I mostly spoke with, Shahana Hanif, for example, the City Council Progressive Co-chair, pointed out to me when I raised some of these things that 19 out of the 20 members of the City Council Progressive Caucus are people of color who are largely opposing Eric Adams's politics. A number of other examples like that.

At the same time, you have this thread where there are people who talk about Eric Adams's management of the city. This is where I think the conversation can get somewhat dicey is, well, what specific pieces are you talking about him as a manager, and let's dissect some of that and see what's really there or what's a broad impression that should be questioned. He pushes back on that a lot.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it for now with Ben Max, New York City politics reporter and host of the Max Politics podcast. His story in New York Magazine's Intelligencer is headlined, The Left Can't Find Anyone to Challenge Eric Adams. Ben, thanks a lot.

Ben Max: My pleasure. Thank you.

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