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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC. While we focus much of our attention on New York City's downstate Mayoral primary results this week. We'll have more news on that after the top of the hour. A mayoral primary election upstate has already made history. In June a 38-year-old Democratic Socialist candidate in Buffalo named India Walton, won an upset over the 62-year-old four-term incumbent mayor of the city, Byron Brown, and just like downstate the winner of the Democratic primary has positioned herself or is positioned by the politics of that city, as a very likely mayor elect in the very blue city of Buffalo.

Mayor Brown in case you haven't heard it in the last few days, has announced that he will run a write-in campaign in November. The Democratic mayor is going to run a write-in campaign against the Democratic nominee. What do you think about that? If she wins, Walton will be the first woman to become mayor in Buffalo's history and the first socialist mayor of a major American city since 1961, when Milwaukee's Frank Zeidler left office according to Vox. They don't count Bernie Sanders in Burlington, because Burlington is so small. It doesn't make these lists of major American cities that have had socialist mayors.

Joining me now to talk about how she managed to beat a 16-year incumbent in the June 22nd primary and how other Democratic Socialists campaigns might use her win as a blueprint, or what it means nationally, if it does have national implications, is India Walton, Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo. Ms. Walton, welcome to WNYC, and congratulations on your primary upset.

India Walton: Good morning. Thank you for having me. I am just beaming. I think that this might be the moment that it finally hit me, the history that's being made out of Buffalo. Thanks for the invitation.

Brian Lehrer: Why this moment, June 22nd was a while ago already?

India Walton: [chuckles] It's all just been very surreal. I am a Black girl from East Buffalo, grew up poor, and by all intents and purposes, the odds have been stacked against me. Teenage mother, single mother, working class, there's no rational explanation for how I got here, but then again, it is. This was organizing and deep strategy. I look forward to sharing some of that.

Brian Lehrer: Would you tell our downstate listeners a little more about yourself? Who are you? How did you get into politics originally, and how did you come to run for mayor of Buffalo?

India Walton: Sure. I was born in Buffalo. I was raised on the East Side, and when we talk about the East Side in Buffalo, it's the place where most of the Black people live. Traditionally, a poor community and we have Main Street and we call it the Great Wall of Buffalo. Where there's this East Side, West Side divide. Historically, East Buffalo has been red lines, in the '50s, they built a highway through it. It is the typical story of a lot of rough build cities, and my experience is that of a lot of people who look like me.

Brian Lehrer: I understand, go ahead.

India Walton: Like I said--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, I'm sorry.

India Walton: Oh, just like I said, teenage mother, working class. I became a registered nurse after getting my GED, and my experience as a nurse just illuminated a lot of health disparities and I wanted to work on policy. That was my foreway into organizing and eventually into politics. I just felt like I could do it better.

Brian Lehrer: As I get more familiar with your background, I see that you're a well-known activist in Buffalo before this race, through your work as a union representative for healthcare workers. Can you talk about how your background in nursing as a caring profession, and your background in union organizing intersect with each other?

India Walton: I think that a lot of people view unions as negotiating contracts, or a way to grieve with your employer. I saw unions as champions for social justice and a way to really amplify the message of working class people and being able to have access to resources that we need to really thrive. One of the most important moments of my life was as a school nurse. People say, "Well, school nursing is about ice packs and band-aid," while it's really not. Because I saw children who were coming to me, not because they were physically ill, but because they were tired, they were experiencing multiple community trauma, including lots of violence, interpersonal and family violence, but also community violence.

I encountered three sisters and they had lice, kids get lice, it's a thing. I called their mother and I said, "It'll be fine. Shampoo them really well and bring them back, I'll check them again, and they can come back to school the next day." She said, "Well, they won't be back until Monday because I can't get the shampoo until I get paid," and it was a Tuesday. These children were going to miss three days of school because their mother couldn't afford to buy the shampoo that they needed. It's those things, and that is the reason why as much as I loved being a nurse, I felt like I could do more and having an authentic experience.

Me being that mother on the other end of the phone, the potential that is me, made me just want to do more, and that led to organizing and eventually deciding to run for mayor. Because we need leadership that is compassionate, empathetic, and understands the challenges of everyday working class people, especially in a city like Buffalo.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this is your chance to talk to the Democratic nominee for the mayor of Buffalo making history, just by winning that nomination. 646-435-7280, if you have a question for India Walton this morning, 646-435-7250, or tweet a question @BrianLehrer. Can we talk about the Democratic Socialists of America? How did you come to join that party, if you consider it a party, if party is the right word in addition to the Democratic Party? What's their reputation been like in Buffalo?

India Walton: I believe that the DSA in Buffalo has been pretty under the radar, and I'm happy to shine light on the great work that has been done. My involvement with DSA up until this point has been mainly around issue based campaign, such as the New York Health Act and healthcare for all. The fight for $15 an hour minimum wage. I hope that the listeners know that a lot of progressive policies that we win statewide often. Often cities like Buffalo and other upstate New York cities are carved out of that. We still do not have a $15 an hour minimum wage here in Buffalo. A lot of my involvement with DSA was just fighting for equity.

I was able to petition with DSA for the first Bernie Sanders Presidential Run and I just developed a relationship with those people. My personal values and my political values just is very closely aligned with that of DSA. It was also a platform that I knew would be able to get us some national attention that was going to be necessary in order to overcome a very entrenched Democratic Party here in Buffalo and also a 16-year incumbent.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think your nomination and then your election, especially if you are elected mayor of Buffalo in November has national implications?

India Walton: I believe it does. Like I said, when we started, it's still sinking in. I knew that we would need to extend our network beyond the Buffalo area, and even the Western New York region, in order for this campaign to be successful, but I did not expect the national attention that has been given to this race. I'm going to do an interview with Rolling Stone after this.

Brian Lehrer: National Magazine.

India Walton: It's surreal, being from a place like Buffalo where we tend to be insulated from a lot of progressive politics. In my opinion, we have been. We have a very conservative leadership overall, even though we're 65% Democrat. Our Democrats tend to be very centered. This win is monumental, not only for Buffalo, but I do think that it is going to have national implications. Not only about what people really want in these days and times, but actually what is politically possible. Just getting back to our root of grassroots organizing. This is a 100% volunteer led campaign. I'm just so proud of the work that our team was able to do.

Brian Lehrer: You talked about yourself as a Black woman from that side of the "great wall of Buffalo", and you talked about being a Bernie Sanders supporter, and obviously you ran on a DSA platform for this Democratic nomination for mayor of Buffalo. By contrast, we saw Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic nomination for president in the first few primaries and caucuses. Then he hit a brick wall when the campaign got to South Carolina with a majority Black electorate and they were for Biden.

We see in New York city with a few progressive candidates to choose from, that the top two vote get, or if you combine, I should say Eric Adams votes and Kathryn Garcia's votes and Andrew Yang's vote. The progressive wing did not get a majority of the electorate here and among Black and brown, New York city residents, it was Adams who ran relatively to the right. I always say relatively, because we're still talking about New York City Democrats, we're not talking about like Mitch McConnell here. You've probably seen the many articles that have been written that say like, "Except for India Walton in Buffalo, progressive largely white Democrats have to reckon with what black Democrats really want." Have you been giving that any thought

India Walton: We've given that a ton of thought and our messaging really is intended to appeal to a broader electorate. The platform is clearly that of a very progressive agenda. When we speak about it, we try and speak about it in positive terms. We don't use anti, and I think that our challenge on the progressive left is one of wokeness. We tend to be very jargony in the language that we use that average people just frankly don't understand. I do a lot of explaining and it's interesting that you asked that question, because in real time, the word democratic socialists is being weaponized against me and use as a fear tactic to perturb the older Black electorate.

Because we are organizer, we know that our job is to get into the community and have conversations one voter at a time about what democratic socialism means and the implication for everyday working class people. We're not going to allow our message to be used against us because we're going to have that level of communication with the voters. I think that that is a lesson in progressive politics that should be heated. Is that, while we have problems with the police in many of our communities, we still have a problem with violence and the solution to that is not necessarily more police, but it is more resources. It is providing opportunities and job creation and affordable housing. All of the things that we know naturally reduces crime.

I have decided to be transparent and honest about the fact that we have challenges on all fronts and the only way to address those is with honesty and facing it head on. It's not that we only have a problem with policing per se, but we also have a problem with community violence. Not that we have only a problem with affordable housing per se. We also have this huge gap in home ownership among Black and brown people that's intentional and systemic. The solution is not only creating a bunch of rental units and protecting renters, but it's also creating pathways for ownership. That's another way that we know that when people have skin in the game, communities look and feel different.

Brian Lehrer: Did you run explicitly at all on, or use the phrase, defund the police in any way? We had one candidate in the New York city, mayoral race, Dianne Morales who ran as the most progressive candidate, who was explicitly using it on her website and in speeches.

India Walton: Yes, I did not use that term because most people don't know what that means. A lot of the aversion to the Defund Movement, is that people believe that it means that you want to get rid of police officers. It doesn't mean that, it means that we allocate funding. We always say budgets are moral documents and police budgets are also moral documents. Increasing funding toward police is not the solution we see in Buffalo. Our budget for police is as high as it's ever been and crime is up. We've had 15 shootings in 3 days, so something is not working.

We are expecting police to fill the role of social services, of mental health counseling, of homeless outreach. That is frankly not what they're trained to do and not what they're paid to do. When I speak to rank and file officers on the campaign trail, and I use those terms, it resonates even with them. They don't want to be doing the job of five people. That's where we should be funding, is those positions, creating and making a robust social safety net system. Fully funding, mental health services, making it more accessible and relieving police have the expectation that they are the solution to everything because they're not.

Brian Lehrer: My guests. If you're just joining us for another few minutes is the new Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo, India, Walton. She will make history if elected as the first democratic socialists mayor of a major American city. By the way, most media usually calculate that phrase since around 1960. She is however about to be challenged in a write-in campaign, or with a write-in campaign from the incumbent Democratic mayor who she defeated in the primary and we'll get to that.

Let's take a phone call by the way, if you don't know where Buffalo is downstate, listen, just get on the freeway and keep going until it ends. India Walton told our screener it's dangerously close to Canada. Paulette in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with India Walton. Hello.

Paulette: Hi, good morning, Ms. Walton. This is so exciting to hear you, the fact that you're running as a member of DSA is very very exciting. Myself as a Black former public school teacher. I'm so happy to hear that you're there talking about the needs and concerns of parents, as well as children with the perspective that is hard, it's very difficult when you don't have the resources. I hope that you will continue to speak out in the ways that you do. I really appreciate your dialogue and your conversation and your perspective on behalf of working class, but also poor people. I think I'm not hearing that enough from progressive candidates. There's a lot of emphasis on working class, which of course I understand, but certainly, there are poor people here to who needs that uplifting, the light for them as well.

India Walton: I think you raise a very good point and our platform is really centered around reducing poverty. There is this red scare tactic that's being used against me. My message to the business community has been, "Hey, when poor people do well, we all do better." If you give a stimulus check to a wealthy person, they put it in the bank and it sits. If you give a stimulus to a poor person, they go out and they spend it. In Buffalo, it's a thing. We spend our money in local businesses and when we're talking basic economics, it's common sense. We can stop giving everything to rich people and they're going to be okay and we can prioritize working people, poor people, mothers, children, our elderly, our most vulnerable. The way we take care of them speaks a lot to how we function as a society.

I look forward to saying the rich people will be fine. We've given a billion dollars in tax incentives to Elon Musk for an empty Tesla factory in Buffalo. That is the legacy that I am going to actively undo. My pledge to my people is that I'm going to put poor people at the center of our policy making and also give them decision-making power by co-governing and respecting the wishes of the people that actually are living this in real time and they have the problem. I'm really excited.

Brian Lehrer: Few more minutes with India Walton and Jennifer in Manhattan, your own WNYC. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Good morning, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I congratulate [inaudible 00:19:49] incredibly admirable and impressive win. I'm calling because I have an academic and profession background in healthcare, most notably in mental healthcare. In light of your background as a nurse, I'm hoping and assuming and obviously your socialist ideology that you are very much an advocate of the single-payer universal health care system that is developing certainly in New York City. All with the objective that New York will become one of the first states to create a single-payer framework. I'd like to know your thoughts on this and how you might work on this in Buffalo.

India Walton: Thank you for that question. I believe that health care is a human right and my pathway into registered nursing led through being a licensed practical nurse. I was a nurse, I was making $13 an hour and I was responsible for the care and health of another human being, but didn't have access to health care myself. I just think that's a ridiculous concept. I think it's ridiculous that health care is a commodity in the United States and it's something that if you are wealthy, and well to do you have more access than other people who tend to be sicker, because of conditions that we created.

Communities that live near highways, communities that don't have access to food, where the air and the water and the soil is polluted. Buffalo has some of the oldest housing sites in the country. Our children have lead levels that are comparable to Flint, Michigan. We have some serious issues here with implications that are wide-ranging and health care is at the center of a lot of that. Though the city of Buffalo, the mayor doesn't have any tangible, I'll use that word, a tangible purview. As the mayor of the second-largest city in New York State, you do have influence. I think that what I'm most proud about this campaign is that we have developed a national platform, and people do care about the opinions of Buffalonians right now.

As mayor, I look forward to sharing my opinion that healthcare is a human right, that we should be doing more to care for the least of us. That housing is also a human right, that we all should have access to living-wage jobs, and you shouldn't work 40 hours, and then have to go stand in the welfare line for SNAP benefits. I'm looking forward to being the story, being able to control the narrative, and putting healthcare at the epicenter of this movement. Not in the way that we are treating illnesses, but in a way that we are addressing all of the social determinants of health, including built environment, safety, employment, and education. Just creating a healthier, more sustainable society as a whole.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, and then I'll let you go. I know you have a lot to do. How do you feel about the person you defeated? The four-time incumbent mayor, Byron Brown, who is a Democrat, you beat him fair and square in the Democratic primary, announcing that he's going to run a write-in campaign against you in November. Are you insulted? Do you think, "Well, no, this is everybody's right to run as an independent candidate?"

I'm thinking of, for people with long enough memories, Joe Lieberman in Connecticut when he got defeated in a Democratic primary by a more progressive candidate for senate from Connecticut. After he was taking more conservative positions on the Iraq war and things like that. He ran an independent campaign and held his seat. Obviously, Mayor Brown thinks that there's enough of a centrist if that's the right word base in Buffalo that they don't really want you for mayor. On the other hand, it's an insult to the person who beat him fair and square in the Democratic primary, how are you processing this?

India Walton: I'm not surprised. I know the current mayor and I'm not really shocked. I think that is more disrespectful to the voters because, during the primary election, he really didn't campaign. He refused to debate me. Buffalo is the third poorest city of its size and the nation and frankly, he's had 16 years to do something and nothing has been done. I think that is the message that is resonating with the voters. It's time for something new, and something better, and bold and visionary ideas. That's just it. He's got a record, and it's not too great and everyone knows it.

The write-in campaign I am taking very serious. I'm not letting up. We are going to continue to recruit volunteers. We are fundraising very aggressively. He has the support of the Michael Bloombergs of the world and Carl Paladino who's local developer. Former school board member that was disgraced and removed from the school board after making disparaging remarks about First Lady Michelle Obama and sending racist and sexist emails around--

Brian Lehrer: He ran for governor, right? Carl Paladino ran for governor from Buffalo. He's like the low rent Donald Trump, before Donald Trump.

India Walton: [laughs] The low rent Donald Trump, and he has vowed publicly to destroy me. That's what I'm up against here. We're going to continue to fight. I believe that if it's the right thing to do, I have every right to do it. I won fair and square, I ran a really aggressive campaign, like I said, with 100% volunteers. This money that is flooding in to support this write-in campaign it just speaks to people's strong desire to enclose power and wealth and not share, they're not being nice.

I am going to continue to run a campaign that is centered on people and rooted in love. My candidacy for Buffalo mayor is a radical act of love. No sane person would go up against this type of challenge, but because I love my community, and I love the people here, and I am one of the many. I'm one of the many and we need leadership that represents all of us and not just the 1%.

Brian Lehrer: Let me just check my years as a little follow-up. Did you say that Carl Paladino is now working for the reelection of Mayor Brown?

India Walton: He is now working for the reelection of Mayor brown. He has vowed to destroy me.

Brian Lehrer: As far to the right as Carl Paladino is known to be, Mayor Brown would accept his endorsement and his aid as a Democrat?

India Walton: Well, he publicly denounced Carl Paladino's support, but campaign disclosures don't lie. Carl Paladino has been a longtime donor of Brown, he has hosted multiple fundraisers at his properties. A public announcement does not mean that they are not privately colluding to dismiss the will of the voters.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting news from Buffalo folks, India Walton is the Democratic nominee for mayor. I hope after November if you win the race, you'll come back and talk to our downstate listeners again. Thank you so much for giving us this time. I know you have so much to do and we're not in your voting area. We really, really appreciate you coming on with us today.

India Walton: Thank you for having me. Just as a reminder, you can't vote for me but you can donate and you can volunteer via phone banking from all over the country. I will just encourage folks to go visit the website at www.indiawalton.com if anyone is interested in contributing.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks again.

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