[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Guess who's getting confirmed to the US Supreme Court today. This judge who knows she's not a lawyer anymore.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Advocacy on behalf of your clients, making critical arguments, the best arguments you can come up with, is a service to the court, but it's a totally different thing than operating as a judge. I think that having had those various experiences, I'm now really mindful of my role and limitations in the judicial branch.

Brian Lehrer: Ketanji Brown Jackson, her confirmation is expected to come this afternoon with at least three Republican votes and probably every Senate Democrat. We'll talk about that and more now with Joan Walsh, writer from The Nation magazine, including Joan's latest article about the governor of New York as she grapples with the complexities of bail reform and so many moving parts in the new state budget, now seven days late, and in an election year where she's trying to win the office that she inherited from the scandalized Andrew Cuomo. The article is called Kathy Hochul Is the Un-Cuomo. Hi, Joan, always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Joan Walsh: Hi, Brian. I'm so glad to be with you. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start on Kathy Hochul. Why the Un-Cuomo?

Joan Walsh: Oh, because she's calm, she's kind, she's super competent, she's not looking to humiliate anyone, she's not a bully, and she's somewhat, I think her instincts are more progressive than Cuomo's actually are, to be honest. Although progressives give her mixed marks as the weeks pass. She was the accidental governor. I make the point in the piece that one of the most high profile women he bullied, there's no sexual harassment, but bullying, was actually Kathy Hochul herself, who he treated terribly as his Lieutenant Governor, tried to push her off the ticket repeatedly.

She just kept traveling around the state in a SUV, not a plane, she couldn't use a plane, and doing good things, minor things, but good things. It turned out to be a pretty good prep to become governor.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about the current moment where she's trying to thread the needle as maybe a centrist on bail reform, but everybody's talking about that. I was really struck by something you had in the article that goes back a decade. You write that Hochul had once been a darling of progressives, until she got to Congress from the Buffalo area in 2010, and then she kept to the right, as you put it. Tell us some of that history.

Joan Walsh: Well, she had been a very centrist figure. I think the thing that people knew about her best before she ran for Congress was that she was a very vocal critic of then-governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to issue undocumented people in New York driver's licenses. She said she wouldn't do it. If people applied, she would even report them to, I don't know if there was ice then, but whatever, whatever the authorities would be.

Brian Lehrer: The immigration authorities.

Joan Walsh: Immigration authorities, right. People perceived that as an extremely cold reaction. She's changed her tune over the years. Then when she decided to run in a special election, I think it was actually in 2011, the Democrats had just been beaten, shellacked, as Obama said, lost so many seats in 2010 and she ran for a seat nobody thought she could win. Progressives really rallied around her for a while because she was really taking on the notion of privatizing Medicare or Social Security. She had the Working Families Party endorsement in that race.

However, when she got there, she took some disturbing votes. She voted to keep the affordable care Act, but she voted on a couple things, minor things, but little things that people perceived as weakening it. She had some terrible votes, quite honestly, on environmental issues. She hued to the center. In the end, people still supported her for reelection, but she lost. Her district was redrawn. Also, I think being ultimately voting for the affordable care Act and also being a strong supporter of abortion rights, which I think some people don't know about her, probably cost her reelection. She certainly thinks that.

Brian Lehrer: She lost her congressional seat to a Republican.

Joan Walsh: Yes, she did in 2012, only by 2 points. She ran, I think, 10 points ahead of Obama. It was a red district. I talked to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the piece. She talks about herself and her own evolution, starting out representing a pretty red district and how you compromise and yet you really can't compromise your values. Then when you wind up representing the entire state, you have to learn more about other constituencies. Some people would call that opportunism, and other people call it either learning from your mistakes or learning from new experiences.

Just like Gillibrand has really shifted and become, I think most people would consider her progressive, Hochul hasn't gone that far, but she's much more liberal than she was when she was in Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, let's take some calls on how you think Governor Kathy Hochul is doing as we wait for this New York state budget to emerge. 212 433 WNYC. 212 433 9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer with Joan Walsh from The Nation. Joan, I'll let people in on a little of our behind-the-scenes deliberations every day this week on how to schedule the show. Every day we think, "Oh, well, the budget is four days late. It has to come down today. We're going to save a segment on the show tomorrow to see, well, what's really in this budget after they've been going back and forth on so many big items, childcare, home healthcare worker pay, education, bail reform, everything," and it doesn't come and it doesn't come and it doesn't come.

It's really tough up there right now for the governor and the members of the legislature, they are having very much trouble getting to yes. Every day we have this open segment and then the next morning, "Well, it still didn't come overnight. We're going to have to figure out what to do in that segment." As Governor Hochul works behind the scenes with the leaders of the assembly and the Senate to craft this budget, which is going to be historic on many levels, no matter how it comes out, how's she doing, listeners?

It's tough to ask this question in a vacuum because it is also an election year where she's facing a primary right now with a challenger somewhat to her left, Jumaane Williams, a challenger, somewhat to her right, Tom Suozzi, then if she gets the nomination, undoubtedly, a challenger from further to her right, probably Congressman Lee Zeldin from Long Island or whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be.

The budget process isn't only the budget process. This is also a campaign document for Kathy Hochul. 212 433 WNYC on how she's doing so far since replacing Andrew Cuomo last year. 212 433 9692. It is tough, Joan, right, to not only be negotiating your first budget as governor with a political intense moment or in a political intense moment already, plus you have to position yourself for your campaign.

Joan Walsh: Right. She's also dealing with changing dynamics in the legislature, an empowered and more progressive democratic leadership that's very proud of its own accomplishments, including bail reform. She's caught between, to some extent, progressives in the legislature and the desires of Mayor Eric Adams, who really wants a much tougher take on bail reform, even though I'm sure you've made this point many times, there is no evidence that the bail reforms have led to serious uptick in crime. That's just known, but there are political reasons for doing it and she's struggling.

I think she's also struggling, it's funny, she's competing with herself in a way, because she hit the ground running in August. She got a lot of money out the door for homelessness, for rent support, she extended the eviction moratorium, which people didn't really expect. She did a lot of progressive things and she did them very competently and she did them without a lot of drama. Her staff gets a lot of credit, they're not bullies. That was very pleasant to people.

That was when I first started doing the story, which was several months ago, that was what I heard, that was the Un-Cuomo was ringing in my ears. However, I think she has stumbled in the budget negotiations. I don't know that it was the right thing to do to introduce bail reform via the budget, although I get why she thought she had to, and so this is tough. It's not all on her, obviously, but I think the legislature doesn't want to be ruled. They don't want to be in a subservient relationship like they felt they were most of the time with Andrew Cuomo.

Brian Lehrer: If it turns out to be a compromise between what the progressive advocates want and what Mayor Adams and people to his right want on bail reform, she's going to get it from both sides, but maybe this is exactly what she's positioning herself for, to run against Jumaane Williams from her left and ultimate Republican from her right, if she gets the nomination because we know the progressives are going to say she caved.

On the other hand, I saw an article in the conservative New York Post this morning where the angle was basically, we are on the lookout for the fake rollback of bail reform that Kathy Hochul is going to say she produced. They're going to call it fake, like it doesn't really roll back bail reform, but maybe she's setting herself up to say, "There are people all the way on the left who don't like it, and there are people all the way on the right who don't like it, maybe this shows I'm doing the right thing."

Joan Walsh: I'm sure she will say that because that really is her approach. In our interview, she said, "I have a progressive heart and soul." She talked about her family background, which is really fascinating. Her parents were real civil rights liberals, Irish Catholic people, working class, but very, very committed to Liberal Catholic social teaching. You help the poor, you work for fair housing. They were really active and at a time, and we've talked about this and I've written about this, at a time that Irish Catholic working-class folks, because I come from them, at a time when a lot of them were moving to the right, in a white backlash, they stayed very liberal and you would even consider them to the left.

They were anti-war, they were friends with the Berrigan brothers, and so she does have this background that makes some people trust in her good instincts, but she's always been somebody who's like, "I've got to represent Western New York. I've got to be able to talk to people who disagree with me and I'm not going to make everybody happy." She thinks that's the sweet spot. We'll see.

Brian Lehrer: We haven't talked about Ketanji Brown Jackson yet. We will do that as we continue with Joan Walsh from The Nation. I also want to get to President Biden's announcement yesterday that he's going to extend the moratorium on student loans through around the end of the summer, but Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others say, "No, you have to do more than that."

We're going to touch on that briefly with Joan Walsh, but when we come back from the break, Joan, I'm going to give this to you right now as a little guessing game in your head. Everybody else, listeners, you can do this too. The calls that we're getting on Hochul, we have 10 lines, at least five of them want to bring up the same point. Guess what it is, hold that guess until after the break. We'll continue in a minute.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Joan Walsh from The Nation on topics including her article, Kathy Hochul Is the Un-Cuomo. All right. I see Scotty Tweets got it right on Twitter. Joan, you have a guess? What are 50% of the calls about Kathy Hochul keying on? I'll give you a clue. It's not positive.

Joan Walsh: The obvious thing is a crime, but I was also going to say, will Andrew Cuomo run? Because that's what people keep asking me, but tell me, I think I got it wrong.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to let Stephanie in Manhattan tell you. Hi, Stephanie. You're on WNYC.

Stephanie: Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. I was interested in her and feeling positive and all that and then the stadium in Buffalo. Really? So many projects need funding. It is one, it is the largest, in dollars and cents, it is the largest giveaway in American history to a billionaire and his stadium. Two, once again, they get away with trotting out all these numbers, manipulate the numbers about number of jobs created when we know that a lot of them are minimum wage and then they vanish when the construction's over. They were talking about 1000 or thousands of jobs. It really will shrink down to, say, a hundred.

Then the biggest one, which really gets me going is, her husband is-- Brian, you can fill it in on the facts. Her husband's involved with either the construction or the concession business, but there's some tie-in with her husband's business. I'll take it off.

Brian Lehrer: Stephanie, thank you. I saw a headline like that, I don't have the facts, and I don't know how closely related to any of the businesses that would profit from the state funding for the Buffalo bill stadium her husband actually is, but Joan, wait, I said half our board is on this, so I'll give it the respect of taking one more call. We're not going to go through everybody who's calling to make similar points, but Susan in the village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan. Susan in Greenwich Village, is that you?

Susan: Yes, sorry, I was having a hard time unmuting. Yes, I agree with everything your previous caller said. I was interested in her because she seemed like a calming influence after Cuomo. She seemed sane, which was a big plus, but the stadium, it's so corrupt, it's so awful. Over a billion dollars to build something for a billionaire. Really? Now I'm not voting for her under any circumstances. It's just awful.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, thank you very much. Well, Joan, are you hearing that a lot?

Joan Walsh: Yes, honestly, she made that decision. All of that came out after my article. It's in the print magazine so it has different and longer-term-

Brian Lehrer: Deadlines and timelines.

Joan Walsh: -deadlines. Yes. I didn't deal with it, but I agree with everything everyone said. I don't think it's going to make me not vote for her. I'll look at the options, but her husband is involved with a huge sports concession company. She has said, if the Bills choose them, she will stay out of it, but it does. The appearance of impropriety is always bad for a politician, especially one who's trying to pose, not pose, but project an image, and perhaps even be a little bit less potentially corrupt than others in our state government.

My colleague at The Nation, Dave Zirin, lefty sports writer extraordinaire, has taken this deal and others apart. I have covered this for many years. It's a terrible deal. It never produces the kinds of jobs or benefits to the community, and we should not be giving money away to billionaires. They should be building the stadium themselves, and that has worked in other places. I don't know why it can't work here. I think she really stepped in it with this, I have to say.

Brian Lehrer: I guess that's one of the things that's probably holding up the budget, because it is a lot of money at a time when, as the first caller pointed out, they're looking for infrastructure funding, they're looking for healthcare funding, they're looking for education funding, they're looking for childcare funding. Hochul herself says this is going to be one of the biggest historical things in the New York state budget. Something that's really going to make history, at least the beginnings of a universal child care program at the state level. The kind of thing that Biden is trying to get in the Build Back Better Bill but can't get through Congress.

The New York state legislature seems inclined, but there'll be less money for all those things, certainly, for housing. Joan, we've talked on this show so much about, with the crime debate back and forth over what kinds of policing tactics, everybody says they need much more money for supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness, especially with the prison to homeless shelter pipeline, where people who are at risk for committing crimes are released into the community.

If they're in the shelters, that's at risk and all these things feed on each other, yet there's never enough money in the budget to build the supportive housing that people say is really needed both as an anti-crime measure and just as a humanitarian measure for people who need the housing. That gets held up, as the first caller did, in contrast to all this money that would go to the Buffalo Bills stadium to a for-profit entertainment company that presumably doesn't need the money. That's why it becomes such a big thing.

Joan Walsh: Absolutely, and she promised, I watched her make an appearance with Mayor Adams to proclaim a new era in subway policing and subway supportive services for the homeless who are basically residing in our trains. He used the stick and was much tougher and she talked about, "We can't treat God's children this way." She proposed something in the order of 25 million in supportive housing services, in new psychiatric beds, very much needed things, but that's a drop in the bucket in terms of what we really need, and we're just talking now about New York City, we're not talking about the whole state.

I interviewed Senator Liz Krueger, who I first met on your show years ago. She's very high on Kathy Hochul, but she's like, "I'm sorry. She wants to do the right thing, but this is a drop in the bucket in terms of getting people out of the shelters, getting people the kinds of support services they need," because you're right, people who've served their time go into the shelters with no real support, and then the people who are not criminals, but are simply homeless, are often menaced by the people who have committed crimes, and may have that mindset.

I don't even know how to talk about it, Brian, but not safe, they're not for lots of reasons. The shelters are perceived as not safe and they are not safe. That's got to change first or rather than shelters, more permanent housing before we get people out of the subways. It's a travesty as the mayor tears down homeless encampments, how few people are actually going into shelters or services. We've been through this so many times and in so many cities, there's no easy answer, but we're not doing what we know a big part of the answer is.

Brian Lehrer: The other thing about the stadium that I'm sure Hochul will bring up and it may be true, I haven't looked close enough to know, is if there is competition for tax breaks or subsidies from other cities and the Buffalo Bills are really threatening to leave, and are susceptible to that lowest common denominator or bidding war to the bottom kind of thing, which unfortunately takes place from locality to locality.

Joan Walsh: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Teams have moved for that reason and they're important in a civic sense to the Buffalo area. The only major league sports team that they have and people love their Bills up there, I know that's for sure, and if they need to compete to get it and the economic advantages that also come, just the economic impact of having a pro sports team, she may feel a little bit caught between a rock and a hard place, but what we never know in those situations is whether these billionaire owners are just playing everybody and saying, "Well, Tennessee is offering this much." I don't know if there's a specific place in this case or just playing everybody or whether they're really going to go.

Joan Walsh: You never know. We have seen teams leave over these things, and I know that Oakland has suffered that. I know that on football and also on the baseball front wanting dollars for new stadiums, not getting it. As you know, I lived in San Francisco for 30 years and I was and am a huge San Francisco Giants fan. I know baseball a lot better than football, and the Giants pulled this. The Giants were going to move, I forget, it's almost 30 years ago, to Tampa Bay, because the voters had rejected, it came to ballot issues and the voters consistently rejected giving the Giants' owners all this money for a stadium.

Finally, a new ownership group stepped up. They said, "We're going to build a new stadium with our money." I think they got some help in terms of land, but it was an amazing thing. I don't always praise the Giants' management group. They made some bad moves, but that was impressive, and that has happened in other places. It's not like it can't happen, and too many struggling cities are being held over a barrel by the threat of billionaires to take their team to a place that will value them more, and it would be a shame if that happened to Buffalo.

Brian Lehrer: We'll see how this comes out of the budget negotiations, which obviously have to conclude sometime in the next few days, and what that means politically, whether she has to chalk this up as a loss if the legislators pull that funding or drastically reduce that funding, or if she's also vulnerable if it's a win and she gets it because of the kinds of things people have been bringing up here. We're going to leave that there for the moment and turn the page with Joan Walsh from The Nation and talk about another woman who will likely also become a first as of later today, Ketanji Brown Jackson. Were you aware at all of her or her judicial record before this nomination?

Joan Walsh: I was. Her name has come up for a long time. There were people who hoped that Barack Obama would pick her instead of Merrick Garland. She was perceived as perhaps not having enough experience, although some of these conservative justices we've seen had less experience, but whatever. He did not pick her, but those of us progressives who've been advocating for, she was a public defender, for a more diverse justice corps to be considering a more diverse group of people, in addition to her status as the first African-American woman, which is fantastic and long overdue.

Yes, she's been on my radar for a while and it was pretty clear when she was confirmed to her last judgeship in DC that she was being groomed to take this next spot when a spot opens. I'm very happy about it. I think she'll be great. I'm going to just celebrate today and forget about that horrible, cruel, racist two days of hearings, and then again, Monday with Republican senators saying despicable and false things about her record. It was a gutting thing to live through and let's just put it behind us and enjoy the day for a wonderful, hugely qualified, and by all accounts, wonderful jurist and person.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it wasn't even just racist as if that wouldn't be quite enough or partisan. It was Q. It was QAnon inspired.

Joan Walsh: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: The QAnon conspiracy juggernaut, whatever you want to call it, which tries to tar Democrats with being pedophiles. We remember that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza place in D.C. lie that wound up in some guy going and shooting up the alleged pizza place because he thought that was going on there, and they were really accusing her of being a pedophile, even if they didn't use that word-

Joan Walsh: They're using it now.

Brian Lehrer: -by being soft on child pornographers, which she wasn't being soft on and she wasn't singling them out for treatment under the sentencing guidelines. Those were the sentencing guidelines and she was looking at each case individually, but to go from there to, well, therefore she's-- Maybe they didn't even say the words, but that, of course, was the impression that they wanted to leave with the American public. She's got sympathy for pedophiles.

Joan Walsh: Oh, I think they said the words and certainly Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the worst people in the house of representatives, she's got a lot of competition, but she's at the top of my list, literally said that people who support her judicial philosophy support pedophiles, and the three Republicans, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, who are going to vote to confirm her, they support pedophiles, but the mainstreaming of this is really about Democrats.

That the Democrats support pedophilia, Democrats, all these bills preventing not just the teaching, but even the mentioning of sexual orientation or gender issues in the early grades, they're creating a moral sexual panic that's about Democrats want to get your kids. We in the GOP are the only people who can save them. It's really sickening because as you said, Pizzagate led to violence, QAnon has led to violence. This isn't just conversation anymore. It's not totally fringe anymore.

Brian Lehrer: What do you make of the likely headcount of all the Democrats? The vote is scheduled for 1:45 this afternoon, by the way, it looks like it's going to be all the Democrats, no Manchin and Sinema drama here, plus three Republicans voting for her, Romney, Murkowski, and Collins. That's three more votes than the Democrats usually get on any of their priorities, but it's still a lot less than for Supreme Court justices historically from across either aisle.

Joan Walsh: Right. It has really degraded on both sides. Sorry, I don't know what's going on. It's degraded on both sides, but obviously, it's gotten worse on the Republican side, I would say. I think she's going to be confirmed with more of a bipartisan vote and with more votes, I believe, than Brett Kavanaugh. That's something. It's important that she get those three votes, but Lindsey Graham, who voted for her when she was confirmed the last time, but not this time, and played the child porn card, has basically threatened to do what he can, if Biden gets any more nominations, to block them. That's their game. We'll see.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, the Republicans will say that the even greater lack of democratic votes for Brett Kavanaugh indicates this is going on from that side too, but we will see. By the way, one correction, number of people tweeting. Yes, thank you, you're right. I was wrong. I was saying that in the city the size of Buffalo, they want to hold on to their one major league sports franchise. Yes, I forgot the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League who are also there too.

All right. Let me touch on one other item today and we'll have to do it really briefly because we're about out of time. We're going to do a separate on this in the coming days. I want to get your take. President Biden announced that he will extend the moratorium on many kinds of student loans through August. Here is Senator Elizabeth Warren on MSNBC yesterday arguing to cancel a lot of student debt altogether.

Senator Elizabeth Warren: It's a way to help close the gender gap. Women now carry 2/3 of all student loan debt. By the way, Black women are the single, biggest-- They are carrying the biggest debt load of any group. Keep that one in mind. It's an equality opportunity, but here's the thing, even if you don't have student loan debt, even if you don't know anyone who has student loan debt, which means there are like four of you out there, but no matter what, you still would be helped if we cancel student loan debt. The reason is because this is about investing in our economy overall.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us briefly, and again, we're coming to the end of the segment and we're going to do a separate on this in the coming days, why has this broken out as such a high progressive priority? Why is Biden only, for what progressives see as the weak T version of a temporary moratorium?

Joan Walsh: Because I think it is controversial. I'm glad that he extended it. I would like to see a permanent solution, but there are people who don't look at it the way that Senator Warren does. I think her equity issue is profound, but feel like it's unfair to people who paid off their student loans. I don't see that at all. I get what she's saying about helping the economy, because we wonder why millennials and even Gen Xers aren't buying houses. They're paying off student loan debt. There are stories of 60-year-olds with student loan debt.

Instead of giving that money to the banks basically, if they were out buying houses, buying cars, changing careers, it would goose the economy, especially for a younger female and Black female cohort. I think it's important.

Brian Lehrer: Joan Walsh from The Nation. Her latest article, Kathy Hochul Is the Un-Cuomo. Joan, Thanks a lot.

Joan Walsh: Thank you, Brian.

Copyright © 2022 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.